My parents enjoyed a companionable social life and often got together for an evening of bridge with Connie and Whig Bisgard. Whig’s real name was Carl, and he was a physician. His father had been one of those old-time family doctors who traveled by horse and buggy to see patients in rural areas of the county at the turn of the 20th Century.
Probably the origin of Whig’s nickname is as obscure as my dad’s own nickname of Beanie. They had known each other as boys growing up in Harlan. I once walked through the cemetery with them in their later years. They reminisced together about all the people they’d known who were buried there, giving me a nostalgic glimpse of the town’s past occupants.
Connie Bisgard was an excellent cook, so she and my mother supplied lots of good food for our family dinners. Several of her memorable recipes are included in my mother’s cookbook.
After a long night of bridge playing, Connie would fix these rich sandwiches before the two couples said goodnight. It’s the kind of food only those who needn’t worry about calories should eat late at night, as my mother’s note indicates.
Connie’s Broiled Cheese Sandwiches
½ pound grated cheddar cheese
1 egg
1 teaspoon Worcestershire sauce
4 strips bacon
4 slices of bread
Beat the egg, add Worcestershire sauce and cheese and mix well. Fry the bacon until almost done.
Lightly toast the bread and spread cheese mixture evenly on the four slices. Top with bacon and broil sandwiches until the cheese is melted. Serves four.
Mom’s note: Connie served these at midnight when we were young!
After my brothers and I moved away from home, our parents enjoyed exploring the different parts of the country where we lived. We’d gone in different directions and moved fairly often, as young people are apt to do.
Mom and Dad liked the specialty food stores and delicatessens where they could buy unusual foods that weren’t available in small town Iowa. When I lived in Cleveland, Ohio, Dad would bring home a nice chunk of limburger cheese that I let him keep in my refrigerator, despite the strong smell.
“Try this, Tekie,” he’d say as he sliced off a snack before dinner. His relish of the cheese couldn’t convince me to try it.
In October of 1970, Mom and Dad visited us in upstate New York. They came to see the vivid reds and gold of fall foliage in the northeast and to celebrate Dad’s 70th birthday.
We lived near the Canadian border, and Montreal had the closest large airport. After their plane arrived, we stopped for dinner in Montreal’s old town at a restaurant of typical French Canadian ambience. Roving musicians played accordions, and we all let go our inhibitions and sang the traditional songs with them.
The Larousse Gastronomique lists several dozen ways to prepare sweetbreads, and French restaurants often offer them. Dad knew right away his choice. I still indulged my early prejudice against variety meats, but I’d become a student of French and loved cooking from Julia Child’s Mastering the Art of French Cooking. So I was intrigued, but not enough to order them myself.
Sweetbreads are expensive and can be found frozen or fresh in some supermarkets. Here is the way my mother prepared these mildly flavored, velvety textured morsels. With this basic preparation, she suggests two treatments using the rich cream and butter she loved.
Sweetbreads
Fresh sweetbreads (2 pair serves four)
Salted water to cover
1 tablespoon vinegar
Butter or cream sauce
Sweetbreads do not keep and must be very fresh. Put them in a pan with enough salted water and vinegar to cover them. Simmer covered for 20 minutes. Drain and cool. Remove all the membrane.
Sauté in butter or serve with a rich cream sauce.
Strange that I recall Dad’s meal so clearly that night but nothing of my own dinner. Sitting beside him, I watched him savor those opalescent nuggets on his plate, napped in butter and wine sauce. This most delicate portion of calf with its French name, Ris de Veau finally caught my imagination. I asked for a bite and surprised us both by liking it. Dad chose the more memorable meal, and I had grown up enough to accept that his taste could be trusted.
“It’s not strange; for tastes are made, not born,” said Mark Twain when considering food preferences in A Tramp Abroad.
Recipes are from the collection of Anna May Cullison.
Margaret Cullison has recently retired from public education and moved to southern Oregon. Now liberated from work, she's happy to be writing again. She can be reached at tekie@starband.net.
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