Food & Beverage

Thanksgivings With Grandma, One of the World's Worst Cooks

Thanksgivings With Grandma, One of the Worlds Worst Cooks

Our Thanksgivings, like for many, meant family gathering and a plentiful meal. For most it’s a day to anticipate: a time that brings entire families together to give thanks, and enjoy good food. For me, Thanksgiving Day with grandma was a day I learned to dread.

My paternal grandmother was the boss of Thanksgiving. Like it or not, she did it her way. She wanted no help, and she deferred to no one. While my grandmother had several positive traits, the one thing that eluded her were her culinary skills.

That’s right, my grandma was a horrible cook. I know saying a grandmother can’t cook borders on heresy. That’s like saying a kiss won’t heal a hurt. But my much older brothers (12 and 15 years older, respectively) and I would do anything and everything we could to either avoid or work around Thanksgiving dinner - or any other meal she prepared for that matter.

I first became conscious of grandma’s kitchen disasters when I was about seven years old. When I got home from school, she had a small plate with exactly five of her special shortbread cookies for me to munch on as a treat. “Special” meaning her cookie recipe must have included 3-4 cups of sawdust and maybe a cup of vulcanized rubber. They were awful; crumbly on the outside, but hard as a hockey puck.

I did make an effort to choke them down. I even tried to persuade her not to make them since I couldn’t eat large portions, and because they might spoil my dinner, but nope. For whatever reason, she took pride in those cookies. I said something to my parents about it, but neither one of them would acknowledge she was an awful cook and baker. “Just deal with it. Be grateful. They’re not THAT bad (but they were).”

My first plan to avoid eating those shortbread cookies but make it appear that I had eaten them was to sneak them into my pants. They were little kid pants with an elastic waistband and no pockets. When she wasn’t looking I’d slide them into my pants and down the front of my underwear. At some point I’d get up and go to the bathroom, occasionally leaving a trail of crumbs that would make it down the legs of my pants. Once in the bathroom, I’d flush them down the toilet. Or try to.

It turned out this was a bad plan for one main reason: a phenomenon I can only describe now as “cooter crumbs” – getting crumbs in your lady bits. Cooter crumbs were like after going to the beach and spending days finding sand everywhere, and in every crease on your body. Or that miniscule piece of dust that gets in your eye that you can’t see, can’t find, but you know it’s there and it irritates the heck out of you. No matter how much you wipe and wet wash, there would be one single elusive crumb that would stay inside the labia somewhere and move around just to annoy you. Just when you think you found the invasive crumb, it would relocate somewhere in all those folds of skin. I remember it waking me up in the middle of the night and going to the bathroom just to wipe and get the thing out. The only way to rid yourself of cooter crumbs entirely was to open up the lady parts and power wash them.

I learned to wear pants with pockets. It would give me a place to stash cookies, and avoid the dreaded cooter crumbs. It worked for a while until one day I tried to flush all five of her cookies at once and clogged the toilet. Thanks to a plunger I managed to get the stoppage to break free, and flushed a couple more times to get rid of the evidence. My grandma wondered what was taking so long, and I told her truthfully the toilet had clogged. She told me to eat more roughage.

Another trick I tried was feeding them to her dog when she wasn’t looking. That didn’t work. If I offered the dog a cookie, he folded his ears back, turned his head away from me, and gave me that side-eye look. Even a pound hound that would usually inhale a sandwich in a single bite, root through garbage, drink from the toilet, and was known to eat his own poop drew the line at grandma’s cookies.

My grandmother overcooked just about everything, no matter what it was. My brothers and I figured she had some fear of foodborne illness, and reasoned if she cooked everything thoroughly – and then some – any bad stuff in the food would die from temperatures above 300 degrees Fahrenheit. She might ask how you wanted your steak done, but no matter what you said you were getting it “cooked through” (well done). My preference for steak is to sear it two minutes on each side then put it on a plate – just knock a steer’s horns off and wipe its ass. That wasn’t happening with grandma running the kitchen.

