Food, Family, and Fish Haven

Over the course of fall 1998- summer 2002 (I didn't have a car freshman year), I spent nearly a weekend a month in Bear Lake, ID. My grandparents lived in an old pioneer house built in 1865 just two miles past the Idaho Border (thank you, Google Earth for the picture).

A family history house in more ways than one, I think it will always be more special to me for the relationships it allowed me to have with my grandparents. We had spent summers there during my childhood, but these memories were mine and no one else's. For that one weekend a month, they got an extra daughter, and I learned to see them as real people and not just doting grandparents.

Many times my memories of those weekends are of food. Grandma was very particular about when meals were served. You could get your own breakfast (though heaven help you if it wasn't before 8:30), but lunch was at noon and dinner at five--and that is when I got them on the table--not a minute later.

I was a passable cook growing up and had some training thanks to Mom and 4-H, but Mom cooked in our house; and the rest of us were sous chefs. My brother Nathan had a gift for just tossing ingredients together, but I had to train and practice. And I did it in my grandparents kitchen, last updated sometime in the 70s, with the hand crank can opener (I still covet) on the wall and the cast iron stove brought across the plains from St. Louis back in the day (It was more a warming area for foods that came out of the electric oven across the kitchen) while Grandma told stories of her years growing up, being a young newlywed, or how many boyfriends my mother had. She always sent me home to Provo with enough food for weeks.

Sundays were the usual: church and then a roast of some kind, mashed potatoes & gravy, green beans with mushroom soup (or cauliflower with cheese), home-canned fruit, stuffing, and some kind of bread (rolls, bread rings, you name it), and what you didn't eat was sent home. But Saturday, Grandma and Grandpa were my guinea pigs. Grandma's staples were meat and potatoes or something she didn't have to work on too much (frozen dinners), but I would prepare tacos, homemade pizza, enchiladas, spaghetti, etc.--stuff that seems really basic to me (now that I have become more sophisticated in my food tastes), but were often new and different for them. After dinner, we would often watch an old timey musical for Grandma (often Deanna Durbin--a star from the 1930s and 1940s, the Julia Roberts of her day) and then a fun action flick with Grandpa after Grandma went to bed.

I cooked my first Thanksgiving for them. I grieved for friends and family with them--cooking the pain away. I picked fruits and vegetables (and Grandfather made fun of my jumpy nature--he said I had a guilty conscience). We watched General Conference while I made pie or bread or fudge. We canned; we cooked; we laughed; we loved. You name it, it happened in that kitchen or the living room or the picnic tables under the boxelder trees, and food and family history tied it all together.

One of my favorite memories of my Grandfather happened on their 60th wedding anniversary. I had been perfecting my fettuccine alfredo recipe at the time, and I decided to pair it with steak (Daddy did those on the grill usually, so I had never actually cooked one on my own). The look of bliss on my Grandfather's face as he bit into that steak--his first in 10 years--will stay with me forever (especially since it was probably overcooked and not my best--I do much better now), and Grandma could not stop talking about that moment of pure pleasure.

Another favorite memory of my Grandfather happened at my Grandmother's funeral. I flew in early to help Mom and her sisters with whatever they needed. Mom, who for years had been pretty territorial in the kitchen, had come to trust me in there, and turned the food over to me while she and her sisters hammered out the details you must during that kind of time. I threw together some kind of chicken pasta the night I flew in--but Grandpa wouldn't eat. Though years had passed since I had been the long-lost, Larsen daughter, coming up every month, I was once again his surrogate child, sitting in Grandma's chair as we talked. Well, I talked--he was never a big talker--after I set a plate of pasta on his lap. Half an hour later, the plate was clean, and I filled it up again and sat down to talk some more.

When it was time for me to leave, I remember holding his hand, tears close to the surface, and looking into his eyes as hours and days rushed back--me and Grandma and Grandpa in our own little world, with dinner at noon and five; music, stories, gospel, laughter, and food tying us together always.