Casseroles

The Navy is not an easy life and many Navy juniors hated the constant moving, adjusting to new places, learning the ropes at each successive school and making new friends. Certainly understandable, but I was just the opposite.

I loved the supportive network of the Navy, the wives arriving with casseroles as soon as we moved to a new duty station and the offers to take us kids off to the pool or the playground to make new friends quickly while Mom settled the house and signed us up at the new bank and the new school district. While I was initially shy, I made friends in each new place and, because everyone was in the same boat, it just seemed normal to me to move every two years or so. Seventh grade, when I was in three different schools in the same year, was difficult, but mostly I did pretty well.

Later, as a young Navy wife, I experienced the loneliness of a six-month deployment; that first year, my brand new husband missed Thanksgiving, Christmas, my birthday and our anniversary. But, once again, all the wives and families were having the same troubles, so it was shared. The wardroom wives closed in around me in a friendly circle, inviting me to pot luck dinners and hen parties when I wasn't working and, once again, the casseroles came out to comfort and support. Letters and very rare phone calls from the husbands buoyed our spirits and the day the boat came home was a joyous one that I will never forget.

After my Dad's funeral, complete with military honors and a twenty-one gun salute, the casseroles arrived again, tightly wrapped in plastic with little cards from the donors to tell us how hot and how long to reheat them. When my sorrow was too great to even face the casserole bringers, still their warmth came to me through their cooking.

What is it about a casserole that is so comforting? They are usually bland and often overcooked, not really very tasty, but in times of sadness or stress, they bring a message of caring. A casserole is considerate food, offering a reasonable balance of food groups in a single dish that is easy to prepare when the spirit is low but the stomach growls anyway. It slides down easily, even past the lump in your throat when you are a little afraid of the new teacher, or you are missing your young husband, or your beloved father has just passed away.

Navy life can be hard but casseroles act as a cushion.

*Photograph thanks to recipes.howstuffworks.com/chicken-casseroles.htm

Doctored Beans

One of the pleasures of writing about whatever we're eating for dinner is that it often brings back memories from long ago to enjoy - or not, depending on the memory.

Because my birthday falls in February, I was not allowed to begin kindergarten even though my mother believed I was ready - or perhaps she was just eager to get that last kid out the door so she could have some peace and quiet! In any case, three of the mothers in our neighborhood felt the same way so they signed up for a Calvert School course and decided to home school their budding geniuses. They took turns preparing and presenting the lessons and some of my earliest memories are of my mother painstakingly printing out letters for me to copy.

By far, my favorite classmate was Sandy Ferguson; I can't even remember the name of the other kid in the class. Sandy was my best friend even before we started school together; we played well and never quarreled, something of a rarity with me and my friends. Very simply, I loved him.

Then, one day we were playing a very interesting game of doctor when Mrs. Ferguson discovered us. As I recall, I had Sandy stretched out on the ironing board and was about to take his temperature rectally when I looked up into Mrs. Ferguson's horrified face.

Although I was sent home immediately with a flea in my ear, Mrs. Ferguson did forgive me once she got over the shock and even gave us her recipe for baked beans, which I still make today. I don't always follow the recipe exactly; I leave out the brown sugar and go light on the maple syrup and, if I don't have apples in the house, I sometimes resort to unsweetened apple butter. The onions and oranges, however, are key ingredients, not to be messed with.

Mrs. Ferguson's Baked Beans

4 #2 jars of B & M Baked Beans (#2 jars ae 1 lb. 3oz. jars)
1 large Bermuda onion, sliced
1 large unpeeled orange, sliced (I used tangerines this time and they worked fine)
1 large unpeeled apple, sliced (or use unsweetened apple butter)
1 cup brown sugar (I omit this altogether)
20 whole cloves
1 cup (real) maple syrup

Grease the baking pot with the salt pork from the can of beans, line with a layer of onion rings, orange and apple slices, 1 jar of beans, 1/4 of the brown sugar, cloves, and syrup. Repeat until bean pot is almost full with alternating layers. Cover and bake 8-10 hours at 200 degrees.

Needless to say, I don't make this amount for just the two of us and I don't bake it for that long. Two or three hours at 300 degrees is fine. I serve this with tube steak and that wonderful Boston brown bread that comes in a can, thinly sliced and spread with cream cheese. I don't know if that's traditional, but it's how it was always done in my family.

I wonder where Sandy Ferguson is today and I wonder if Mrs. Ferguson chuckles over the memory as I do.

Michigan Mitt

Growing up in the Navy, you sometimes lose friends when your father receives orders to a new duty station, or their's does. You swear you'll write and they do, too, but little by little the correspondence dwindles and you move on.

Sometimes you find them again at a different duty station at a different time in your life. My friend Annie and I were great pals when we were 13 years old at Norfolk Naval Air Station in Virginia and we renewed our close friendship in Pearl Harbor, Hawaii about 10 years later. We've kept in touch ever since, sharing divorce woes and wedding joys, long letters between visits back and forth, pictures of our grandchildren and almost daily emails now that the internet has made staying in touch so easy.

One of our happiest Navy connections has been with a Michigan family we met when I was an infant; our fathers were test pilots together shortly after WWII. Although they left the Navy after several years, we kept an ongoing family friendship that continues to this day. My Dad and theirs loved and respected each other like brothers, or maybe even better than brothers - theirs was a cooperative rather than a competitive friendship. Our mothers also were close pals; fueled with martinis and good will, they picked up the late-night discussions and giggle fests as if they had never been apart. Their kids were roughly our ages and we got along well, too. We children would fall asleep to the lullaby of our parents' voices down in the living room, talking, talking into the wee hours. Whenever we lived somewhere interesting such as Newfoundland, they would visit us; if our duty station was more mundane, like Omaha, we'd spend part of the summer with them in Michigan. When your home base changes every two years or so, it's a pleasure to have a place to ground you - for me, their house in Michigan was that place.

When I lived in Western New York, their daughter Wenirs lived just a short day's drive away across Canada, so we became fast friends, sharing Thanksgivings, Christmases and Easters. When she and her husband started a family, I was the children's official Fairy Godmother, still my most cherished role although the children are now young adults.

And, every now and then, a box of goodies arrives from Michigan with my name on it. In the latest one there were all kinds of prezzies from silly mugs to goofy jewelry and, for the kitchen, this reminder of all the fun we have in Michigan. They live down by the cuff and they have a summer cottage up in the mitt about where the pinkie finger would rest - I've spent happy times in both locations. Each time I use this oven mitt, I'm reminded of how lucky I am to have kept my good Navy friends over the years, even at my current duty station in California.