Author: Sheila Quirke

Posted on

Mom’s Spaghetti Recipe

My Mom didn’t really like to cook much.  I grew up on a diet of canned vegetables, meat, and potatoes.  It’s what my Dad wanted and didn’t require a lot of thought or energy.  I totally get that.  So much of the time I feel uninspired by food.  I try, and with effort can put a dinner on the table that both tastes good (if a little bland at times) and is nutritious.  The truth is, though, that food does not move me.  Well, brownies move me, but dinner, not so much.

I married into a foodie family, which has been a bit tough at times.  I always worry that my in-laws feel disappointed in my lack of food curiosity and I sometimes feel pressured to know more, try more, eat differently.  And seriously, if any of you gals want to take Mary Tyler Dad on a sushi date, I will not stand in your way.  Poor guy.

That said, there are a few recipes that my Mom made that I cherish.  Oh!  And they are delicious.  My Mom could bring it when she wanted to — just like me.  When I miss her or need an extra shot of comfort in my life, I bring them out to help me feel close to her.  Their smells are evocative of her, just like Oil of Olay and White Linen perfume.  Most of them I have; some have disappeared into the ether.  Sloppy joes, lemon pork chops, peach meat loaf, lasagne with cottage cheese, pot roast with prunes.  My folks married in 1958, so there is a Mad Men quality to these dishes that I simply adore and romanticize.

Her chop suey was one of my favorites as a kid.  What I ate of it consisted of the meat broth over rice and cooked celery, but the flavor was strong and delicious.  Once, in the grocery store, I asked my Mom what kind of meat was in the chop suey.  “Snake meat,” she replied.  I recoiled in horror, but also loved the wicked nature of my Mom’s humor, knowing from the twinkle in her eye that she was kidding.  She was lovely that way.  Wicked humor in a Mom is a good quality.

Yesterday I made a triple batch of my Mom’s spaghetti sauce.  The babysitters were coming over during the dinner hour and a friend just had a baby — both perfect fits for a warm dish of spaghetti.  I posted a photo on Facebook and a few folks asked for the recipe.  Here it is.  Oh, and this is approved by all three in Mary Tyler Family — a foodie, a meat and potatoes gal, and a three year old.  That is the trifecta of hard to please.  Mangia!

spaghetti sauce

Mrs. Q’s Spaghetti Sauce

yellow onion, chopped

1-11/2# ground beef, browned and drained

28 oz. diced tomatoes

12 oz. tomato paste

6 oz. water

6 oz. red wine

1/2 teaspoon salt

1 tablespoon sugar

1/2 teaspoon basil

1/2 teaspoon oregano

1 bay leaf

add garlic to taste

Saute onion in olive oil until tender, translucent.  Brown and drain meat (FAT CAN!).  Add onions, tomatoes, tomato paste and stir.  Add liquids and stir.  Add dry ingredients and stir.  Simmer on very low heat for two hours, though tastes best when flavors have had time to wed in fridge or freezer.  Can be doubled or tripled.  Serve with spaghetti noodles, garlic toast, and green salad.

Hey, I’ve never written about food before.  Should I do it again?  Per my usual, it would be about the emotional impact of food in our day-to-day.  Let me know if that might float your boat.  

Posted on

The Junk in My Trunk

When I was in graduate school I trained in the PTSD Clinic of a local VA Hospital.  All of my clients were Vietnam veterans.  I was a 26 year old woman.  What the hell did I know about Vietnam?  Not a whole lot, it turns out.  I spent the summer before I started educating myself by reading everything I could get my hands on about the war, the era, the soldiers, the Vietnamese.  It was an interesting summer.  Powerful and humbling.

Novels were the things that helped me the most.  A good novel reveals truth.  Tim O’Brien wrote a book (a hybrid of memoir, novel, and story collection) called The Things They Carried about a platoon of soldiers in Vietnam during the war.  The title refers to just as it says — the things the soldiers chose to carry with them in their rucksack, the premise being that those things were in some way indicative of who carried them.  The things captured some essence of their carrier.

That idea, that we keep the things that matter to us close, has resonated with me ever since.  It hit me like a ton of bricks a few weeks ago when I opened the trunk to my car.  What I saw was a hodge podge collection of stuff, some of it junk, that so completely reflected my life and its particular chaos.  So here it is, an ode to Tim O’Brien, and a reflection on the junk in my trunk.

Junk in my Trunk

A log.  

This cut log is from the cemetery where my daughter rests.  She is buried in a “nature sanctuary,” which means that she is surrounded by trees.  This is why we chose where we chose for her to rest, despite it being a 90 minute drive.  It is peaceful and lovely.  The sun plays through the trees and dapples Donna’s gravestone.  Nothing I plant grows there — I can’t for the life of me keep the deer away.  And that’s okay.  They keep Donna company.  Right now, like so much of the rest of America, they are trying to do more with less.  Seems like the sleepy nature sanctuary we chose in 2009 is all the rage now.  Green burials, they call it.  They are cutting down a lot of trees to make room for more graves.  More nature with less trees.  Yeah, it doesn’t make sense to me either.  I took this log in July, wanting a piece of what was close to Donna to be with us now.

St. Baldrick’s Banner.

Last March, Donna’s Good Things held it’s first annual St. Baldrick’s shaving event.  We raised $77K for pediatric cancer research through the kind help of a lot of friends and strangers.  Extraordinary.  We’re doing it again next March 30.  Do you have a head?  Do you want to shave it for kids with cancer?  You can.  I’ll be there and so will this banner.  Somehow it never made its way inside.  I can’t quite wrap my head around needing to find a place in my home for a St. Baldrick’s banner.  It’s safer in the car.  I can ignore it more easily there and then take it out when I need it again.

Mary Tyler Son’s Artwork.

