Shit on a Shingle: (two servings):
20 slices chipped beef (about 100g/ 4 oz)
4 teaspoons butter
4 teaspoons flour
2/3 cup milk skim
Ground pepper
4 slices bread
I trace the loopy letters with my pointer finger. The recipe is written on a faded pink piece of paper, the edges still fraying from being ripped out of a notebook many years ago.
It’s my second week at college, and I have never been so excited to receive a letter in the mail. I knew it was from my grandmother the moment I saw the light pink envelope, the cursive writing on the front. I’d practically skipped back to my dorm room that afternoon, taking the stairs two at a time, and plopping heavily down at my desk, breathing hard and trying to not rip the envelope too unevenly as I tore it open.
I close my eyes and imagine my grandmother reading this; hear her laugh, clear, deep, hearty, echoing through the kitchen as we make Shit on a Shingle together before I leave for college.
We are dancing to Frank Sinatra, tipsy from white wine, rhubarb pie, summer. I hate Frank Sinatra, but today, I love him. She takes my hands; she closes her eyes and we waltz through the kitchen to Summer Wind. The light streams in through the window, refracting through her dreamcatchers, her windchimes.
I measure the flour, the butter, the milk. She chops the beef roughly, expertly, sets it on low heat. She tells me about making Shit on a Shingle with her mother on the farm, she tells me about milking their cows, driving the tractors.
We sit out on the barn stoop, eating the toast while my grandfather laughs at us from his rocking chair. He has a Coors Light in one hand and scratches the low of Ozzy’s back with the other. The barn stoop faced the west, perfect for sunsets. We could sit there for hours, watch the sun slowly sink through the sky, greet the mountaintops, and disappear. That night, a great blue heron flies just barely above the horizon, hovering in the fading yellows, the orange pastels, as if it’s getting swallowed by a fire.
When I think of my grandmother, I remember Gin Rummy on the stoop, I taste the gummy bears she slips me during family reunions, the meals we make together on Sunday afternoons. I feel her hand in mine as we watch the sunset, her hand over mine as I chop the beef. I remember sitting on my grandfather’s lap, learning to drive the tractor while my grandmother runs after us with the camera. I see my grandparents washing the horses together, my grandfather spraying my grandmother with the hose, laughing. I think of snipping long stalks of rhubarb from the garden, baking rhubarb pie, canning the rest. I think of collecting wild blueberries in the bushes behind the barn, I think of Shit on a Shingle, I think of love.
When I open my eyes, I realize I must have been smiling so widely my mouth hurts. I look back to the recipe, and sigh. Today, I must cut the Shit on a Shingle recipe in half.
I am cooking for one.