A Love Story & Getting To Know My Mother: Remembering “Betsy”

A Love Story

“It was not like my father to go without dessert. He whose favorite maxim was, ‘A bit of sweet makes the meal complete.’ For a week or so, I’d go straight to my room with a Hershey bar and read myself to sleep. But one evening, I noticed him carrying a plate wrapped in a linen napkin as he went out the door.” Diana Farr Louis

Eating Well Is The Best Revenge

By Diana Farr Louis

ATHENS, Greece—(Weekly Hubris)—11/4/2013—I fell in love for the first time at the age of eight. With a woman. Luckily, my father loved her too. That fall, he began to go out at night. Every evening, he would leave the house right after dinner. He never stayed for dessert, but would give me a kiss and tell me to be a good girl.

It was not like my father to go without dessert. He whose favorite maxim was, “A bit of sweet makes the meal complete.” For a week or so, I’d go straight to my room with a Hershey bar and read myself to sleep. But, one evening, I noticed him carrying a plate wrapped in a linen napkin as he went out the door.

“Where are you going, Daddy?” I asked. “And what’s that you’re carrying?”

“Oh . . . ,” he said, without looking me in the eye. “I’m just going to see a friend. Night-night, little darling.”

After this happened a second and a third time, I decided to plant myself in the kitchen before supper. I had to see what Marie was up to.

Although Dad and I were the only ones left in our big house on Long Island, we had plenty of people to look after us. One was Marie, the cook from Alsace. Another was Mrs. Colmar, who came to do the laundry and ironing. Sometimes, there was a governess; sometimes not. Of all the cooks, maids, and nannies who came and went in the four years after my mother died, I remember not a single name except these two: Mrs. Colmar because she was a constant; Marie because her cooking changed my life.

We were lonely in those days, Dad and I. He had his office, I had school, but the nest was empty. My oldest brother came back from The War and headed straight for Wyoming, never to return except for a few days here and there. My sister had married. My second brother was off at boarding school. My father slept with a green blanket rolled alongside him, to make his huge mahogany bed cosier.

He had gone courting before. He’d even taken out my second grade teacher, a Miss Conti, who, despite the name, came from Finland and had purple gums. There was Debbie, a widow herself, but cold and strict, while Aunt Babs, my godmother, seemed clingier than she should have been. None of these women came even close to replacing my mother.

I was barely four when she died of liver cancer at the age of 42. I have no memories of her being well, of even being anywhere but that huge bed. In the unconscious way of tiny children, I used to run in and out of her room to get at the candy bowl. That I remember distinctly. It was a swirl of ultramarine and white porcelain laced with gold threads. It had a knob on its lid and stood on top of a narrow piece of furniture with six drawers that was painted sunflower yellow and decorated with little people in pointed hats. The fragile chest was one of many Chinese souvenirs her missionary father had brought back from the Orient. I had to climb onto the chaise longue next to it to reach the candies, multi-colored sourballs.

If my mother had been well, I’m sure she would have stopped me. But she’d just smile and call me her little sprite.

When I went into the kitchen that afternoon in the fall of 48, I scared Marie out of her wits. She’d been so intent on her cooking she hadn’t heard my slippered feet.

“Don’t evair come up on me like zat again,” she gasped after she caught her breath. “My heart stopped beating.”

I apologized and peered into the pan she was shaking on our big stove. I’d give anything to have one like it now. With a large oven under the six burners and smaller ovens, a grill, and plate-warming spaces on the left side, it took up most of the kitchen wall.

“What are you making, Marie? I asked.

“Oooh, eet ees someting for your papa.” Her round face lit up under its short dark curls. She was very round and not that much taller than I—definitely not an untrustworthy, skinny cook. “Eet ees a leetle sauce for some crêpes, Crêpes Suzette—pancakes—that your papa will take to a new lady friend.”

“Pancakes! Can I have one?”

Marie gave me a piece of limp dough that was much much thinner than our breakfast pancakes. It didn’t make much of an impression.

“But zese are noting wheezout zee sauce,” she said. “And I can’t give zat to you, not good for tsildren. Zere ees alcohol, liqueur, in eet.”

When my father got home that night, I asked him about the new lady friend. Rather vaguely, he said she was a newcomer to Cedarhurst, a woman with two small children, and she needed to meet people. But she had to stay home with her son and daughter so he’d decided to keep her company.

Then I remembered that I’d already met the two kids. Been told to look after them on the school bus, but they’d slipped right out of my mind.

It can’t have been too long after that evening that my father brought the new lady friend home to meet me.

I’d been sitting by the fire in the living room, reading a book as usual, with the glass doors to the outer living room and hall shut to keep in the warmth. My father opened the door and she stood there. Neither of us moved for a long, long moment.

She was small and slim, five foot two, eyes of brown, with brows that met in the middle and a widow’s peak, dark shoulder-length hair, a turned-up nose. She smiled, a warm smile with laughter in it that coaxed a smile out of me. I got to my feet and grinned.

Later, she told me that I’d broken her heart. “You looked like an angel. You had yellow hair but teeth to match. I knew I had to marry your father and save you.”