What do you do with all this artwork?  Where is it supposed to go?  I haven’t quite gotten around to sorting it out.  Pinterest tells me I should photograph and scan it.  Ugh.  That requires a level of organization and forethought that escapes me.  Some of my friends frame it and proudly display it in their home.  I wish I were that Mom.  I’m not.  That, too, requires effort that I can’t quite seem to find.

Blue Blanket.

This is my husband’s blanket.  It is old and ratty.  An adult version of Linus’ blanket, if you ask me.  He won’t allow us to get rid of it.  We keep it in the car because it’s just sensible to have a blanket in the car, but damn if I want that thing around me in an emergency.  Ick.  They say there are no athiests in a fox hole and there’s probably no germophobes in a freezing car either.  At least that’s what I tell myself.

Office Stuff.

I quit my job last month.  Yep.  Closed up my cube and now its contents sit in this box in my trunk.  There are two other boxes from the last office I closed in our storage room.  Mary Tyler Dad complains about them all the time.  I can’t quite bear to add one more to that pile, so here the box sits.  In the trunk.  Sigh.

Twig.

This twig is in the shape of Mary Tyler Son’s first initial.  He found it on a trip to the beach a few weeks ago.  I picked him up from school and it was unseasonably warm.  I made a left instead of our usual straight, just on a whim, and we headed for the Lake.  I am so grateful for spontaneity in my life.  There are so many possibilities in it.  Like unexpected “nature dances” on a warm fall day that entail nothing more than spinning ourselves around in a circle until we fall in a heap on the sand, laughing, hugging, and kissing.  This twig will find its way inside, to be hung on the boy’s wall, so we can both remember a warm afternoon in the sun, spinning in the sand, hugging and kissing and loving.

Glitter.

Lots and lots and lots of glitter.  Mary Tyler Son goes to the school where Donna went.  We see her teachers frequently.  That brings us a lot of joy.  Back in 2009, though only knowing her for a few weeks, they came to visit during her vigil.  They got to say goodbye and give us some much appreciated love and hugs.  The day after their visit, Donna died.  As a memorial, they had the children in Donna’s class decorate a pumpkin.  A big, bedazzled, feathered, painted, glittered pumpkin that only pre-schoolers are capable of making.  For young kids, more is always more.  The pumpkin has become an annual tradition in our home.  We look forward to it and it brings us joy.  This year, because we are at the school, we got to carry the pumpkin home ourselves.  That glitter is gonna stick around for a while.  And that’s okay.  We all could use a little more sparkle in our lives, right?

Separately, these things are just a collection of a lot of nothing.  Together, they tell a story.  My story.  The story of my life today and how I’m a little overwhelmed by it all.  Lord, what a mess it is.  But it’s my mess.  And I cherish it.  And I carry it all close.  Perhaps too close, but since I took this photo, I moved the log to my coffee table, so that’s progress.

What junk is in your trunk and what does it say about your story?

Posted on

A Good Day in America

Today is Election Day.  I am a democracy dork, so that makes it pretty special in my home.  As long as I can remember, I have been interested in the larger world and how politics impacts our little worlds.  I have fond memories of hanging on to my parents thighs as they waited in long, long lines to vote, my neck straining from looking up, trying to get a glimpse of all the adults above me, imagining all the important things they were doing.  I distinctly remember the metallic noise of the curtain closing behind my Mom and I as she entered her votes.  The curtains were blue and scratchy and the booth was small.  I liked being inside, as the mysteries of voting were a lot less mysterious in there.

We had spirited conversations at family dinners about what was happening in Washington, D.C. and Chicago and Springfield — the three capitals of politics that most impacted our day-to-day life.  As a young girl, I got caught in a melee when a classmate insisted she was allowed to actually vote with her parents.  I would have none of that fairy tale.  My little girl self knew the score.  No vote until you are 18.  Period.

Today, we woke about 6 AM.  Mary Tyler Son needed to be leaving for school by 8, so we opted to vote first and breakfast later.  All three of us walked to our polling place, a local synagogue.  I carried graham crackers and raisins for the boy to tide him over.  I was a little sad to see no line outside the door, as my Facebook friends in a few places had already described.  This was Mary Tyler Son’s first presidential election.  He knows who Barack Obama is and has identified Mitt Romney as Obama’s bodyguard.  Regardless of their position in his eyes, I love that my three year old knows both candidates’ names.

The last time I voted in a presidential election, Mary Tyler Son had yet to be born.  That bun was still in the oven.  I was nursing him by Inauguration Day, Donna still at my side.  A lot can change in an election cycle.  What hasn’t changed are the butterflies I feel, waiting for results, an all too familiar combination of hope and fear.

I am naive, you see, believing that yes, my vote does in fact matter, despite the fact that neither candidate has courted Illinois and that I live in a district where an incumbent runs unopposed in many of the more local races.  I don’t care.  The most important vote I cast today was for Mary Tyler Son’s future, that he too will grow up to honor and respect and feel grateful for the democracy he was blessed to have been born into.

Mad props to my parents who taught me well.  I am so grateful that they allowed their four year old daughter, little ‘ole me, to watch as Richard Nixon resigned.  I am so grateful that they kept me home from school on a warm day to go to the local high school to see President Carter in a town hall meeting.  Seeing Marine One land in the field where I had played a thousand afternoons was thrilling.  The Secret Service inspecting my school bag made me feel dangerous and important all at the same time.  I am so grateful to my parents who respected my 10 year old self enough to talk about their vote for John Anderson, the Independent candidate, in 1980.

All of those memories shaped the voter I am today.  All of those memories shape the voter I hope my son will be one day.  I hope I am teaching him as well as my parents taught me.  Only time and a few election cycles will tell.

Ballot Receipt