A Latke Memory
Lisa Summers
Every year, as the holiday season approaches, I revisit what I call my “botched holiday meal” strategy. If I can maintain my reputation in the kitchen, no one will ask me to be in charge of feeding crowds. As an occasional science writer, I’m now more of a cuisine naturalist than enthusiast.
For example, last year, around Thanksgiving, I had to make four separate potluck dishes for the kids’ heritage feast at school. I had a mild panic attack and called my sister in Colorado. She said, “What are you asking me for? Don’t you remember I don’t cook, either? Make something white. Kids love white food.”
Sheepishly, I called my mother. “You failed to domesticate us,” I told her.
“It’s not funny anymore. You don’t even iron,” she said.
“Who irons?”
“Well,” she said triumphantly, “I raised artists.” That’s what she tells her friends.
Finally, at my mother’s suggestion, I made a green bean casserole, a dish I truly believed to have passed into legend circa 1971. My mother made a list of the simple ingredients I would need. She assured me it would be a hit. “It’s all starch and salt. Everyone loves it.” I went to the Safeway, and it took me at least fifteen minutes to find French-fried onion rings. I had difficulty classifying them as a species. Would they be with crackers and chips? Baking supplies? On the ethnic foods aisle, perhaps, under “regional American/Confederate states?” Near the green beans, perchance? Finally I found them in a listing tower near the pharmacy, right next to the cans of cream of mushroom soup—a mysterious coagulated compound of fungus and plumber’s putty. I brought the casseroles to the heritage feast. I was so proud. Of course, most of the kids only ate the rolls and butter, anyway.
However, since I had now mastered the green bean casserole, I decided to bring it to Thanksgiving at my mother’s house. Sadly, when we arrived, the meal had already fallen into disharmony. The gravy, stuck in traffic on Highway 5, showed up two hours late. We waited as long as we could, until the turkey became shriveled and dried out on the barbecue and the kids had to dunk it into sparkling apple cider just so they could chew it. There was a miscommunication about the stuffing and we ended up with about forty pounds.
After everyone had enough wine, the conversation turned to turducken, a distinctly Yiddish sounding word yet a profoundly unJewish dish. Luckily my cousin’s new girlfriend took my part. (She animates adult cartoon shows and collects rare fighter fish—a real shiksa.) Authoritatively she said, “I believe a traditionally prepared turducken is a turkey stuffed with a duck, stuffed with a chicken. The French do something else. There are more birds involved. I think they start with an ostrich.”
“I bet,” I said. “An ostrich stuffed with a turkey, stuffed with a duck, stuffed with a chicken, stuffed with a house finch, stuffed with a cigarette.”
“Exactly!” she said. “Speaking of cigarettes…”
My mother got up and left, giving me the evil eye. “You had to start,” she said. “At least you could let everyone eat before you make them sick with all your nature. How did I fail my daughters? Oy!”
A few weeks later Hanukkah arrived. My strategy was working. “Can we all just admit that latkes are just Yiddish for “hash browns” and get over it?” I asked my mother.
“They are not hash browns. It’s important to make them from scratch, the right way, hand-grated. Will I never teach you anything?”
In our family, the “traditional way” means hours of peeling and grating followed by billowing black smoke followed by the immediate onset of anxiety around the Christmas meal.
In their book Jewtopia, Bryan Fogel and Sam Wolfson offer my favorite definition of Hanukkah:
Jews now commemorate this long ago victory (Maccabees vs. Greeks) by celebrating Hanukkah while pretending not to be jealous of Christmas. Contemporary Jewish families celebrate for eight days by gluttonously eating oily foods like latkes and jelly donuts, gambling with dreidels and chocolate coins, and leaving candles burning in rickety menorahs whose holders are too full of 10-year-old dried wax to hold this year’s candle upright. Other wonderful traditions of the season include going out for Chinese food, pretending not to tear up at the end of It’s a Wonderful Life, and watching the local weatherman who’s standing next to an electric menorah wishing us a “Happy (ch as in church) Cha-na-ka.
“Don’t you remember last year?” I asked my mother.
A dark cloud passed over her face. During last year’s Hanukkah dinner, I walked into my mother’s house during peak latke production. My son, running through the kitchen, skidded out on a viscous, potatoey substance on the floor and injured his head on the refrigerator. Clumps of latke batter were dripping from my mother’s hair and her face was partially covered in flour. The garbage disposal was groaning and yurping up excess potato matter. “This isn’t making latkes, mom. This is a potato apocalypse.”
“Don’t you have something to do? A trail to run? A ball to kick? Leave me alone,” she said, defeated. Then I realized it was I who had failed her.
Finally, after some pressuring, I convinced her to try the frozen latkes from Trader Joe’s. “It’s just us,” I said. “No one will know.” She scoffed, of course. But in the end I won. We spent the rest of the evening drinking and watching the candles burn down.
“These were good,” my mother said. “Not a word to anyone about frozen latkes, especially no one Jewish. My reputation is on the line.”
“Mom,” I said, “haven’t I taught you anything?” FL
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