Nana

The legend in our family is that our ancestors were Polish royalty. As kids, my cousins and I loved this tidbit and would affect Polish/Buffalo, NY, accents and say things that we thought sounded royal. Our supposed heritage gave us a bit of cockeyed confidence. I was glad to grasp onto the possibility of a royal lineage.

This birthright did not extend very far, however. In the area of food, we were treated to certain ethnic specialties, to be sure, like freshly-made pierogis, Polish sausages made by butchers right in our neighborhood, deli meats of all stripes, delicious pickles, tender rye bread encrusted with fresh, naturally-sweet caraway seeds. The yeasted, crumb-topped coffee cakes were perfection.

But those were not our everyday foods. My Nana, my mother's mom, took care of us kids quite often. She was not big on cooking, but she was big on thrift. She made a few things in heavy rotation, like hamburger pie, plain hamburgers and plain white rice, canned green beans, stuff like that. Milk was always the reconstituted kind, skim, from powder. And there were lots of generic-brand cookies and Wonder bread. I loved good food, even back then, but I didn't mind eating at Nana's. At any rate, it gives you something to compare the good stuff by, if you really get to know the not-good kind.

Nana drank coffee all day long. She sometimes had people over and they'd play Yahtzee or pinochle while they smoked one cigarette after another. They argued with each other incessantly, always taking affront to each other, and swearing liberally. They used Polish to say things to each other that they did not want us to understand. They were loud, and they didn't pay too much attention to us. We played in the backyard a lot.

When Nana neared the end of her days, I visited her almost every day. I listened to her stories--always about herself, never asked about me (she would have been a fine blogger, I think)--and I did things for her like go to the store, clean stuff in her house and just keep her company. I was in college then, and a full-bore vegetarian. I planned to make her and my great-aunt Rose, Nana's step-sister, a dinner from Jeanne Lemlin's Vegetarian Pleasures, a book that I still use from time to time: mushroom quiche, Irish soda bread, home fried-potatoes and onions, fruit salad. I bought all the ingredients, then dawdled a few days. I have set the story up so you can guess that I did not get to make that dinner for Nana. Aunt Rose and I shared it together a few days after Nana was gone. So, whenever I use Vegetarian Pleasures, I think of Nana, what a character she was. From royalty? Perhaps. Let's just say it was so.