Piccadilly Cafeteria Carrot Souffle
Mom looking super witchy and badass at the Reed family farm in East Tennessee.
It’s always important for kids to remember that their parents have their own thing going. Love this photo of Dad & Mom.
This was taken at my wedding in Houston in 2000, so 35 years after the previous photo. They’ve still got it!
The name on this image file is “foxy.jpg”. I named it that because Mom is SUPER FOXY in this pic. What a goddess. It’s the day after I was born and I guess they are in Watts Hospital in Durham. (You’ll learn more below.).
Our first passport photo so we could all go to Israel for the year. I’m sure that my Nonnie and great grandmother, Dee Dee, made those dresses.
Phaistos on Crete, where we spent a week in a house with no running water. Yikes. Look at me screaming my head off in the stroller. Poor Mom.
Elisabeth and Mom looking long and lean in Oxford, England.
This post is primarily gonna be sassy pics of Mom. Here she is at my Granddaddy’s retirement party from Eastman Kodak (with Granddaddy, Nonnie & Uncle Frank). I love her hair.
Mom playing guitar at our Reed family reunion at Conesus Lake in 1979. She could just pick it up and start playing!
Mom in a dress she made before some UNC graduation in the 70s probably. On the front porch of our Mallette St. house.
At some point this got saved into my “Mom Photos” folder, I think just because it is something that she would totally wear. It illustrates my witchy Mom goddess dream perfectly.
I drove by the Mallette St. house on Thursday and it looks to be in good condition. It made me sad to see new people in it. Mom would be horrified because they have no curtains and you could see their TV from the street. I showed this pic to Dad and he said “That’s a lot of electricity”. ha ha
Me in the library of the Mallette St. house probably in 1995? I was visiting from NYC, I think.
Mom and Dad’s NC BBQ book, Holy Smoke. I’ve seen it at the RDU airport several times and it’s always fun to get off the plane and feel like I’m home. The pig pickin’ we went to was hosted by a former UNC student who had studied the book and was bound and determined to cook his first whole hog using Mom and Dad’s method. He invited Dad to come try his effort. I love his bravado!
Mom demonstrating a smaller smoker for the book.
Friday’s pig pickin’ with Dad sampling the meat on the right.
I totally ate it.
I closed out my NC weekend with the 11:15 Rite I service at the Chapel of the Cross. I noted today that this church was where I was baptized, went to pre-school, sang in the Junior Choir, was confirmed, and acolyted. Mom sang in the choir there for 40 years and her ashes are buried in the front.
Now that I’ve sufficiently freaked everyone out with stories about Bus 50, I’d like to get back to the topic at hand, Dale. I’ve recently been listening to an interesting BBC Radio 4 podcast called Witch, recommended by a friend. I told my daughter, Luca, about it and she said “I’ve only been gone a week and you’ve already become a witch?”. Empty nest does weird things and, to be clear, I’m just witch-curious. I mean I already do a lot of things that fall in the “witch domain” but I think that might just be a South Austin mom thing, like how we all have cupping bruises on our backs and send our kids to Montessori school. Episode 6 of the podcast talks about midwives and healers, roles that often historically got lumped into the “witch” category. There’s an interview with Deirdre English, a women’s health advocate and co-author of Witches, Midwives, and Nurses: A History of Women Healers , where she describes a conference where she spoke in 1972, the year of my birth. She describes women’s reproductive care up until that point as fairly grim, women heavily sedated and not remembering childbirth and only 7% of the doctors being female. This made me think about Mom. My sister and I were both born in Durham, North Carolina, which is kind of odd as we lived in Carrboro at the time and UNC has great medical care. Why did Mom and Dad drive to Durham to have us? Well, because Watts Hospital was one of the few places that would let Mom give birth naturally. That was important to Mom. Evidently she and Dad had taken Lamaze classes in New York. Dad says that it was not all that radical an approach at the time given their friend circle, but when Mom moved to North Carolina in 1969 while pregnant with my sister, they found that North Carolina was definitely a few steps behind in the natural childbirth department and the options were few and far between. Knowing what I know about Mom it makes sense that she would thoroughly research a system of childbirth and commit to the bit. Personally, my birth plan for my daughter went out the window when I felt the first bit of my back labor. I had my sister call ahead to the hospital to make sure the anesthesiologist was there! But, of course, Mom did it her way. Twice.
