A Church Potluck Favorite: "Pretzel Salad"

I grew up hungry.  There wasn't a lot of food in the pantry, there wasn't a lot of time for love.  I grew up "working class" and was raised by my siblings, because my parents worked so much. When they got home from the odd jobs they worked, they'd put Spaghetti-o's on the table and tried to get me to drink milk more.  It was my sister who taught me to tie my shoes, frustrated one morning when I didn't want to go to kindergarten, the laces trailing behind me and tears welling in my eyes.  I already felt like a failure at six years old.  She grabbed my laces and taught me with patience, we got on the bus and she held my hand until I calmed down.  A lot has changed between us, and that's the last time we were tender to each other.  A lot has changed, but I still get worked up so easily. I grew up poor.  I grew up poor and I didn't even know it.   I grew up poor and knew no other way.  I grew up poor when my parents worked four jobs and resented them years later for being too tired to listen to my day, my stories, my dreams of being a famous writer and never seeing them again.  I grew up poor and never helped my mom around the house.  When she needed it most.  When she was so exhausted, she'd fall asleep at the dinner table.  When she wasn't herself for so many years, fighting the good fight.  She worked in a freezer once, in a grocery warehouse. My dad took a job once stuffing coupons into newspapers. They did it for us.  They tried to make ends meet, to tie my laces and keep me young.  All of this in Kentucky, where my brother stepped on a nail and he didn't want to tell our parents, in case it cost too much to fix.  I asked him about it while I was in North Carolina in June.  He still has the scar, and I still have the memory of the sacrifices everyone made, and how I was happy to be too young to understand them all.

One thing I was kept young about was food and levels of flavor until I had moved out of rural Pennsylvania and into Pittsburgh (arguably, still rural Pennsylvania).  Until then, I only knew about cake layers, pizza toppings, adding a little more cream to my coffee and calling it something French--I called that cooking.  I didn't know herbs existed in their green state, or that anything you saw at through the smudged bakery glass could be made at home.  I didn't know a lot of things, because my mother fed a family of five on a dollar-store budget.

We come from Indiana low-country, an often underrepresented class that subsists itself on eggs covered in ketchup, twenty-year grudges, and first marriages that never seem to stick.  It's a place where you can drive for twenty miles and still see the same rain cloud in the distance.  A place where they get fresh water from a water tower, painted light blue and where kids climb to make out and smoke weed.  It's a place with a Dairy Queen and two cemeteries: the Catholic graveyard and the Baptist graveyard.  A place where the elasticity of money means being creative, stocking a deepfreeze in the garage with bulk cuts of meat, and eating more preservatives than maybe a neighboring longitudinal town.  It means knowing what tastes good and sharing it with your family of five, putting a little extra in the brown paper lunches you pack when the school's get too expensive.

It's comfort food without the luxury of Southern heaviness--no buttermilk or animal fats.  Too expensive.  We budgeted with Crisco, Velveeta, and Great Value-brand butter, saving bacon fat in a mason jar by the stove for Sunday morning donuts.  Everything was saved, everything reconfigured instead of throwing it out.  I assume that's how this dessert was made.  Some cream cheese was going beyond the saving point, some pretzels were stale.  A woman no different than my mother--working class and a mother of three--layered and baked whatever she had on hand, set and cooled the product of her labor in the fridge.  She told her friends who told her friends, who went to church and share it at potlucks.  It was made cheaper with Jell-o, made easier with Cool Whip.  It was adapted and streamlined for economy, using barely any heat and barely any ingredients.  And once my mother got the recipe, it became a staple in our house.  "Pretzel Salad" it's called.  It's a working-class answer to the cheesecake, simple and sturdy and tart how you like it.  It sweet enough to balance out all the salt-of-the-earth people I've met throughout my life, reminding me who I really am and where I really come from.

Strawberry and Pretzel Pie (Pretzel Salad)

Ingredients:

For the crust:

• 2 cups finely-crushed pretzels (to the point of coarse meal or flour)
• 1/3 cup firmly-packed brown sugar (light or dark--I preferred the stronger molasses in dark)
• 3/4 cup + 1 tb melted butter

For the cream cheese filling:

• 1 package cream cheese, room temperature
• 1/2 - 3/4 cup sugar (your preference.  More tart means less sugar)
• 1/2 cup Greek yogurt, sour cream, or plain yogurt (up the sugar if using the former two options, so it isn't overwhelming)
• 2 teaspoon vanilla (optional)

Strawberry layer:

• 1 quart strawberries, hulled and smashed
• 1 cup sugar
• 1/2 lemon, zest and juice
• A slurry of 3/4 cup water and 3 TB cornstarch

Directions:

