Published November 29, 2012
Stockton Sentinel
Stockton, Kansas
It was poor planning on my part that had me in the kitchen instead of Bob, deboning the turkey. He was busy doing something else, like putting down new flooring in our bathroom remodeling project, so I didn't think it was fair to ask him to drop what he was doing, just to help me. Deboning a turkey or chicken would top my list of "Cooking tasks I despise the most." As I began the messy job, I remembered the first time I cooked a turkey. It was our second Thanksgiving, and after a year of culinary, on-the-job training, I was ready to take it up a notch and make our own turkey dinner. Actually, I don't remember a thing about the experience other than when I started to cut the cooked bird, that yukky bag of goodies plopped out of the turkey. I screamed! How was I supposed to know that there was a little bag of body parts, tucked inside the carcass, which I was supposed to remove before baking!
In another cooking experience (or experiment!), I wanted to perfect the art of baking zwieback. This is our Mennonite ethnic bread -- zwieback being German for "two buns," or something like that. It is a yeast mixture, with two balls of dough stacked together like a headless snowman. After putting one bun on top of the other, you poke your finger down into the top bun to give it a dimple, thus holding the two buns together. That's the way it's supposed to work, anyway. I had watched my mother make zwieback for many years, and I was pretty sure I knew how to create this time-honored tradition for my own family. The problem was, my dough was not right and the first several attempts produced rock-hard zwieback, nothing like the soft buns my mother baked.
Soon after my first attempt at making zwieback, Bob and I were walking through a craft fair in our little Mennonite community of Goessel when he stopped at a display of wood crafts made by a classmate of ours -- a very pretty wooden bowl holding an arrangement of wooden zwieback. My husband picked out one of the wooden zwieback and shoed it to me, saying, "Look, honey, James makes zwieback just like yours!" It's a wonder I ever made zwieback again. Actually, it's a wonder I ever cooked another meal for my husband!
My extended family, consisting of four brothers (two older and two younger) will never let me forget the time I brought cookies to a family gathering in a Tupperware storage container -- a brand new Tupperware container that I should have first washed in warm soapy water, like the instructions always say, before using. Those cookies had an aroma that matched that of the box, and my brothers still sniff my cookies to see if they smell like Tupperware. In fact, I would bet a batch of gingersnaps that someone at my family Christmas get-together will make a point of sniffing my cookies when he's sure I'll notice!
Well, while I'm on a roll (no pun intended), I might as well 'fess up to another culinary gaffe that my family won't let me forget. It happened at the wedding rehearsal supper for our oldest son, when we had invited the wedding party and all of my out-of-town family to our home for the rehearsal "picnic" dinner of grilled hamburgers with all the fixin's. I was rushing around before-hand, trying to get everything ready for the barbecue. I grabbed the big orange Gott container and began filling it with water from the backyard hydrant, using a new water hose. My dad, relaxing nearby on a backyard swing as if there was nothing he could do to help, was watching me, and said, "Your water is going to taste like the garden hose." No, I argued with him, it's going to taste like tea.
After rehearsal, as friends and family gathered in our backyard on a hot, June evening, everyone was ready for some good, refreshing iced tea. But I could tell immediately that my dad had been right, because everyone was spitting out the tea after their first sip. Indeed, the tea tasted much more lika a new, rubber garden hose than tea. I haven't lived that one down, either.
After being married nearly 40 years, there have been many other flops that went the way of the garbage disposal. But, to look at me and my husband, it's obvious that we don't know hunger, so I must be doing something right. I'll never be a Rachel Ray, but I've learned a lot in the kitchen of hard knocks and wooden zwieback. Plus, I've given my family plenty of things to talk about at the table as these stories, plus many others, get passed around the table as often as my fresh, buttery-soft perfected zwieback that they can't seem to get enough of.
