By ANNE RAVER, published 26 October 2006 in the New York Times
I’ve been thinking about borscht,” Mother said one day a few weeks ago, as we were walking down the lane and past the field where our beets were flourishing among the weeds.
It was an iffy summer for tomatoes and squash in our Maryland garden: up and down temperatures; near drought, then heavy rain; cold nights; early frost. My second crop of basil never made it to pesto. Our zinnias turned to mush overnight.
Rabbits ate most of my beloved pole beans. Deer ate the sweet corn. But nothing bothered those beets: Bull’s Blood, an heirloom with sweet, blood-red roots (and delicious leaves, when picked young); and Red Ace, a prolific old favorite with dark green leaves and crimson, round roots that remain tender, even the ones as big as tennis balls.
When we got back to the house, my mother, who at 93 has her own ups and downs, pulled out her favorite cookbooks to consider what approach to take with these hearty survivors.
Among them was “Joy of Cooking,” where she quoted from Irma S. Rombauer: “There are probably as many versions of borscht as there are Russians.”
The reference to Russians brought to mind Janna, our live-in aide, who is Russian. She arrived at about this time last year, to help my mother with whatever she needed, be it taking a walk down the lane, cooking a meal or cleaning the house. Having her around was a great relief to everyone but my mother, who couldn’t stand Janna hovering about, saying, “Kathleen, you must eat!” or “Kathleen, you must walk!” or “Kathleen, smoking is dangerous to your health!”
My mother, who enjoys an occasional cigarette with her evening Scotch, would look at Janna with a grim expression that might have come from grinding her teeth or from the effort it took for a woman of her Southern upbringing not to scream: “I’m 93 years old. I will do exactly as I please!”
But no. She would be genteel, even if it killed her.
Janna rose each morning to make coffee, before my mother could get to the kitchen, saying: “Kathleen, sit down!” I would draw her aside and say, “Mother really likes to make her own coffee.” Or, when I would come from the garden carrying beets that Mother wanted to pickle, Janna would grab them from my hands and say brightly, “I will make borscht!” When I protested that Mother would enjoy making beets herself — that this was a chance, in fact, for Janna to take a break — she would reply, “But she might fall!”
And I would say, “That’s the risk she wants to take, just to make pickled beets.”
Janna would look at me aghast, as if I had signed us all on with the Hemlock Society.
Our battle of wills was settled one morning by a deer tick, which had embedded itself in Janna’s midriff. No amount of assurances that she would not die of Lyme disease, that there were doctors to give her a blood test and antibiotics, could keep her from packing her bags for New York.
“It is so dangerous here,” she said. “So many ticks and snacks.” (By snacks, she meant snakes, which hang out in the cellar, eating mice and chipmunks.)
Mother waved goodbye from the kitchen porch as Janna got a ride to the bus station.
I had watched my mother grow curiously passive under Janna’s reign. She gave up trying to make her own coffee, and would just sit while Janna boiled the eggs. She ate far more than she wanted to, for lunch and dinner, because Janna made sandwiches and soup and hamburgers stuffed with little cheese balls, all for her.
“It would be rude to say no,” she said. She ate all her meals with Janna, because it would have been rude to eat alone, she said. She lost her joie de vivre. She spoke in a whisper when I came by to chat, and she didn’t have much to say. “Everything is fine,” she said with a thin smile.
When her aide left, she seemed to have a new lease on life. The first night, I found her in the kitchen, sipping Scotch and reading The New Yorker. Who cared about dinner?
I finally took her at her word. She meant it when she said her life wasn’t worth living if she couldn’t do things for herself.
She really would rather fall and break a hip, even bleed to death, all alone, than have someone hovering about every moment of her life.
So I have gone back to part-time nurses’ aides, in the morning and at night, if I am out of town. They help her take a walk outside, as she pushes her rollator — a walker on wheels, with handlebars and hand brakes — looking for the bluebirds in the locust trees, watching the finches pull seeds from the sunflowers, noticing a whole row of fat red beets begging to be pulled before they get too tough.
And the other day, when my mother asked me to buy some beef, a key ingredient for borscht, I knew that she had reclaimed her kitchen. I brought up some fresh beets and laid them by the sink, unwashed, so that she could deal with them. When I forgot to get that beef, it was no big matter; she asked one of her helpers to buy some.
When I was too busy to help her make it, she didn’t wait around or put the beef in the freezer. She just made it herself, using the walker she keeps in the kitchen to help her wash the beets; peel and chop them; slice an onion, carrot and turnip; add the tomato paste and what have you; and cook a fine beet soup.
It was a lot tastier, too, than her well-meaning former caregiver’s, because it had enough salt. (“You must not eat salt!” Janna had said, taking charge of my mother’s blood pressure.)
“How did you make this soup all by yourself?” I said, marveling over the subtle mix of flavors (and marveling, too, at how energetic she seemed, despite her exhaustion).
“Oh, I would just sit down when I got tired,” Mother said. “I can’t stay on my feet that long, but I still love to cook.”
Now, with the last harvest, we are trying different ways of cooking beets, including roasting them, simply brushed with olive oil.
“Hmm,” she said. “Very tasty. Sweet, but earthy.”
The flavor was far more intense, not having been diluted by water. I remembered the beet salad that I love to eat in New York: roasted diced beets, with arugula, goat cheese and walnuts. “Hmm, sounds good,” Mother said.
Then she showed me how to pickle beets the Eastern Shore way. Just trim the leaves off the washed beets, but leave an inch or so of the stems. Cutting into the root leads the beet to bleed into the water, leaching out vitamins and flavor.
“Beets, you know, are full of iron,” said Mother, who was trained as a nutritionist.
Cook until just tender enough to stick easily with a sharp fork. Then drain, peel and slice as soon as they are cool enough to handle. Mix half a cup of sugar with half a cup of vinegar in a big bowl, stir in the warm beets, and salt to taste.
“Isn’t that a lot of sugar?” I said.
“Yes, but that’s why people like them,” she said. “They’re sweet.”
Copyright 2006 The New York Times Company
, published Thursday, October 26, 2006 in The Washington Post
