The Way He Liked It

I was talking with my Mom today and she mentioned cabbage. That, of course, reminded me to ask her about Rumbledethumps, Colcannon and Bubble and Squeak. She had never heard of any of the aforementioned dishes and thought her youngest daughter had gone off the deep end! I quickly explained about Rumbledethumps. That triggered a memory for her. When my Mom was a girl (back in the 1920s and 30s), her mother Marion, my Gagee, would make a “New England Boiled Dinner”, which is corned beef, cabbage, potatoes, carrots and onions all cooked together in one pot on top of the stove. Marion’s father-in-law, an angel of a fellow named Jody, would ask her to make it “the way he liked it”. Gagee would reach into the icebox for the bacon drippings and put a little in a frying pan. Then she would scoop out some of the cabbage from the big pot and fry it in the bacon grease. Next she would lift out a potato and add that to the frying pan and mash it in with the cabbage. Gagee would serve it to Jody and he would add just a splash of apple cider vinegar to it.

Now if that isn’t the kissin’ cousin of Colcannon and Rumbledethumps I don’t know what is! Jody was of Irish, not Scottish descent. And he was, in fact, my Gramps’ stepfather. The Scottish branch I wrote about recently is my paternal grandfather’s side. Be that as it may, it cements that strong feeling I had about Rumbledethumps being a connection to something deep and old in my family’s culinary heritage. I need to keep browsing Maw Broon’s Cookbook to see what other chords get struck!