I don’t remember any of the very early Thanksgivings with grandma, but the first one I remember was when I was eight years old. My brother came in and told me to get changed so we could go to grandma’s for Thanksgiving dinner. I started crying and shedding big crocodile tears. That was the only time my brother ever saw me cry. I wondered what I’d done wrong. What had I done so awful as to warrant eating grandma’s food? It took him almost half an hour to convince me I was going go to live through it. I wasn’t so sure.

We didn’t have turkey every Thanksgiving, sometimes she’d vary the menu. I looked forward to having HoneyBaked Ham if that was on the menu for Thanksgiving dinner for the simple reason that all she had to do was heat it up – or not. One year she’d bought fresh corn in the husk from a farmer’s market, and bragged she got a bargain on it – something like a nickel an ear. I turned out to be feed corn. Cattle may love it, but it was unfit for human consumption.

One year we had roast beef which she would usually get too well done. Most times if roast is too dry, I could moisten it by saturating it with brown gravy. Searing a roast to make brown gravy is not particularly difficult, but she could really jack that up. Grandma’s brown gravy had an oil slick. She put vegetable oil (about ½” of it) into the roaster before she seared it. She’d skim the apparent fat off the top, but what was left was brown-colored seared meat in pure vegetable oil. The one and only time I ate it I found out that grandma’s roast gravy took only two minutes to get into your digestive system, causing everything you ate, and everything you planned to eat for the next month, to make a sudden free-fall down your innards and come to rest at your butt hole. It was the only time I ever had to take an emergency poop in the middle of dinner. I just barely made it to the bathroom. I broke two rules that day: I bolted from the table without asking to be excused, and I used the “pee-only” half bath off her living room. For those who don’t know about the unwritten “pee-only” bathroom rule, it’s the half bath (sink and toilet) right off the living area in a home. One is not supposed to stink it up, then open the door afterwards and subject everyone in the living area to the odor. When I finished the smell was probably enough to knock a buzzard off a shit wagon, but I would never have made it to the far end of her house or upstairs. They could suffer through it, I was simply too old to be crapping my pants. When my dad went in for a routine colonoscopy, I suggested a tablespoon of grandma’s roast gravy would probably clean him out better than Miralax. He was not amused.

As I got into my teens, I tried often to get out of Thanksgiving dinner at grandma’s, but no luck. I learned to wear oversize baggy pants with large pockets to dinner. I took several paper napkins with me. If no one was looking while I was chewing, I took one of the napkins, pretended to wipe my mouth, and spit food into the napkin then discreetly slipped the napkin into my pocket. Her green beans, “farm fresh green beans,” were particularly awful. I hate crunchy green beans. Hers were like chewing on raw carrots. By the end of dinner, I’d excuse myself to use the bathroom and jettison several napkins filled with partially chewed food. This always made my grandmother wonder whether it was “the Asian” in me that made me have to go to the bathroom so soon after dinner, as my “constitution seemed to be so delicate.” That or I needed “more roughage.”

If something got dropped on the floor, she’d often say to leave it, her dog would get it. But I’d end up being the one to pick it up. The dog had standards.

As we got older, we tried to wicker a way to get her to let us make dinner. You know, give herself a break, let us do it so she could relax. She wouldn’t go for it. One year we had Thanksgiving dinner at our apartment. It didn’t matter it wasn’t her kitchen, she would promptly take over and run everyone out. Her job: prepare all the food. Our job: clean up afterwards. When I got into college she gradually relaxed her reign over the kitchen and allowed others to help. One of my brothers and I were successful in taking over most all of the cooking tasks one year, leaving her in charge of the brown and serve rolls – something we figured she couldn’t turn into a train wreck. We were wrong. Grandma often disregarded instructions on packages, stuck things in the oven and eyeballed them. The food was ready by golly when she said it was, not when some store-bought package said it was. Unless the tops of the rolls were completely – and darkly – golden brown, they were simply not ready. They came out like overcooked shells that cracked if you cut into them. They were supposed to be soft.

