Bereavement Observations #4: Taste and Death
    A few days ago I made one of my favorite things to eat for the first time since my mother's death: A toasted tuna salad sandwich on sourdough bread. Making and eating it was like a small celebration of my mother's and my life and, as well, of my life without my mother. I made the tuna, mostly, the same way I did when my mother was alive, adding lots of minced yellow onion, minced fresh celery with leaves, dill pickle relish (dried between paper towels to remove as much moisture as possible...I hate wet tuna salad), celery salt, an-off-the shelf salad seasoning that I discovered many years ago and onion powder (my secret ingredient). The differences were: I didn't use nearly as much mayonnaise as I did when I made these sandwiches for my mother and me, I only require enough to glue everything in the mix together while my mother required enough to add a definitive "white glue" taste to the sandwich; I didn't add cheese to transform the sandwich into a tuna melt, which my mother loved; I used only a hint of the salt based flavorings rather than enough to change the taste of the tuna; I used Pam in the skillet to toast the bread instead of buttering the bread before placing the sandwich in the skillet because I don't like greasy toasted bread.
    As I made the sandwich and reviewed the differences between my mother's food preferences and mine I realized that, while she was alive, it was important to me to make food the way she liked while retaining tastes that I liked and that I preferred to be eating exactly what I prepared for her to eat so that, as we discussed each meal (which we always did), I was in tune with what she was describing.
    The differences between what I prepared for my mother and I to eat and what I prepare for myself to eat alone seem small but are profound:

• I haven't eaten, or used, an egg since the week after my mother died;
• Without trying, I am eating far less meat than we ate when she was alive, which means I am back to using meat mainly as a flavor booster rather than a main ingredient;
• I use far less cheese than I did when she was alive;
• It is not uncommon for me to prepare a meal for myself with nothing but vegetables...my mother would never have stood for such a meal;
• I not only can handle but prefer sauces and dressings that are more acidic than my mother liked, thus, I add only a small fraction as much sugar to the salad dressings and tomato based sauces I now make than I used to add when preparing them for my mother and I;
• My mother preferred noodles to rice and white rice to brown and mixed rice, thus I've been pawning half used bags of noodles and white rice off on my friends since my mother died;
• I'm discovering that, although I thought the two of us consumed little enough salt, the frozen leftovers from before my mother died, through which I am still in the process of working, are a little too salty for my taste;
• Now that I don't have to cook breakfast, I hardly ever eat breakfast meat, except in a BLT (if I can get really flavorful tomatoes) or as a flavor booster in beans;
• I prefer, for instance, a bowl of home made chili to nachos made with generic chili; meat with steamed vegetables rather than meat with stewed vegetables.
• Take-out fast food really isn't as flavorful as my mother thought; nor as I thought when we ate it together.

    It is a pleasant revelation that I am quickly reverting to the way I used to eat before I took up housekeeping with my mother and became the primary cook for two. I had forgotten, for instance, that I used my oven primarily for storage when I was living alone; that a steamer is more essential to me than a stove top. I'm also finding it peculiar that I adjusted my tastes to fit in with my mother's. I'm not sorry I did that...I think community eating requires palate adjustment and savory adventures and I'm pleased that I was not so stubborn about my own tastes that I sapped the communal aspects of eating from our shared meals. The pleasure of delighting my mother with food, too, more than made up for the food compromises I made during our companionship. Now that I can eat the way I like, though, I look forward to, rather than dread, celebratory communal meals that please a variety of palates.
    If eating is possible at the Elsewhere Bar, I suspect that my mother, too, is reveling in some of her old favorites that she hadn't eaten for years since I took over the cooking. I imagine the first meal she ordered was a baloney, ham and yellow cheese sandwich on white Wonderbread, slathered with Sandwich Spread and Miracle Whip and margarine with several Bread & Butter pickles squeezed between the layers, accompanied with Cheetos (just leave the bag here, please) and, of course, dessert: Several handfuls of Hershey's Almond Kisses.
    Later.
- posted by Gail Rae @ 10:16   email  this post