They were married on a snowy December 27^th in New York. I needed no time to get used to the idea. I was smitten. Head over heels, totally enamored. And my new mother did save me. She started by coaxing me, slowly, slowly, to brush my teeth. None of those nameless nannies, maids, or cooks had ever bothered to teach me that most basic habit.

And I will always be grateful to dear Marie for inserting an irresistible love potion into those Crêpes Suzette.

My new mother hated to cook, but she did love to eat.

Recipe

I cannot replicate Marie’s recipe and I’m not going to try. It must have been quite a feat to keep them perfect, drenched as they were in intoxicating sauce, instead of being flipped in it at the last minute. I suggest you resort to Google or pick up your old Mastering the Art of French Cooking.

But I don’t want you to feel cheated, so here’s a recipe for pancakes (tiganites) with orange juice from from my cookbook, Feasting and Fasting in Crete. They are a lot easier to throw together, and you could sprinkle them with a little Cointreau or Grand Marnier for that Gallic touch.

In years past these pancakes were a must on St. Andrew’s day (Nov. 30), when it was said that the kallikantzari (the Greek equivalent of hobgoblins) would steal your frying pans or poke holes in them if you didn’t put them to use. Children would bang the pan like a drum the night before, pretending they were the evil spirits.

1 teaspoon baking soda, dissolved in

180 ml (3/4 cup) fresh orange juice

ground cinnamon & cloves, to taste

grated rind of one orange

35 grams (1/4 cup) chopped raisins (optional)

1 tablespoon olive oil plus oil for frying

1/2 teaspoon salt

250 grams (8 oz) flour, approximately

chopped walnuts (optional)

In a medium-sized bowl, mix the spices, orange peel, raisins, salt, and olive oil with the orange juice. Gradually stir in the flour until you have a thickish batter (these are not crêpes!). If the batter is too thick, add a little water. Let rest for 1 hour or more to let the flavors mingle.

Heat a few tablespoons of oil in a frying pan and drop in as many tablespoons of the batter as will fit comfortably without touching. Flip them over when you see bubbles forming on the surface. Drain the pancakes on paper towels and serve them, with a little sugar or honey, and sprinkled with chopped walnuts if desired. Makes 24 small pancakes.

Getting To Know My Mother

“Mom (I never thought of her as a stepmom) had only one recipe. For spaghetti and meat sauce and that was all we ever ate on the cook’s day off. Without variation—no pesto, carbonara, or funghi. No tagliatelle, lasagna, or fettuccine. No marvelous dishes from her years in Italy, because she would rather starve than stand over a hot stove and had never bothered to learn anything else.” Diana Farr Louis

My new mother was a story teller. She made the most mundane things exotic and fascinating. To start with, she’d been born in Kingston, Jamaica, where her father, a US consul, was posted, and lived in a village called Halfway Tree. She’d had a pet monkey in Nicaragua, that died of a cold when she forgot it outside in the rain. And she’d run a barbershop on her front steps in Washington DC, cropping the locks of kids in her neighborhood with her mother’s kitchen scissors.

In the 30s, she lived in Italy, Turin, and Florence, where she went to school with Emilio Pucci, and in Breslau, where Otto von Bismarck’s red-headed grandson dipped her pigtails in the inkwell. Her route to school in Florence took her past Michelangelo’s giant statue of David and every day she’d try to peek under his fig leaf.

She didn’t have much time for her mother, disliked her sister, Antoinette, who was very proper and ten years older, but adored her father. She used to sit on his lap while he listened to opera recordings or radio broadcasts. And once he came home from a reception with a rare treat: a banana, wrapped in a linen hanky with the initials AT embroidered on it. The maestro Arturo Toscanini had lifted it from the banquet table when he heard about the little girl who loved the fruit. Two other prized possessions from those years were autographed state photographs of the King and Queen of Italy, with little crowns on their gilt frames.

I lapped up every word. And yearned to move to her Europe, instead of remaining on Long Island where nothing ever happened.

My new mother, Elizabeth Ann Heard Register Farr, or Betsy, never ran out of stories but she hated the kitchen. In the good old days, that didn’t matter because we always had a cook, though my savior Marie lived up to that line of Saki’s: “She was good as good cooks go, and as good cooks go, she went.”

Mom (I never thought of her as a stepmom) had only one recipe. For spaghetti and meat sauce and that was all we ever ate on the cook’s day off. Without variation—no pesto, carbonara, or funghi. No tagliatelle, lasagna, or fettuccine. No marvelous dishes from her years in Italy, because she would rather starve than stand over a hot stove and had never bothered to learn anything else.

So one snowy day as I rushed through the kitchen, I stopped in my tracks upon seeing her there. Looking closer, I saw that she wasn’t stirring the pan, she was crying into it. I was aghast. Adults didn’t cry. I’d only seen my father break down once, shortly after my real mother’s death. And that was, he said, because my brother Shelty was on his way to war in Germany.

“What’s the matter?” I came closer and she looked at me, eyes streaming.

“I’m so disappointed in you,” she whispered. “You threw that snowball that nearly cracked the window. And when your father ran out in a rage, he saw Woody holding one his hand. But he hadn’t thrown it yet. You let Woody take the blame. And never said a word. That was not fair.”

