Chipotle Smashed Sweet Potatoes
Happy New Year! Here are Mom and Dad looking cute on New Year’s Eve in 1964.
Funny, it never occurred to me to Google Image Search Mom until today. I’ve never seen this photo! It’s from the Greensboro newspaper. Mom and Dad are in our Mallette St kitchen which was well used and well loved.
Another Google Image Search winner. This was a publicity photo from the Backyard BBQ festival.
I don’t have ANY photos of Mom and Dad in India in 1988 (I’m sure there are some at Dad’s house) but here are they are in an equally exotic location: Egypt!
The wrong kind of Indian but it will do. Dad in 1946.
A cute photo of Mom and my sister, Elisabeth, just cuz. Belmont Abbey College, NC in the early 2000s.
An emo photo of Mom and me just cuz. Italy in 1988.
Mom, Elisabeth, and Dad is Elisabeth’s old apartment in Oakland. The tin star on the table next to Dad was a gift to Elisabeth brought back from my honeymoon in San Miguel de Allende. The painting hanging over them is an East Tennessee landscape done by my Mom’s mother, my Nonnie, Phyllis Volberg.
My friend Susan and me in San Miguel de Allende, Mexico just 2 days ago!
As of January 11, I will have been doing this blog for a year. A YEAR! For someone with the attention span of a Chihuahua, that’s pretty damn good. Speaking of Chihuahuas, I’ve been in Mexico all week, soaking up the delicious food, great weather, and abounding beauty of San Miguel de Allende with friends. I’ve been before, 22 years ago to be exact, for my honeymoon. To be honest, I wasn’t that excited to return. This trip was at my friend’s urging. I had adopted this too cool for school “San Miguel is too gringo” mentality. (Like I’m really down with grit. Ha ha.) You know what? Gringo or not, San Miguel is freaking lovely and I can’t wait to go back.
We did what gringos (or in this case, gringas) do: walked, shopped, dined, and siesta'd. On a side note, my friend Richard’s nickname for me is “Dirty Gringa”. He spent his childhood in El Paso doing chores doled out by his Mexican mother. I, decidedly, did not. We had a cleaner who came once a week and Mom was pretty lenient with us in that department. So, when, as a 20 something gallery employee making essentially minimum wage, I had a house cleaner, Richard let me know this was preposterous. He said that she probably referred to me, under her breath, as “Dirty Gringa”. The name took. In fact, I told my current house cleaner (when she returned after quarantine to find our house a disaster) that she could call me “Dirty Gringa”. She looked at me in horror like - did I hear that correctly?! Yes, she did. I can call a spade a spade.
There was so much loveliness in San Miguel. Everything is considered! Even our toilet paper holder was gorgeous. My purchases were limited by the space in my suitcase, so I, for the most part, bought little things: jewelry, blown glass shot glasses, candle holders. I did get overserved and enthusiastically purchase a jaunty hat with a feather, which I now (sober) realize makes me look like a middle aged, female Stevie Ray Vaughan impersonator. Oh well, you can’t win them all.
My friends and I nostalgically recalled the days of unlimited free airline baggage. If you bought too much stuff, you’d simply buy a cheap suitcase to get it home! Not anymore with United Airlines charging $35 a bag. Sheesh. When Mom and Dad went to India for six weeks in 1988, Mom thought ahead and brought some extra suitcases for the goods she knew she’d buy. She returned home with yard upon yard of stunning saris and other glorious textiles. (Mom liked to sew.) They went to India because Dad had a Fulbright and was touring all over the country giving talks. Each place they went had a different artisanal specialty and Mom ATE IT UP. I still have a little box and bracelet from a place where they hammer black wire in silver to make patterns. I also have a beautiful pearl bracelet and earrings from a different region.
Now that I have a daughter who is around the same age I was (15) when Mom and Dad were in India, it’s pretty wild to think about. They left me in the charge of our family friend, Erin, for three weeks, and then one of Dad’s grad students for another three. For the most part, I behaved. I may have driven the family Chevy Citation to the mall without a license. Which may have almost given me a heart attack because I didn’t really know how to drive stick and kept stalling out at the stop sign at the top of our street, resulting in a police car pulling up behind me and watching until I gunned the car and peeled out loudly. But it all worked out.
This trip to India was actually the reason for another gift from Mom: her “death letter” to me. It is dated February 6, 1988 and begins, “My dear Sarah, This seems melodramatic, and I keep telling myself I’m being silly, but I just can’t go off on a trip like this without leaving you some sort of letter in case our plane goes down or we get hijacked.” The letter goes on to say she’s had a marvelous life and would only miss having more of it, should she die (fortunately, she got another 30 years). It continues with her admitting to having a great curiosity about what I’ll settle on as a career. (Good question, I still haven’t settled.) She wishes that I find a wonderful partner and have kids, because she thinks I’d be good at that. (I did and I may be???) And, then, here’s the kicker, she talks about her “strong feelings about the waste of women’s talents and destruction of their egos in traditional marriage”. BOOM! She advises me to “avoid the traps and find the proper give and take that’s necessary even in the most healthy marriage”. Good stuff, Mom. Good stuff. I don’t think Mom would necessarily label herself as a feminist but this advice indicates that she was definitely an independent woman. At one point in the early 90s, our tastes overlapped and we were reading a lot of the same feminist theory books (mine mainly for school and Mom’s mainly for fun, although fun is perhaps the wrong word for this genre!). Mom was definitely an interesting cat.
Yesterday was my travel day home. It’s funny how getting from Mexico to Houston was no big deal. Direct! Short! Pleasant! Once in America, things took a turn. There were both weather and staffing issues. Our original flight was cancelled and we ended up sitting around the Hard Rock Cafe Houston Airport eating $25 Cobb salads. Barf. We could have made the drive in two and a half hours but it took five to get us in the air! Travel is so un-sexy now. Sweatpants, bro dudes ignoring the mask mandate, screaming children, you name it. The Houston United terminal was old and my friend Susan remarked that the bathroom reminded her on a 1970s gas station. This brought a well-needed chuckle and reminded me of an amazing restaurant review I recently read that went viral. It describes a horrific meal at a Michelin-starred restaurant where they served something the author “can only describe as ‘an oyster loaf that tasted like Newark airport’”. Click this link for the full ride.
I wanted to share something at least vaguely Mexican as today’s recipe. A quick dip into Mom’s files and I found this Alton Brown gem. Mom loved Alton Brown. Enjoy!
CHIPOTLE SMASHED SWEET POTATOES
2 large sweet potatoes, peeled and cubed
2 tablespoons unsalted butter
1 whole chipotle pepper in adobo sauce, chopped (from a can)
1 teaspoon adobo sauce from can of peppers
1/2 teaspoon salt
Put cubed potatoes into steamer basket and place steamer into a large pot of simmering water that is no closer than 2 inches from the bottom of basket.
Allow to steam for 20 minutes or until the potatoes are fork tender.
Add butter to potatoes and mash with potato masher.
Add peppers, sauce, and salt and continue mashing to combine.
Serve immediately.
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