Thursday: Family Recipe

Preparing a roast in the appropriate way has always been a family tradition passed down from my grandmother.




I remember Sunday dinners with roast beef, potatoes, carrots and onions as a regular feature on the menu. Mom would always serve delicious green beans cooked with a ham hock and home made biscuits. Usually jam was there that she had preserved during the harvest season. Salads could very but often it would be green jello with chopped up apples and celery served with a dollop of mayonnaise. We did not usually have desert because that special treat was saved for Sunday evening where everyone would gather together after church to fix something neat like fudge or peanut butter and potato candy.




I really never thought much about Sunday dinner but always looked forward to it. So I carried on the tradition from my childhood to my new family.



Our first Sunday dinner, I took the roast and prepared it to go into the baking dish. I carefully cut off both ends and placed the roast in the pan with the end tucked neatly one on each side just as my mother had done. I peeled the potatoes and scraped the carrots and neatly placed them in an array of bright color with onions diced and sprinkled for flavor. Add a couple of cups of water, sprinkle on some salt and pepper and in the oven to bake.



My new husband asked me: Why do you cut the ends off the roast? I said, I don't know. That is the way you cook a roast. It is the way my mother always did it and that is the way her mother always did it. It is the way you cook a roast.



A few weeks later he and I went to Mom's for Sunday dinner. Of course, she served roast beef. Not one to be silent, my husband asked her: Why do you cut the ends off the roast? She said, I don't know. That is the way you cook a roast. It is the way my mother always did it and that is the way her mother always did it. It is the way you cook a roast.



At Thanksgiving, Grandmother joined the family for dinner. My husband asked her how she cooked a roast. She explained and he said: Why do you cut the ends off the roast? She said, I don't know. That is the way you cook a roast. It is the way my mother always did it and that is the way her mother always did it. It is the way you cook a roast.



Now my husband is a Virgo and a very logical person and he knew that there either was a good reason for cooking a roast this way but for the life of him he could not figure it out. Could it be that placing the ends on the sides kept the temperature more even? Could it be that by cutting off the ends and leaving the exposed ends one got a cleaner heat? None of that was logical. And if something doesn't sound logical to him, he works that question like a dog working a bone.



After about six months of marriage, we planned a trip to go see my great grandmother who lived in a retirement village in Florida. My husband was excited to visit this woman and see if he could find the answer to his puzzle. As we sat down to Sunday dinner with Ya Ya, He commented on how her roast was the best he had ever tasted. He asked her finally, why do you cut the ends off the roast. She just sat back and broke out laughing. She laughed so hard tears were trickling down her face.



Well, she said, when my dear departed David and I first got married we were pretty poor. And when we could afford to buy a roast for Sunday dinner, it was a real treat. However, I couldn't afford to buy a roasting pan so I had to cut off the ends and tuck them on the side to fit in a square cake pan. I got in the habit of doing it. And I just kept doing it.



The moral to this story is that every family has a recipe to remember happy times. Sometimes it is as simple as a ritual to cook a roast or choosing what sides to serve at a special dinner. Family recipes are comfort food that often cannot be explained except in the feelings that we have when we have them.





Myriam Maytorena, M.Ed.
http://myriamsmuse.blogspot.com/
http://manifestreality.com/
http://asknow.com/
You are the Miracle.
“It is one of the commonest of mistakes to consider that the limit of our power of perception is also the limit of all there is to perceive.” - C.W. Leadbeater