In loving memory of Betty Christoferson
1930 – 2019
Forever my sunshine.
Kelsey Schoen
By Kelsey Schoen
It’s 7:00 A.M. at my grandma’s house; I smell fresh hot coffee, oatmeal, eggs and fried spam. I hear the sizzle from the grill and the horrible sound my grandma makes when she scrapes the bottom of the oatmeal pan. As I awake to the smell of my grandma cooking breakfast, I know it is time to get up. My grandma gives me a big warm smile and points to the kitchen table where my bowl of brown sugar with a side of oatmeal is already set up for me to eat. I squeal with excitement because I know that no one could beat Grandma’s oatmeal. She, of course, knew to set it out for me ahead of time so the brown sugar could melt, and the sides would cool. Very quickly, I found out that if you eat from the outside edge of the bowl first, and then slowly make your way to the middle, your food will always be at the right temperature. Grandma knew how I ate and made sure that all my food was prepared that way.
My grandparents’ house was built on my grandpa’s parents farm. Most of the vegetables that we ate during the spring and summer were grown by my grandpa and me. My grandpa was a true Norwegian, so the garden mainly consisted of potatoes. Every year, half the crop would rot due to my grandpa getting impatient and overwatering the potatoes. My grandma would just shake her head but cook the potatoes that survived anyway. She only knew how to make potatoes two ways: boil them ‘til they are mush, or if she boiled them too long, then they were mashed potatoes. Oh boy, did people not like when she did that! But me? I loved it! The best part of the potatoes were that she didn’t put a lot of salt in them, so they tasted perfect.
It’s 3:30 P.M. and I am walking through the front door after school; I run to the fridge and look to see what’s in it. I look down to the bottom shelf and I see an overly-used, worn-down, rectangular yellow Tupperware container, with cold neatly frosted cherry-chip cupcakes. My mouth begins to water as I grab one, sometimes three. I plop myself in front of the TV and devour the cupcake. Thirty minutes later I look behind me and I see a plate of Lefse, a Scandinavian potato flatbread, with butter and brown sugar just sitting there waiting for me. I don’t know how she did it because I never heard her footsteps. She had special powers when it came to getting me to eat. My grandma played an influential role in teaching me how to cook and acknowledging what I like and don’t like to eat. She would make a dish called salmon loaf with creamed peas. Some may call it a peasant dish; I call it a luxury. Granted, I am very sensitive to salt and refuse to add it onto any cooked foods, but I loved this quite rather salty, creamy dish. When I would get home from school and the house smelled like fish, I knew it was going to be a good night.
One drink I will always despise and never wanted to drink is milk. However, my grandma made me drink it before I was allowed to leave the kitchen table. It got to the point that we compromised on a small glass and I just drank that like a shot of whiskey. I never understood why my grandma was so gung-ho on the fact that milk makes yours bones strong. At the time, I didn’t believe it. But, hey! Grandma knows best.
Overall, if it weren’t for my Grandma, I wouldn’t know who I am as an eater or a person. Yes, she spoiled me rotten, but it gave me a chance to figure out what I genuinely like to eat and cook. I now know what true comfort food is, and that even though Grandma’s potatoes are good, roasting is the way to go. My grandma never made me eat something I didn’t want to, she just encouraged me to try it when I was ready. The same went for cooking. If I didn’t want to cook with her that night, it was okay, but she encouraged it the next day. It’s that sweet, gentle, kind approach that made me into the adventurous eater I am today. Thanks to my grandma I am a cook, baker, future farmer, and adventurous eater.
It’s 5:00 PM and I’m sitting at my grandma’s kitchen table. I get up and go see what she’s doing and if she needs any “help.” I can smell the over-cooked boiled potatoes and broccoli but what I’m most excited about is the fishy, creamy, mushy, to-die-for salmon loaf with creamed peas on top. The food is placed nicely on the table and the food people liked the most is put close to them just so. I run and grab my huge glass of water and sit down as fast as I can so I could get the biggest slice of the loaf. My parents divorced when I was five, so my mom, brother and I lived with my grandparents ‘til my mom could get our house back. We say grace and I start eating my food. I always ate my food in order of what I liked the least to what I liked the most. I quickly learned that if you eat your favorite food last the taste of the food lingers, which I enjoyed. We get done with dinner and I yell, “Is everyone done with the potatoes and broccoli?” Of course, everyone says yes, and I devour every last crumb. As I’m finishing my vegetables out of the corner of my eye, I see it: dessert. Yes, I still had dessert, even after all the food I ate, but it was always worth it. The dessert varied from cake, cookies, or even just my favorite graham crackers filled with Betty Crocker canned vanilla frosting. Having dinner at my grandparents’ house was always a treat.
My Grandparents met atPictSweet, which was a cannery in Stanwood, Washington. My grandpa was known as “the man leaning on the broom.” One day, my grandpa asked my grandma if she wanted to go out to breakfast. She thought he was out of his mind because all she wanted to do was go to sleep since she just got done working a night shift. My grandma eventually agreed, and it went from there. In 1947 my grandparents got married, and not soon after my uncle, Kenny, was born; they ended up having six children, with my mother being the youngest. My grandpa was a first generation Norwegian, and the food that he grew up on was influenced by his heritage. His diet included a lot of fish and the milk products from their farm such as, milk, cream, eggs, and beef. Everything he ate was boiled. My grandma’s family ate a lot of traditional West Coast American food, which was similar to my grandpa’s diet. Both of my grandma’s parents were deaf and met because they were introduced into that social circle. They settled on a dairy farm in Silvana, Washington and raised my grandma and her younger sister Alice. My grandma lived through the depression, during which sugar was rationed, but that didn’t stop my grandma and great aunt from stealing the sugar from the kitchen to make fudge. Every time my grandma told that story, she always ended it with “It was all worth it.”
When I dined at my grandparents’ house, I pretty much ate meat or fish, boiled potatoes (a staple), and a boiled vegetable, which I finished off when everyone was done. When I cook, I don’t boil my food, but I do eat similar foods such as fish, potatoes, vegetables, and eggs. My body needs seafood, especially fish. I have seafood at least once a week, usually twice. If anything, the foods my body craves the most are seafood, potatoes, vegetables, and eggs. My grandma’s cooking has tremendously influenced how I cook now, I just kicked it up a notch and added flavor.
Not only did my grandma influence my cooking, so did my mom. After we moved out of my grandparent’s house, my mom was the main cook. Oh boy, when my mom cooked, did she add flavor. Sometimes the wrong flavor, which was salt. Less is more, in my opinion. My mom would always have the Food Network Channel on television and her and I would watch Emeril Lagasse together. Emeril Lagasse had a cooking show filmed with a live audience, and every time he put spices in his food, he would yell “Bam!”. Whenever my mom cooked dinner, I would run in and help her, acting as if we had our own television cooking show. I called it the Mom and Daughter Cooking Show. It was more like me talking a lot and getting in my mom’s way, but she let me do it anyways. Recurring dishes in the Schoen household where meat and potatoes (roasted not boiled), some kind of pasta dish, and random recipes my mom found that we either kept or never ate again. Without my mom and my grandma’s different types of cooking I would not be the chef I am today. I cook like my grandma in that I cook with heart and love. I cook like my mom because of the style and techniques I use. Whether it be roasting vegetables or looking up new recipes, my mom and I cook pretty similarly. I do have to say, there is nothing like a good home cooked meal from my mom. Ever since I was young, both my mom and grandma instilled in me the value and impact sharing a meal can have on someone.