The good cooking that I was raised on is an art, and I was taught by the best. At Galen and Deanna’s table, good food was a given. Prepared with love, presented as an event, even when money was tight (always), and the house needed cleaning and repair (always), we had candles lit for supper, wine in wine glasses, and the food was the centerpiece. Even if it was served on paper plates, and often it was, to save my busy parents the dishwashing, we four children had the chance to experience food, wine, and laughter – the holy trinity of the Deibler table – with our wine served in the antique shot glasses from the corner cupboard. We learned early on that you tried everything whether you wanted to or not, and often you were surprised at how really good it was. At my parents’ table we ate turtle soup, rabbit, oysters, African peanut stew, Moroccan lamb, oxtail stew, and sushi long before it was in vogue. We once had pheasant two weeks in a row. The first week, I saw one fly into a telephone line from the school bus window, reported it to my mother, and to my deep adolescent embarrassment, we were soon in the car and on our way to retrieve the body for dinner. The second week, happily, another pheasant flew into the side of the barn during a snow storm. Roasted, stuffed with fruit and wild rice, two very fortunate accidents. From my earliest memories, my June birthday dinner choice was always grilled steak, rare and bloody, sliced fresh tomatoes, and corn on the cob, dripping with butter and salt. Best of all was being allowed to snag a piece of the beautiful beef before it was cooked, with a sprinkle of salt, chewing and tasting the pure raw beef flavor. No one worried about e coli or salmonella in those days. And I certainly didn’t think it an odd choice for a seven-year old. Good food was just what I wanted for my birthday.
Food is family, and family is food. The cute baby Easter chicks, grown into psychotically nasty roosters, were dispatched one warm summer day, by my grandfather wielding the hatchet against the stump of the walnut tree. We watched in fascination as the roosters that that morning had terrorized us in the yard, ran around in blind, headless determination, then just fell over. The smell of the process is still with me. My parents and grandparents, working together, cleaning the two chickens, plunging them into boiling water, then plucking every feather and fluffy pinfeather from the two carcasses. These adults, beloved by me beyond reason, listening to music together, talking together, laughing together, while we kids watched the process from the doorway. It was as much about having the family together as it was about the chicken dinner we couldn’t wait for. Roasted, brown and juicy, crispy salted skin, stuffed with homemade bread stuffing; velvet gravy, rich with milk, flour, and glistening fat from the chicken; yellow potatoes mashed with butter and hot milk; green beans fresh from my grandparents’ gorgeous garden that never knew a chemical spray. The memory of the conversation, the comments on how good these chickens raised on grass, worms and bugs tasted – free-range before there was free-range – was as enlightening for me as any school lesson. Who knew that what a chicken ate could affect how it tasted. Amazing! My grandfather, our link to my family’s long history in this area where I still live, wove it all together by telling us how when he was little his grandmother and grandfather did the same thing we were doing that day. He’d tell us how they built up the fire in the wood stove to roast the chicken and bake the bread. I could envision it all taking place in the log house he grew up in, just up the street from the house where my father was raised, where we spent weekend nights “sleeping over.” Proud family history was all tied up in the food that was raised and grown and prepared and he made sure we felt the strength in that chain of physical and emotional nourishment.
Food is friendship and I feel special affinity with those friends who are also adventurous and willing eaters. I love talking food, admiring food, preparing food, and eating food alongside those who also love it. Laughing, sharing confidences, surrounded by the fragrant sauté of beef and pork, wine and garlic, vinegar, raisins, and hot chilies. We sip a good malbec and chop mountains of fresh vegetables. Our children walk in to see what’s going on, get a taste, pick up the conversation and carry it along, make us laugh, and leave again. I hope they’re building their own food memories. My husband comes by for a taste, a sniff, and to give a kiss, a hug, and a compliment. We restart La Misa Criolla, and sing along as the music plays, joyously South American for these Venezuelan hallacas. We pour more wine, we sharpen the knives, we chop the fresh herbs and the smell of cilantro, rosemary and fresh thyme fill the kitchen and coat my fingers. I can still smell it hours later. Oiled hands patting warm silky masa dance along all on their own, knowing the way, freeing the mind and the soul to talk and think and share while our hands meditate on the touch, the fold of the banana leaf, the knot of the twine that holds that delicious treasure together. We forge new bonds and nurture old ones, reaffirming the strength and value of loving friendship and family, and always it lives around the food.
Truth and Malbec 