There is a statistic I heard on the news the other day, and I had heard it recently before that. Here it is: kids stay off drugs and out of trouble when they have dinner with their family. That was it. Yeah. Somebody probably did a “study” to come up with that one. My parents could have told them that (and my grandparents, too).
We’re Greek, and in a lot of Mediterranean families (I know it’s true for my Italian friends) - we eat together. I know other cultures do that, too. What a concept. Food isn’t just physical nutrition, it’s mental and spiritual as well. Dinner with ecoyennia mou (my family) is an essential part of our culture.
Tonight we had such a dinner - at a restaurant, but nevertheless, it was a family dinner: me, my two sisters, my brother-in-law and my niece and nephew. It’s what we do on a regular basis. My sister has family dinner with the kids and her husband daily. My niece and nephew don’t know any different. You eat with your family - don’t you? Yes, is their answer.
What this means is, if you have trouble, or need help, you know you can go to your family, because you’ve been eating meals with these people since forever. You’re a tight group. You have actual conversations. You share food. You actually like each other. My family and I all *love* each other (wow, another concept, right?).
It all started with my grandfather -a Greek from the “old country”. The man was a chef. He had a little café in Austin before I was born. He could come into your house, take your leftovers out of the fridgie and rustle up something marvelous for dinner. You would be asking yourself “These are *my* leftovers?” You wouldn’t recognize that food (in a good way) after he got done with it.
We have a saying in my family (a joke): When two Greeks get together, they open a restaurant. It’s almost true. Of course, as I said above, food for us is more than just food.
Tonight over our family dinner we discussed our plans for Thanksgiving this year, and that lead to a remembrance/conversation about my grandmother (maternal, not on the Greek side) and her fried apple pies.
First of all, I need to tell you about love. This woman was not my actual biological grandmother. She was my great aunt. My grandmother died when my mother was two months old. My grandmother and grandfather had five (count ‘em) children! My grandfather was a farmer (again, this is on the non-Greek side of the family). My grandmother was dying, they had a two-month old baby (my Mom) and they had to have a plan. My grandfather could not run the farm and take care of the other four kids and an infant. My eldest aunt (then only eight) had to help him manage the other three kids. She couldn’t manage the infant either - since she was eight - you know - years old.
My grandparents decided before my grandmother died (at the age of thirty-one) that my mother would go live with my grandmother’s older sister. So, the woman I referred to as my “grandmother” was actually my great aunt. In order for all of this to come to pass, my great aunt had to agree to take on this responsibility (she had two biological children of her own).
She met the task.
As children, we would go to my grandfather’s farm house and spend time with him, and also go to my “grandmother’s” house (great aunt) and spend time with her and her husband (who we called “Pop”).
On Sunday afternoons, this woman would lay out a spread that would feed the Dallas Cowboys. I kid you not. There was cold ham, fried chicken, mashed potatoes, macaroni and cheese, green beans, peas, carrots, squash, green salad, fruit salad, rolls, bread... are you getting the idea yet?
We would sit down at that table and have Sunday dinner with “Grandmother” - the woman who raised my mother and told everyone we were her “grandchildren”.
The Grand Finale to this meal would be her homemade fried apple pies. Yes, people, I said *homemade*. Pie crust from scratch rolled and cut into a round shape, apple filling from scratch spooned into the middle of the round crust, crust then folded over into a half moon, sealed around the edges with the tines of a fork and plopped into hot oil and quick fried. Then she drained them on paper towels over a plate and dusted them with cinnamon and sugar.
My father (who was her son-in-law, technically her nephew-in-law) loved these things (hell, who didn’t?). He often could not come with us on Sunday, because, as a mechanic, he was frequently making extra money working on cars.
Grandmother would pack up three or four (or more) of those delicious apple pies in a big piece of foil and send them home with us. She would say: “I know Louie likes these, so they're his, since he’s working hard and he couldn’t come.”
You didn’t touch those pies when you got home. They were Daddy’s - from Grandmother - and Mama would swat your hands if you tried to snag one of those.
Daddy would sit down to supper and then afterward dive into Grandmother’s homemade fried apple pies.
We had dinner together every night, and we had family dinners with grandparents and cousins on a regular basis. Family was, as my Greek grandfather would say, “number one”.
The fried apple pies? They were far more than just a tasty treat. They were all that love my grandmother had to give: the love she gave to her sister’s child, her sister’s grandchildren, and her sister’s son-in-law.
Love like that will keep you out of a whole helluva lot of trouble in life, people - and it tastes damn good, too.
Polla Filia,
J.F.
