I've never shared my mother's recipe for that festive and savory treat?
- Michelle Wood: SWCD
- November 5, 2017
- 1208
Kitty Hawk, North Carolina: Picture your favorite album cover. Could be “Rubber Soul.” Could be “Exile on Main Street.” Could be “The Carpenters Greatest Hits.” The music — for this one and only time, faithful readers — really doesn’t matter. It’s the size of the thing that you’ve held in your hands hundreds of times that I want you to envision.
Imagine, then, a window of approximately those dimensions. Then conjure a scenario in which you find yourself — on your wedding anniversary, no less — stranded on the front porch of the beach cottage that you and your wife have reserved for the week. And you can’t get the key to the door to work.
This is already not a pretty picture, but if you want to add another layer of ignominy and bad karma, consider the fact that as you wrestle with that unforgiving piece of hardware, an entire week’s worth of groceries — including stuff that could easily melt in the Outer Banks' sun — is just sitting there, waiting, hoping, trusting that you can figure a way to get into the beach house before nature takes its Hitchcock-esque course and the ravenous seagulls converge, attack and fly off with everything.
Including the Corona and the ingredients for Dorothy Dip. What’s that? I’ve never shared my mother’s recipe for that festive and savory treat? Permit me a tasty tangent then, and we’ll get back to my story soon.
When we were growing up, Mom was charged with — among a thousand other duties — preparing sack lunches for my sister, my brother and me to take to school. It wasn’t that we didn’t enjoy the meals provided by the nuns (or their kitchen surrogates) because they prepared nutritious fare faithfully, Monday through Friday.
And Friday was, of course, fish day because this was before the church relaxed its no-meat edict.
I think the reason Mom liked making lunches was she liked making us suffer. Well, let me put that another way. My mother was the kind of shopper who believed that if she bought, say, Fig Newtons or Quaker Oatmeal instead of, say, Chips Ahoy or Lucky Charms, then she’d be better off in the long run.
This was her argument. “If I buy the things you like,” she’d say, “they’ll be gone in no time. You’ll just eat them all.”
How is a kid supposed to mount a convincing rebuttal to that kind of Depression-era logic, scars of deprivation and serious want so ingrained as to last a lifetime?
The short answer is that even as the '60s entered the Space Age and talk of man on the moon wasn’t just sci-fi nonsense, you didn’t. You went along with what Mom packed.
“Offer it up for your sins,” our devout Catholic of a matriarch would say, staring at me. “God knows you’ve got enough of them.”
Lest you think she was some kind of vengeful termagant, I need to tell you about underwood devilled ham. This stuff was one of her lunchtime staples, but when spread between slices of white bread, it had the unfortunate tendency to, well, sweat, leaving an ugly and unappetizing stain when opened four hours after being wrapped in waxed paper.
“Looks like dog food,” my brother said.
“Mom’s trying her best,” my sister said.
To which I said, “Better than being hungry all afternoon.”
Who would have guessed our mother would build her finest holiday taste treat — which we christened Dorothy Dip — around that self-same food product? But that’s exactly what happened, and it’s been a favorite of mine ever since. In fact I was ready to recreate it that very Sunday evening, but then, as you’ll recall, I couldn’t get the front door open.
After 10 years of marriage and 30 years together, my wife and I have established a nonverbal code. If, for example, she’s telling me a story I’ve heard before, I’ll hold up two fingers, not meaning the peace sign but indicating “twice,” as in no longer new.
If, on the other hand, my wife points to a window about the size of the “Blood on the Tracks” LP cover, I know she means for me to somehow crawl through that aperture. And to do it before her butter pecan ice cream is a sweet stain on the front porch.
Now just to refresh your memory, I’m built along the lines of a praying mantis: very long arms and even longer legs. I stand 6-feet-5 and weigh around 185 pounds, which means I have no real center of gravity. My wife has regaled friends and family, describing my futile attempts to get comfortable in a simple hammock.
“He spins around and flips right out,” she says, making an illegal procedure gesture with her hands. “And then, well, he gets back up and tries again.”
Which was the mind-set I adopted when confronted with that window. “Even if I don’t get in the first time,” I told myself, “I will make it before dark.”
My wife pulled the screen from the frame and worked the pane to its fullest height. “OK sweetie,” she said with a smile. “You’re on, or should I say, you better get us in.”
My first attempt was to try and simply step up, but the window was 5 feet off the ground, and I couldn’t get the leverage I needed, so I turned my back on the frame and tried to sit on the ledge. Which wasn’t really working either until my wife grabbed one of my sneakers and shoved. Backward. Hard.
With one leg inside the house, I was able to get an arm and then my shoulder under the frame, which meant the rest of me came through easily. Second leg. Second arm. Then my head popped through. Probably would have reminded my mother of her agony birthing me.
But I got in, unlocked the door and we've had a fine week. No vacation’s perfect, but we’re doing our best. I can imagine the way my wife will tell that story in years to come. It’s probably best that I get my version out first.
Mike Dewey can be emailed at carolinamiked@aol.com or snail-mailed at 6211 Cardinal Drive, New Bern, NC 28560. For the Dorothy Dip recipe, visit his Facebook page.