CONDIMENTS!

​On Sunday at Ruan Thai in Greensboro I had the lunch special, yellow curry with chicken and fresh vegetables. It was delicious, as is everything on their menu and every special. The chef, who seems to like my interest in trying as many new things as possible and my being adventurous with seasonings, as usual came out to check on how I liked it. I assured her that it was great. She asked if I would like to try a special cucumber relish usually served with yellow curries in Thailand. Of course! She reported that she didn’t usually serve it to our local customers because she wasn’t sure they would like it.

​Well, I think her customers would love it! It reminded me immediately of the chopped fresh cucumber/onion/tomato/minced hot pepper relish that my mother would always serve with family dinners during the summertime when I was growing up. (You will understand that family dinners in those days meant Sundays or holidays and always at noon.)

​And like Proust’s madeleine, it opened my mind to remembrances of condiments past.

​ My mother always had lots of condiments on the table. I recall her chopped cucumbers and onions mixed with sour cream, or if that were unavailable cream cheese which she would mash up with a fork and soften with liquid. (Back in those days we didn’t know yogurt.) Likely on that same table would be a tray of peeled and thinly slice fresh young cucumbers dressed with white vinegar and black pepper. Think uncooked and fresh pickles.

​Lots of pickles. My mother canned her own sweet and dill pickles, and usually both would be on the table in a special dish with a divider down the middle. She would can okra if she had enough small and young pods, but never green tomatoes or other pickles that required alum. She also canned lots of cucumber relishes with onions and peppers during cucumber season and we had those year-long.

Sometimes chow-chow (made with cabbage) and sometimes corn relish and always olives.

In pear season pear relish, all ground up with onion and bell pepper and likely as a small hot pepper thrown in and of course some vinegar. You ate your black-eyed peas just so you could have some of that pear relish on them.

And don’t forget the hot pepper sauce! Pods of hot peppers in tall containers with small mouths into which hot vinegar had been poured.

Desserts too had their special dressings from time to time. She did something with a double boiler and marshmallows and mustard and cayenne pepper and possibly a bit of vinegar that she served over cooked (usually canned) pears. I taste it even as I write this some 70 years on. Also a double boiler came into play when she cooked up a sauce to put on vanilla ice cream that had lots of chopped fresh ginger and usually some chopped pecans. I guess the sweet came from sugar. I’ll bet there was a dribble of vinegar in there as well.

Now if she was only serving my father and herself and their 2 children pickle jars and relish jars would be put on the table with forks stuck in. But for a big company dinner you always used special dishes.

​What would be served with those condiments? Well, a meat. A post roast or backed chicken or turkey or fried chicken or meat loaf. Often in the South you’d have 2 meats on the table. We rarely had more than one. Mashed potatoes or rice, with gravy of course. Rarely boiled new potatoes with butter and chives or parsley. Sweet potato casserole topped with marshmallows, sometime pecans, sometimes both. Black-eyed peas. Green beans. Turnip; greens or collard greens. A casserole, eggplant or green bean or English pea or asparagus.  A tray of sliced tomatoes in season. All of this would be on the table and we’d pass them around. Biscuits or homemade rolls would be brought out hot and fresh from the kitchen.

​Both always brought out sliced, of course.

I sit here thinking I don’t want to die and go to Heaven, I want to die and go to one of my mother’s Sunday dinners. (If that option is not available, maybe the Powers That Be could substitute Ruan Thai.)

After I grew up and left home I became aware that many people did not dine as we did. A meat and 2 vegetables, no extra condiments. Maybe catsup. I did feel and still do feel deeply sorry for them. Maybe I can invite them to dine at my mther's table in Heaven.