Party Food

Watercress Sandwiches

 I was sitting at the kitchen table when I noticed on the wax paper carton the words, “Win $7500! Your Favorite Way to Use Square-Cut Wax Paper Could Be Worth $7500!” Anny picked up the box and tore six more pieces of wax paper in quick succession, and then folded all six in half, ran her fingernail down the crease, and tore them on the edge of the table to make a dozen paper squares. While she was crawling her fingers into the Wonder bread bag, I reached over to the wax paper box and picked it up to glean more knowledge from the flap, but there was none, other than a phone number and an e-mail address. I memorized the e-mail address: squarecut.com/sweepstakes. If I forget, it’s not meant to be.

I personally had no favorite way to use wax paper; in fact, I didn’t use wax paper at all. But I associated wax paper with Anny who was presently rolling watercress sandwiches like tiny jelly rolls in 4-inch squares of wax paper, to be unwrapped the following day and arranged on a silver plate for the guests on the house tour. I’d seen my mother make these watercress sandwiches my entire life and I figured it’s as good a way to use wax paper as anything I’d ever heard of, certainly worth a shot at $7500. What other use for wax paper would anyone come up with, ironing leaves? Powder sugar snowflakes? Watercress sandwiches have got to beat them out. And anyway, the odds are in my favor, I thought. How many people are going to compete in a wax paper contest?

I decided to keep the ambition to myself, but I sure could have used $7500. It had been spent several times over already, almost not worth trying for we were so in debt. We’d have been almost in the black by the new year if Wick hadn’t bought that run-down building. And Christmas only two months away. Seventy-five hundred would barely be noticed. But then, if I won the money out of the blue, maybe I could buy something new, like living room furniture, because it would be like a gift, a windfall. I pondered this while watching my mother slice crusts off the pile of white bread slices.

Later that week, when I was paying bills on the computer and I saw our bank balance draining away like water on sand, I suddenly remembered the contest and the e-mail address, and I opened the website to see what the contest rules were. It was simple. I had to type in my name and address and email address and then there was a box for filling in my favorite way to use Square-Cut Wax Paper. I thought it would be nice to start my essay with a question: Do you know that watercress only grows in clean spring water? If you have watercress growing, you know the water is pure.” But right off the get-go, though it was a thought that always comforted me, I recognized that it had no relevance to wax paper.

I started to type: “My mother has been making watercress sandwiches my whole life. She paddles across the pond in a little yellow raft boat to the watercress patch and--”. The screen wouldn’t let me add any more words. I glanced at the rules and saw “…in 25 words or less….” I backed up and deleted “My mother has been making watercress sandwiches my whole life.” Clearly there was no room here for personal history.

I typed in “She chops the watercress, salts it, and mixes in mayonnaise –“ and again the screen stopped me from saying any more. I gotta get to the wax paper, I said to myself, and I erased the part about the pond and the boat, then continued my description, “—and smears –“ no, no, I backspaced “smears” and typed “spreads it on white bread trimmed of crusts, rolls each one in Square-Cut.” I counted. That was already the limit. Thank goodness they counted “Square-Cut” as one word. I hadn’t yet begun to explain refrigerating them overnight, removing the wax paper in the morning, and serving them with tea.

Maybe that doesn’t need to be explained, I thought. Maybe everybody already knows about watercress sandwiches with tea. Any doofus will know you have to remove the wax paper before eating, but will they know to remove the wax paper in the kitchen, before serving them? That the sandwiches will keep their tubular form? That they make perfect finger food because the bread is neat and white. That they’re delicious because the nippy watercress is balanced by the mayonnaise and the bland white bread. That they’re squishy without being messy because the salt draws out the watercress juice and the bread soaks it up? I decided they would just have to find that out for themselves.

I had to find room to say, “Remove paper before serving.” It was the least I could do for maintaining standards of gracious entertaining. The least is all I’m permitted to do, I mumbled to the screen. How about “Mom” instead of “My mother?” Magazines like familiarity, I reasoned. But maybe they’ll disqualify me because it’s my mom and not me making the sandwiches. So I highlighted “My mother” and overtyped “I” instead. Too bad short words don’t give me some advantage. I am the Queen of Pictograms. I envisaged the entire recipe written in code: MX CRS N MAN88 & SM(picture of an ear) N SL(picture of an icicle). RL N P(picture of an ape)R & RFRGR8.

I erased “one” and typed “refrigerate overnight. Remove--” “This is a recipe! You can’t leave that out!” I shouted at the screen. “Get rid of the pronouns,” I calmly replied to myself. I moused the cursor to the top and began anew, typing furiously, cutting, inserting, leaping down the lines, wedging words in, yanking others out, til I mashed the entire experience into the 2-inch by 1-inch box. “There,” I said triumphantly and leaned back in my chair.

But when I looked at the final product, it was stripped of all memory, the mist off the pond, the hairy white roots, the bitter taste of the leaves, the jaunty stack of 4-inch wax paper squares, the rolled sandwiches held in place with two neat twists of the paper like a bonbon, the pile of crusts for mopping the bowl and gobbling up on the spot, and Anny’s clear hindsight of yet an earlier age when ladies ate watercress sandwiches with their afternoon tea. I denied myself a sigh, and I smacked the SEND button.

