Читать книгу Beyond Delicious: The Ghost Whisperer's Cookbook - Mary Ann Winkowski - Страница 24

SOMETIMES PEOPLE JUST WANT TO BE REMEMBERED, in whatever small way possible. We can’t all have buildings or streets named after us, but we do all touch others in ways that will help us be remembered after we’re gone. Veronica had been forgotten, however, at least by the people she wanted to remember her.

Shelly had called me because her son, Donny, was always talking to a “lady with a ponytail on top of her head, but with no tail.” Donny was four-going-on-forty, as his mother said—very well spoken for a four-year-old. I’m not sure he was quite forty, but he did certainly seem to speak and comprehend above his age group.

When I got to the house, Donny was thrilled to see me.

“Grandma is mad!” he explained of his excitement. “She’s mad because Mommy and Daddy can’t talk to her and she wants to talk to a grown-up.”

“Grandma?” I repeated, glancing at Shelly.

“That’s just what he calls her,” she said. “But it can’t be his grandma—they’re both still alive.”

At that moment the ghost walked into the room, and I saw exactly what Donny meant about a ponytail with no tail on top of her head—only I called it a bun. She looked like your pretty typical old lady, and I couldn’t imagine her having a mean bone in her body, but she also looked sad—and relieved.

“Here,” Donny said, interrupting my train of thought. He thrust some pictures he’d drawn into my hands.

“What are these?”

“Grandma told me to draw these,” he said. I flipped through them and saw lots of crayon pictures of food, by the looks of it. “Look,” Donny said, pulling out one in particular. “That’s green beans, and that’s corn, and that’s meat, and that is the surprise!”

He pointed at a blob in one corner of the plate. “Are they potatoes?” I asked.

“No,” he said thoughtfully. “Well, maybe … but surprise potatoes.”

“He’s been going on about that surprise for months,” Shelly said. “We don’t have any idea what he’s talking about, but this Grandma he talks to is very adamant about it.”

“Why is it a surprise?” I asked Donny.

“Because there’s something inside it!”

At that moment I remembered that this lady was standing in the room with us, so I looked at her and asked, “What is this?”

“It’s a potato dumpling surprise!” she answered cheerfully. “Oh, it’s so good to talk to you! I’m a relative of theirs. Donny is named after my husband.”

I told Shelly this, but she shook her head dimly. “Donny’s not named after anyone. We just liked the name Donald.”

“My great-grandfather was a Donald,” Shelly’s husband called in from the other room—where he was pretending not to be interested. “But that’s not who he’s named after.”

“That was my husband,” this ghost said, so I asked her who she was and she said her name was Veronica.

“Nope,” Shelly’s husband reported from the other room. “His wife was named Elizabeth.”

“That was his first wife,” Veronica explained. “I was his second wife. He died about six months after we got married.”

I wasn’t sure how that qualified her to be a relative, per se—certainly not by blood—but since she went on to tell me that she’d been wandering from family member to family member for the last sixty years “trying to get some respect,” I thought it best to let things slide. In the meantime, Shelly’s husband had gotten on the phone and called his mother, and after some back and forth with her he returned with the news.

“It’s true,” he stated simply. “He did have a second wife named Veronica.” Then he vanished into the basement and came back up with a huge box stuffed with old photographs. While he dug through them, I explained to Veronica that she wasn’t doing anyone any good by hanging around, and she agreed. She said she’d figured that out, so she didn’t stay too long in any one place.

“But Donny—he just has to try my surprise dumplings,” she said. “My husband loved them so much, and he is named after him.” I didn’t argue.

“That’s her!” Donny suddenly shrieked, pointing at an old photograph in his dad’s hand. “That’s Grandma!”

His dad flipped it over and read the back, “Donald’s second wife, Veronica.”

Shelly was quite happy to take down the recipe after that, and she promised to make it for her Donald.

Surprise Potato Dumplings

1 cup bread cubes

2 cups mashed potatoes

1 tablespoon butter

1 egg

1 tablespoon finely chopped onion

¾ cup flour

1¼ teaspoons salt

Dash of pepper

1 cup milk

½ cup fine, buttered breadcrumbs

Brown bread cubes in butter or bacon fat. Into warm mashed potatoes add butter, and allow to cool. Then add egg, onion, flour, salt, and pepper; blend well. Make 12 balls about the size of an egg, forming each ball around 4–5 cubes of the fried bread. Place in gently boiling water to which has been added 1 cup milk (keeps the dumplings white), and cover pan. Cook dumplings for 7 minutes. Lift dumplings with strainer; place on a large platter. Sprinkle with breadcrumbs.