1. Preheat oven to 350 and prepare a 9-inch pie plate with butter and parchment paper the bottom (optional)
2. On the stovetop, melt butter gradually and set aside.
3. In a food processor, pulse pretzels and brown sugar together until you get the consistency of corn meal or flour.
4. In a mixing bowl, combine two cups of the dry pretzel mixture with the melted butter.  Stir with a wooden spoon until just combined, then pat wetted pretzel into the prepared pie plate, molding into the plate to form a consistent thickness and even layering around whole pan
5. Bake for 10-12 minutes or until browned
6. Set aside and allow to cool to the touch, about half an hour
7. While crust is cooling, get a large mixing bowl and whip cream cheese and 1 cup sugar together until peaks begin to form.  Soften these peaks by adding your yogurt or cream and blend until the consistency of very stiff meringue, but still easily spreadable.  Add vanilla,  if using.  (This step doesn't take an awful long time, so if your pie crust is still not cool yet, now would be a good time to hull and smash your pint of strawberries, if you aren't following the mise en place philosophy)
8. Use a rubber spatula and mix cream cheese mixture by hand for a couple rotations to ensure all ingredients are mixed properly, then pour over cooled pie crust.  Distribute mixture over crust and transfer to fridge to cool further and solidify filling for about half an hour.
9. While pie is in the fridge, combine strawberries and 1 cup sugar and heat on medium-high to promote maceration.  Stirring every so often, bring to a boil.  Berries will continue to release their juices.
10. Add the zest and juice of half of a lemon, stir.  Bring to a boil.
11. Add cornstarch slurry and reduce heat
12. Simmer until thickened into a jam-like consistency
13. Remove from heat, mixture will continue to thicken as it cools
14. When cool to the touch, pour and spread mixture on top of cream cheese layer of pie.
15. Return to refrigerator and allow to completely set for no less than one hour.
16. Enjoy!

Enjoy another taste of my memories, because I'm sure they're your memories, too.

Momma

I don't think I can ever love anything the way I love my mother.  A bond that runs through my blood, a love that's almost spiritual.  I think I left for California because I was afraid of that love, of that bond between us that was broken when I came out and repaired with thread and bits of Big League Chew.  I think I'm always afraid of losing her, the way she lost hers when she was 14.  I've at least got eight years on her, at least I've got text messages and phone calls.  At least I've got her cheekbones and her temper, the way I jump to conclusions and take St. John's Wort for an acute and whispering dose of hereditary depression.  And at least I have the memories of sleeping in the middle, of baths and her drawings.  She's been sending me more and more momentos to remember her by, to keep the memory alive and tangible.

My mom's a Midwesterner through and through.  Nosey and angry, bitter and prideful.  She sends me care packages of coffee and candy, jars of jam and mustards.  Nourishing boxes, care boxes.  Curated boxes that remind me of home.  She's a gothic novel, a southern gospel of the haunting romance of love.  She's Catherine at the windowsill when she sends these boxes, boxes that scare me because I left her alone.  Alone in a house too empty and filled with silence and cats.

I called her on Mother's Day and she and my father were visiting my brother in North Carolina.  My voice cracked as I drove on the 8 West.  I sipped coffee to burn my tongue so I could distract the tears from coming.  I just missed her so much in that moment.  And when the phone call ended and I got to work, I had enough distractions to keep me busy.  It's only at night when I really miss her.  The absence is like a migraine, though, dull and constant until there's something to trigger it.  Light and sound, memories and scents.  Peaches or cucumber-melon lotion.  I avoid it all when I start to miss her.

Here's to Nancy and her hugs, her laughter and her sadness.  Here's to Nancy, and the toffees she sent me and the times I'll never get back.

Ansuz.

I was eight in Kentucky, visiting family that still lived in the double-wide trailer I was babysat at.  It was blue with a water bed, where my cousins and I would watch Twister with our aunt, Tammy.  I was at the mall and I didn't hold my mother's hand.  For two hours I was lost, wandering around and navigating the shops that lined the main concourse.  We probably circled each other's paces like satellites.  And when she saw me, she hugged me tight and promised not to let go.  

Of course, it's silly to promise things conditional on the human emotion, on circumstance and change.  I left my mother when I was seventeen and she was never able to hold my hand again.

But we place reminders on ourselves to not forget to stay connected, grounded to the bluegrass roots that shaped us in one way or another.  She used to leave me post-it notes on my dashboard to read before school and I still try to revive that tradition with an occasional text.  It goes unanswered, lost to the lull of technological synapses between our generations.  I have a reminder on my calendar for her birthday with a little heart next to the 14 and the days leading up to it are marked in my planner with "Don't forget to buy the card", "Don't forget to mail the card", "Don't forget to call her."  

They're all unnecessary insurance, anyway.  I don't plan on forgetting anytime soon.

But that's how I am with many things, with all things, in some way.  I like the insurance of planning, of making a to-do list and never marking anything off because it's all finished before I even looked to it for guidance.  That's how I am with myself, with my body.  I like to be organized, to have constant totems nearby to retrieve the inherent "me" that's sometimes fogged by the daily coil of corporate life.  I didn't want this to happen with writing, something I've always valued within myself.  I wanted to remember it as it was, and not lose it for two hours and come back scared.  I wanted my talent to shine in a way that was nurtured and remembered like when your mother remembers your favorite dish for dinner after you haven't been home for a year.  I wanted to build a relationship with my writing, and I just needed a reminder to appreciate it while it's still around.

My new tattoo is the Elder Futhrak rune Ansuz, which symbolizes the creative mind, the poetic soul, and the "god's breath".  I wanted to hold it on my forearm and invoke that metaphysical energy during my day-to-day life and remind myself of the innocence of the energy that, when reduced by half like a marsala wine, just boils down to love.

still healing.  don't you love this quilt?

PS, I updated my "Connect" page and you can find me on pinterest, instagram, and VSCOgrid. Feel free to say hi :)