—Jenny

 Hot Crab Dip

3 large packages of cream cheese

½ cup diced onion

1 Tbsp. horseradish

1 Tbsp. Worcestershire sauce

1 lb. crabmeat

Salt and pepper to taste

Breadcrumbs

Mix first 4 ingredients. Fold in crabmeat. Season to taste. Spread evenly in a buttered casserole dish. Sprinkle top with bread crumbs. Bake 45 minutes at 375 degrees.

 Recipe for Chocolate Toes

Ingredients:

1 scuzzy pond

1 set of toes

Preparation:

Jump off rickety dock into scuzzy pond. Hit bottom. Ignore squishy squelching ookiness. Hold muddy toes up out of water and say, "Anny, look! Chocolate toes!"

— Lassiter

Tea Party

For a span of years, Anny picked the three of us up (Philip, Boomer, and I) in her convertible every Wednesday at 4:00 for “Tea Party”. Tea Party was not an actual tea party. Tea Party was whatever Anny came up with. One tea party, she had us dress up in Chinese clothing and rice hats (spray painted our blonde hair jet black). We sat on cushions on the ground and feasted on Chinese food. Another tea party, she gave us each $1 and took us to Big Lots and whoever made the best purchase with their $1 received an additional prize (most likely chocolate). Another week, we went to the farm and each person had their own color string and was given one end of the string and she had weaved and rigged the string throughout the back porch. The goal was to follow the piece of string to get to your prize at the end. Another, was actually the mad-hatter’s tea party from Alice in Wonderland where the teacups were filled with jello and all the food was not as it seemed. Another, she revealed “The Secret Garden” to us. She took us behind the barn into a valley where she had fashioned steps down to a creek where we would play for hours on end. Another, she had set up a scavenger hunt all over the farm.

 300 ears of fresh corn in the husk

a 6-foot-by-8-foot-by-1-foot pit

a mountain of firewood filling the pit to a height of about 6 feet

12 heavy-duty burlap sacks

a water hose, a water trough, and a water bucket

2 shovels, a gravel rake, and a helper

matches

Have all the above mis en place 24 hours before serving.

 Epilogue

Mouse Turd Cookies

Unlike some of the other recipe names in this collection (Pond Scum Salad, The Big Ug Cake), this name is not metaphor. The cookies Anny baked for us had mouse turds in them, as well as chocolate chips. How could we tell them apart? We could see the mouse teeth marks. Anny and Lou could not.

Anny baked them to celebrate a rare visit. By that time they had been living on the farm in West Virginia for 50 years and most of the family lived far away. This visit was extra special because Lassiter, the oldest grandchild who lived in Vermont, was there to see them. Anny was pleased and excited, and she went to the trouble to make something special, chocolate chip cookies.

By then the kitchen was old and run-down. Inefficient and jerry-rigged, it presented more of a physical hazard than a work space. Anny often fell down while she cooked, if not tripping over the dog asleep in front of the fireplace, then spilling hot pans as she lifted them from the wall oven. More than once she set the electric stove on fire or burned a pot black and smoking.

Anny and Lou both had incipient dementia and they fought like wildcats to stay on the farm, with no help, no changes, no accommodations made for their declining states.

The visits from family became more and more challenging. The house was filthy. Anny stopped using the dishwasher or the washing machine, choosing to wash everything by hand. The dog hair was suffocating. The smell of urine-soaked clothes made one’s eyes water.

The visits from family became more and more contentious. Hired help was hired by the kids and fired by Anny and Lou. The state took away their drivers licenses and Carry took away their keys. The refrigerator was full of rotten lettuce and spoiled milk. Yet no one was allowed to help, clean, or throw away. Anny would fly into a fury and demand that everyone leave.

That was the setting for the cautious lunch with Lassiter. We got through soup and sandwiches carefully, and then Anny pulled out the plate of cookies, uncovered, from an open shelf. They were covered with mouse turds. Anny passed them to Lassiter first as the guest of honor. She politely demurred. Anny passed them to Jenny who also declined. Lou reached over and took one and munched it down. Anny said, “I baked these for you. You aren’t even going to try one?” We both said politely, “No, thank you.” Then she complained. “I do something nice for you and you can’t even bother.” Jenny said, “The mice have gotten to the cookies first.” Anny cried, “No they haven’t! Those are chocolate chips.” Lassiter said, “There are also mouse turds, and little teeth marks, Anny. You and Lou shouldn’t eat them either.”

Then Anny got angry. “I think you should eat them anyway. I made them for you.”

“Is this a test of love?” asked Lassiter.

“Yes, it is.”

It was always a test of love. Or a testament of love. All the meals, all the parties, the very fact of cooking for someone, were testaments of love.

The Mouse Turd Cookies were a test of love, and they ended in heartbreak. Dementia took its toll in many ways on many people, eventually landing Anny and Lou in a retirement home with round-the-clock care, but not until after much heartbreak. Perhaps the name of the cookies should be changed to Heartbreak Cookies.