This reminds me of the story of my RISD friend Jen Shaw who went into labor with her first child while evacuating from New Orleans during Hurricane Katrina. Evidently she had trained in the Bradley Method and was poised to have the first water birth at her hometown hospital (oh, the irony….). As I remember, the first place they stopped at wouldn’t let her give birth naturally so she turned around, got back in the car, and kept driving. I can’t recall where she ended up having her son Claudio, but I’m pretty sure it was Mississippi or somewhere. That is some freaking determination. Why would she not just have the baby the way the first hospital wanted her to? I guess when your life is in turmoil you just want to control the things you can control. Jen produced an amazing photography book about this experience called Hurricane Story which I highly recommend.
I remembered 1970s Mom in a dream this week. Kick ass, sinewy, sexy, counterculture Mom: the outlier. In my mind she had on a chocolate brown, slinky Halston dress. She was elevated and lit from behind like a Goddess. I woke and exclaimed “Mom was a witch!”. To be clear, Mom was not a witch, but she did have some cool witch-like qualities. She made things. She was mysterious. She had wicked style. I also had this great visual of me and my sister as her little witch daughters, not unlike the sisters in the movie Practical Magic. (I guess I’m the crazy redhead Nicole Kidman character but with *slightly* better taste in men – I’m looking at you, Chris Bean.) Now, I love this idea of me and my sister as little witch girls, somehow it justifies the years of us not quite fitting into Chapel Hill public school society.
It was important for me to have this memory of Mom when she was in this state of power. Over the years Mom assumed many identities, often partnering with my Dad on projects. But being a mother was a solo effort for her. It was something only she could do, and she did it well despite battling some of her own demons. Mom was a bit depressive, she was her own worst critic, and she was a perfectionist to a fault. As I’ve learned from my experience of childrearing, it’s all fine and good to be in your head until someone needs to be fed. Seeing this feisty side of Mom again I was able to find great empathy for my Dad. It’s so easy to only see your parents as, well, parents. But, this stunning version of Mom made me remember that she was also Dad’s partner: Dad’s quirky, sexy, brilliant, slightly mischievous partner. (Click here for a funny story about a stolen Igloo cooler.) I grieved for their lost partnership.
I’m writing this on a plane home to North Carolina, which is apt. One of my favorite bands of the late 80s /early 90s, The Connells, is having a 30th reunion show at The Cradle, my old high school haunt. They are pairing up with another great NC band, Dillon Fence, for a concert on Saturday night. High School Sarah is greatly amused to now be Facebook friends with 3/4 of the band members of Dillon Fence. Oh, how the mighty have fallen. I was saying to someone the other day that you know it’s sad when you actually *might be able* to land one of the members of Duran Duran.
I took my daughter out for breakfast yesterday, one of the perks of her staying close for college. I made some offhand comment about entering middle age to which she replied, “Mom, you’re not entering middle age, you are EXITING middle age.” Ouch! This all comes as a surprise because I still feel like a teenager in so many aspects: going to see bands, not giving a damn about age appropriate clothing, and eating more sugar than I should.
Dad has lined up some activities for my trip, one of which is an NC style pig pickin’. If you’ve been reading this blog all along you’ll know that I’ve been versions of vegetarian or pescatarian for decades. Well, like 95% of the time. I’m most likely going to let that 5% out to play this weekend. I just read about a diet called “TexMexetarian”. Basically, you’re vegetarian unless TexMex is involved. So, I think I could be classified as a vacation-level Pulled Porketarian. In the wonderful John Sales movie “Sunshine State” Edie Falco is shown drinking tequila shots in the morning. When questioned about it she responds, “I figure, you're gonna drink, why fuck around?”. Exactly. If I’m going to stray it’s going to involve picking meat off of a carcass with my fingers.
So, I’ll have some BBQ in honor of Dale. I’ll see old friends and drive the streets I used to ache to escape. I’ll go home for a little while.
PICCADILLY CAFETERIA CARROT SOUFFLE
There was a Piccadilly Cafeteria in some mall in Durham, NC (maybe South Square?). Anyway, this sheer amount of sugar in the “vegetable” dish amuses me.
3 1/2 lbs. peeled carrots
1 1/2 cups sugar
1 tbl. baking powder
1 tbl. vanilla
1/4 cup flour
6 eggs
1/2 lb. margarine
Powdered sugar
Steam or boil carrots until extra soft. Drain well.
While carrots are warm, add sugar, baking powder, and vanilla.
Whip with mixer until smooth.
Add flour and mix well.
Whip eggs and add to flour mixture, blend well.
Add softened margarine to mixture and blend well.
Pour mixture into baking dish about half full as the soufflé will rise.
Bake in 350-degree oven about 1 hour or until top is a light golden brown.
Sprinkle lightly with powdered sugar over top before serving.
Serves 10.
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