There were a few times she invited people to join our family for Thanksgiving dinner. One year one of the ministers we worked with closely lost his wife right before Thanksgiving. After her funeral grandma invited him to join us for Thanksgiving dinner later that week. He wisely said he would have to check his schedule. I got him off to the side later and he said he was inclined to accept it. I told him a wise man would run run run. Leave town. Heck, leave the time zone. Be unavailable. Only because I liked him did I forewarn him of grandma’s gawd-awful cooking. He ended up having to choose between grandma’s cooking and helping feed the homeless at a shelter. He chose wisely.

Since my brothers are so much older, they’d moved away when I was young and usually took turns coming home for Thanksgiving. They didn’t alternate years though. When I was in middle school the oldest came home three years in a row for Thanksgiving, which prompted me to ask if they’d played rock paper scissors and he lost.

Whenever one or both of my brothers made it home for Thanksgiving at grandma’s, they’d look around her house for “something that needed to be done.” One year there were a couple of lights out, and she needed light bulbs. She needed them right now. Wally World was open. But that was an excuse to get out of the house and drive through whatever was open, be it Wendy’s, McDonald’s, or Taco Bell. I tried to ride along, but “the kid” (me) had to stay and help clean up. Rat bastards, I muttered. I told them if I smelled tacos on their breath and they didn’t bring me something back, I’d tattle on them. One year they took off without me noticing, ostensibly to get whatever was needed to fix some chair railing that was separating from her wall. You know, trying to play the “sweet, helpful grandsons.” I was ready to rat them out, but the oldest redeemed himself. When he got back he stood out of sight from everyone but me, pulled a wrapped burger from Wendy’s out of his jacket, and dangled it like a carrot. I walked down the hallway, snatched the burger, and went into the bathroom to gobble it down.

As long as she was living, I managed only once getting out of Thanksgiving dinner with grandma. I was in formation at my National Guard unit for a weekend drill when the First Sergeant said he needed a volunteer for a 10-day active duty for training stint that would encompass the week of Thanksgiving and the week after. I was quick to raise my hand and volunteer; I was selected by default, as no one else had volunteered. Everyone thought I was nuts. Who wants to spend a holiday at scenic Fort Leonard Wood (aka: Fort Lost in the Woods), Missouri? I did, if it would get me a reprieve from grandma’s Thanksgiving burnt offerings and other food disasters. I went home and announced I would have to be gone for Thanksgiving. Duty calls, it’s what I signed up for, no mission too difficult, the Army needed me, etc. My parents understood, so did grandma. But my brothers could see right through it. The oldest called and said I was “a sneaky little shit” and neither of them were buying any of my “duty calls” nonsense. I would neither confirm nor deny it.

And so I spent Thanksgiving holidays three years ago at Fort Leonard Wood ferrying troops to training areas in cattle cars, being semi-permanent staff duty driver, and generally being detail fodder for NCOs and junior officers. I spent part of Thanksgiving Day burying and boobytrapping inert anti-tank mines in a field for a group of Combat Engineer students to clear the next day. The company commander of the unit to which I was attached invited all of the single soldiers, including me, to his quarters on post to dinner. It was a delicious feast. Back on the home front, for the one and only time in my lifetime, my brothers talked my grandmother and the family into eating out for Thanksgiving, their treat – and I wasn’t there. They told me it was delicious. I gave up holidays to the Army for nothing, though it was a pretty good two-week active duty tour. As fate would have it, the only one I missed was her last one.

Grandma passed away in hospice care a few weeks before Thanksgiving the following year. Part of me regrets not having been there for her last Thanksgiving, part of me doesn’t. It is still not a topic I can discuss with my parents, they don’t want to hear it. Right after her funeral, we were having lunch with friends and family. Everyone was encouraged to tell a meaningful or funny story about grandma. My dad whispered into my ear “not a word about her cooking.” He said the same to my brothers. It remains a taboo topic to this day.

Happy Thanksgiving holiday to those who celebrate it! Take the time to enjoy it. And if you’ve got a relative who can’t cook but insists on preparing the meal, my sympathies.

Thanksgivings With Grandma, One of the World's Worst Cooks
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