The Holiday Grind

So spring has rolled around again.  I love it!  All of the beautiful colors awakening after a barren winter.  New hope emerges with the opening of the buds.  For me, springtime marks the beginning of my entertainment season as well.  It’s time to get the house and deck in order to welcome all of our guests in the coming months.  It is also time to get my kitchen in order, washing the art glass in the bay window, scrubbing the floor and reorganizing the cabinets.

Cleaning out the cabinets, I am reminded of how much I love my kitchen tools. The sauce pan which is the perfect size for the amount of gravy I usually make.  In any other pan, it never comes out exactly right.  I love the knife my sister brought back from Alaska.  It has a round blade with a wooden handle.  You rock it back and forth and it breaks down a pile of fresh herbs it just a few minutes.

Last week I came across my electric meat grinder.  This grinder I inherited from my parents.  Those blades have seen more vegetables pass through its rivets and tunnels than meat, though.  My parents used it every summer making chow-chow and hot sauce. Oh how our eyes would sting from the onions and peppers.  The tang of the vinegar would make your jaws ache as soon as you entered the front door of the house.  They would process gallons of sauce every weekend as the vegetables ripened throughout summer.  The space under every bed in the house served as storage for the cases of pint jars filled with the bounty from those hot summer days.

The times I remember this grinder grinding meats the most was around the holidays.  In my family one thing that big holidays meant was lots and lots of food.  This also meant plenty of leftovers.  The real chore was to use the leftovers in ways that kept the food interesting. One of my favorites was meat salads.  This could be turkey salad, roast beef salad, and so on.  Generally speaking the method was to put the meat through a grinder along with assorted vegetables, seasonings and dressing. 

I loved cooking with my mother and grandmother, especially at the holidays.  These are some of my happiest and richest memories.  The kitchen was full of conversation, laughter and sometimes tears.  I learned so much about my family history and myself during those kitchen sessions.  One year the Easter ham was extremely tough.  Not much of it was consumed during dinner, so you guessed it, we had an abundance of ham left over.

After the dishes were cleared and everyone else had left the kitchen, Grandma and I decided to work on the ham salad.  We all thought that this ham was a perfect candidate for the grinder.  As Mom was finishing the last few dishes at the sink, Grandma and I set ourselves up at the table across the kitchen.  I started assembling the electric grinder and chose the appropriate size bowl and the matriarch of our family was cutting up onions and deciding on the other ingredients.  This time, she chose a combination of dill and sweet pickles, mayo instead of miracle whip and maybe a little horseradish.  Not much, just enough to make you think “what‘s that zing?”.  She was expounding on her philosophy of cooking.  “You don’t want to overwhelm the palate, just tease it a little.”

Now, the trick is to alternate the ingredients as you are putting them into the grinder so it will be easier to mix at the end.  We would start with the meat, then some pickles, some onions, then a few eggs and seasonings.  After cycling in this manner a few times you will end up with a nice big bowl of layered ingredients.  At this point it just takes a bit of effort to add the dressing and stir well blending all the ingredients into a beautiful, spread able salad.  Divide it into manageable portions and freeze for some wonderful treats at a later time!

When we got everything all set, we commenced to grind.  It was my job to hand the different ingredients to Grandma as she asked for them.  “Ham, onion, a little more ham, now some pickles.  No, let’s start with the dills.”  It felt like I was assisting a great surgeon in a life saving procedure.  I giggled a little at this, so I had to explain what I thought was so funny.  Grandma looked at me with a furrowed brow and said  ”This IS very serious business!”  Of course, that just made my giggle turn into a belly laugh which really got us both going for a little while.

Then we were back to business at hand.  Things were flowing pretty well, “more ham and what about those garlic dills we put up last summer?”  I turned to the refrigerator to retrieve the requested pickles and I heard a grunt from my grandmother.  I turned around to see a deep frown on her face as she studied the bowl which was beginning to fill with the layers of ingredients.  “We seem to be stuck”  she stated flatly.

I went over to the table and sure enough the grinder was grinding away (remember it was an electric grinder), but nothing was coming out.  I looked at the surgeon as she was studying the problem.  She added a pickle spear.  She added a chunk of onion, an egg…some more ham.  All her efforts were to no avail.  The grinder was still grinding and nothing was coming out.

I considered this woman who had overcome so much in her long life. She had lost a son to the horrors of war and raised three kids during the depression.  This ham was not going to get the best of her.“Hand me a slice of bread…more ham….another pickle…that egg” pointing to the last hard boiled egg in the bowl.  The grinder was still grinding and still, nothing was coming out.  I looked towards my mother still at the sink oblivious to the pressure mounting.  I turned my attention back to Grandma who was now beginning to get frustrated.

“Honey, let me have that bowl of ham.”  I handed over the ham.  Some pickles were next.  I could feel the tension in the room rising.  This was not fun anymore.  That damn grinder just kept on grinding and nothing was coming out!  Then just when I thought I would burst from the pressure, the food let loose from the grinder.  A pink fusion of juicy sludge spewed out of the grinder at a speed hard to imagine.  It shot across the kitchen, splattering the back of my unsuspecting mother.  Grandma and I gasped in unison covering our mouths in shock then almost collapsing in laughter.

At first I thought my mother was going to be furious.  Her kitchen she had been spending all this time getting back to its normal spotless condition was now spattered with a pink gory mess!  And all we could do was laugh.  Laughing so hard I could barely breathe, my sides began to ache.  Finally, as we fell into the kitchen chairs, we began to catch our breath.  I looked over at mom and she was at last laughing too.

I must admit, I’m not sure I have used this grinder since it has been mine more than a time or two.  Nonetheless, it has a special place in my kitchen and remains one of my favorite kitchen tools.