I was mortified. I knew she was right. I should protect my new little brother. Had I lost her love? That meant more to me than anything, even my father’s anger.

The next time I found her crying it was late summer. She was again in the kitchen, dripping tears onto a party dress she was ironing. “Your father won’t take me to the yacht club dance,” she sobbed. “Now that we’re married, he feels he can just stay home. No need to see anybody, do anything . . . .”

Lest you think she was spoiled, you should know that she had only just turned 28. My father was 57. She’d taken on four stepchildren, two who were almost as old as she was, along with her own little ones. Despite her youth, she had us all spellbound. Even without a college education, she knew more about psychology than most shrinks. She certainly had more charm. And she usually got her way.

Strangely, although Mom couldn’t abide cooking, she did appreciate good food. When I grew older, from about twelve on, she used to take me into New York to the ballet or the theater (but NOT the opera—I never knew whether she’d had a surfeit when she was little or too many memories). The outing would start with an early lunch at her favorite restaurant, the Rex, opposite Bloomingdale’s on 59^th street. The maître, a Peter Lorre lookalike, was Italian, so a babble of animated chatter always preceded our order. And a dry martini always arrived along with the menu.

Sometimes I was allowed a sip. But we always chose the same dish: Frogs’ legs with a garlic-parsley sauce so delectable that after I had polished the bones, I almost licked the plate. She introduced me to soft shell crabs—a rare treat at our beach club cafeteria—and had our new Swedish cook make a fresh pea velouté I have never been able to equal.

I wish I could say that she taught me how to eat. My new mother had a much greater influence on my drinking habits.

Gin was not exactly mother’s milk to me, but she did prescribe it for menstrual cramps. My father called his Scotch “medi,” but never offered it. Mom took her thermos of martinis to the beach and gave me a swig whenever pains made me miserable. I do recommend it. You don’t need more than a couple of swallows.

She also had her own defense against drunkenness. The usual teenage beverage at parties, besides beer, which I hated, was punch, sweetened with fruit juice and spiked with booze. To avoid getting pissed and, more important, to safeguard my virtue, Mom told me, “Sip bourbon. You won’t like it, so you won’t be tempted to overdo it and let boys take advantage of you.”

She never said what to do if one did develop a liking for it.

As for boys, she’d had so many beaux before she married that she’d had to call them all Darling so she wouldn’t get them mixed up. Chic, funny, overflowing with “personality,” Mom had what used to be called “it.” Even in her 70s, in Athens for a visit, she collected a crowd of men—all new to her—on our balcony. Eighteen years later, some of them still remember that day.

I did not acquire that ability, alas. But what she did pass on to me was her love of Europe, and her attraction to older men.

She never could understand my passion for the kitchen. When, in 1971, I moved from New York to Rapallo, Italy, where she and my father had retired, I crossed the Atlantic in a freighter along with a container filled with belongings they hadn’t been able to carry.

Imagine her disgust when, instead of her beloved antiques, the first few boxes revealed my treasures: scores of Gourmet magazines, copper-bottomed Revereware, my wok and fish poacher, and my records.

Her cooking did not improve over time, either. When her dear friend and physician Bubi Bacigalupo came for dinner, he used to bring his own pasta and watch the pot till he proclaimed it al dente. The only thing she had perfected was boiled chicken for the dog.

But what fun we had eating lasagna al pesto and gamberi in her favorite trattorias by the sea near Genoa, Santa Margherita, Zoagli, not Portofino (too expensive). Sipping Verdicchio and laughing, often till we cried, about life and its remarkable quirks. She never did achieve her dream: to live above a restaurant with a dumbwaiter to raise up the meals and send the dirty dishes back. But she never lost her knack for storytelling and finding humor (and admirers) even on black days.

Recipe

My mother’s recipe for spaghetti and meat sauce held no secret, so, instead, I’ll give you something I used to make for her. It was one of the first Greek dishes I learned and she loved it.

Fasolakia Ladera me Arnaki—Green Beans in Olive Oil with Lamb

2 lb (1 kg) boneless lamb leg or shoulder, cut in chunks

2 medium onions, chopped

¼ cup (60 ml) olive oil

4 ripe tomatoes, chopped, or 1 16 oz/400 g can

pinch of sugar

2 lb (1 kg) green beans, washed, trimmed and halved if long

2-3 garlic cloves, pressed, to taste

handful of chopped parsley and/or mint

Sauté the meat and onions together in the oil until the meat is slightly browned and the onions are translucent. Add the tomatoes and sugar, stir, and simmer, covered, for about 30 minutes. Add the beans and continue to simmer, covered, until the meat and vegetables are tender (30-45 minutes more). Just before serving, press the garlic into the stew and add the herbs and any seasonings (salt and black pepper).

I always add the garlic at the end so the taste doesn’t get lost. And now I usually stir in a teaspoon of hot pepper flakes at the sauté stage, which my mother probably would not have appreciated.

You can also add some potatoes, cut in small chunks, to the pot along with the beans.

This should be enough for 4-6 people, especially if potatoes are included.