Making America Grateful Again

With Food from Orchard, Vine & Bog

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From Karyl’s Cook & Tell Newsletter (November, 1995)

All I can remember clearly is the gratitude. It was a long time ago, but I was grown up; I do remember that. Something was wrong, or not quite right, anyway. We were out of a job, or of money, probably, now that I think of it. And I suppose, if I were to probe memory long enough, I could come up with what the problem might have been called. But I am glad I don’t want to do that, and gladder still that what I remember most clearly was the solution.

It was very likely my mother who gently urged me, back then, to make a list of what I was grateful for. Mothers do that. Such an exercise didn’t strike me as quaint or pointless then, any more than it does now. As a child I had learned that whatever the difficulty, gratitude leads the way out. Far from ignoring the problem, being grateful was doing something about it.

But it wasn’t, and isn’t, just an exercise, this enumeration of things you have to be grateful for, what I always called my grateful list. It’s acknowledging everything good that you can think of at any given moment, and for successive moments, and always. If you will admit to a glimmer of what they call faith, you may agree with me when I suggest it is something beyond human reach, the ultimate good, to whom thanks are due.

So, through tears at first, for whatever distress seemed such a threat to my happiness, I started my list of every good thing that came to my attention. Small things, the things you hardly notice, or forget quickly. The mailman’s cheerful greeting. A compliment. Careful driving. Politeness. I kept my list beside my bed, adding to it at the end of every day and reviewing every morning. As thanks filled my thoughts, my reasons for gratitude expanded to include the idea behind the thing, and not just the thing itself. The very idea of gratitude sang in the storm and lifted me out of despair.

I can’t remember the specific resolution to the problem any better than I can remember the exact nature of the problem. All I remember clearly is the gratitude.

Gratitude is big enough to fill a room. Then it leaks out, spills onto sidewalks, crosses streets, and bounces off neighbors and strangers. But it can start small—about the size of a little girl, whose “Greatful List,” which I found in the family files includes her dog and cat, her Granny, Mom, Dad, her neighbors and “a lot more people”—and grow bigger as it rolls along, as when she came to the bottom of the page and wrapped things up with words that unfurl to infinity: “and it goes on and on. It never stops.”

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illustration by my mom, Karyl Bannister

Amie’s Headnotes

I’ve got two pairs of recipe pairings—no pears involved—that’ll have you feeling grateful for fall flavors. The first features butternut squash: Autumn Bisque, the treasured recipe from a treasured friend’s treasured late mom Ann, and Butternut Squash Crumble, a Cook & Tell favorite.

Next up, a pair of creative solutions for leftover cranberry sauce: Leftover Cranberry Sauce Muffins and the Cran-Apple Jalapeño Salsa & Cheese Spread I whipped up to put a dent in the million tiny jalapeños growing in my backyard.

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Cran-Jalapeno Salsa & Cheese Spread

For the Salsa

• ¼ cup roughly chopped jalapeno peppers

• ½ cup cranberry sauce

• 1 green apple or whatever apple you’ve got lying around, cored and cut into chunks

• ¼ cup cider vinegar

For the Spread

• 1 8-oz. pkg cream cheese or Neufchâtel

• 4 oz. chevre goat cheese

• ¼ cup walnuts, finely chopped

Put first 4 ingredients in food processor. Blend for about 1 minute until very finely chopped - almost like a paste.

Serve with tortilla chips or use in cheese spread (below).

For cheese spread, set cream cheese & goat cheese in bowl of stand mixer with paddle attachment for 30 mins to soften. Beat until smooth; use hand mixer if no stand available. Add 3-4 Tbsp (add more depending on taste) of the salsa to cream cheese and beat until smoothly incorporated and goat cheese mixture. Refrigerate for at least 1 hour, or until firm.

Top with walnuts & serve with crackers—wheat thins are a perfect pairing.

Notes: for less heat, remove the seeds from your jalapenos. I prefer the heat! Salsa will keep in refrigerator for up to one month.

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Amie’s Endnotes

From grateful lists to the Grateful Dead shows I attended years ago, my life is full of gratitude. And when things seem at their bleakest and the even the word gratitude makes me cringe, if I listen hard enough, I hear the still, small voices of mothers near and far: make a grateful list.

illustration by my mom, Karyl Bannister

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We’re grateful to you, readers old and new, for inspiring us to keep cooking and telling.

Amie & Karyl

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As we enter the season of holiday food and eating, consider paying it forward by helping feed others not as fortunate. You can donate to your local community food pantry or to Americans missing their SNAP food benefits or through the United Nations World Food Programme, Share The Meal.