The Distant Whistle of Hobo Stew
Walk In My Shoes
March 30, 2001
Sometimes in life we tend to bite off the proverbial more than we can chew. This was one of those times.
I don’t know what the heck I was thinking when I decided to recreate a meal that I saw a professional chef prepare on the TV Food Network. Everything looks so easy when someone else is doing the work.
I’d be happy if I could just get my damn $20 Timex to stop beeping every hour. My attempts to silence the beep result in resetting the time. In the process of fixing the time, the date gets changed. Once the time and date are restored, I’ve somehow managed to set another alarm that only seems to beep when I’m in a movie or at a funeral.
Sweet Jesus, everything in this world has becomes so complicated. It’s little wonder that I sometimes feel impotent until the “experts” on CNN tell me what to think and how the world works. Even on this day, all I wanted was a little beef stew like my mother used to make. But, No…I had to consult the TV Food Network to be told how to cook.
My first challenge was getting the television turned on to the right channel. Let’s see…six remote controls…here it is…no, that’s the one for the DVD player…OH this is the one…nope that’s the surround sound remote…OK, here’s the TV remote. Now, out of 156 channels of advertising mixed with drivel, which number is FoodTV? Guess I have to stare at the trusty scroller for the next 15 minutes.
Even the freaking cable network is a mind game. Just when you can remember which number goes with which channel, the friendly cable company randomizes the numbers yet again. The “real” channel 3 becomes channel 2 for cable purposes. Deciphering a cable box makes a politician's speech seem straightforward. Here we go, FoodTV is now channel 77. I can almost taste my dinner.
Luck is on my side. I just jumped into the middle of a show entitled the “Melting Pot”. “Today’s Melting Pot feature is Birria.” It’s some kind of a stew containing beef. I really wanted Mom’s beef stew, but maybe I’ll get fancy. Let’s see what this baby’s got to offer.
I’m certain that this is going to be a good stew because the name of the show is “Melting Pot”. What could be more American than that? After all, America is the big melting pot of the world. You take a beautiful continent, the most enlightened system of laws and rights in history (the Constitution and the Bill Of Rights), a diverse pattern of ingredients (the proud mix of immigrants) and after stewing (assimilating) in the pot (culture) for a bit…out comes an American. The flavor is singularly complex even though it is a blend of hundreds of diverse and separate flavors of humanity. It is uniquely American and when, allowed to simmer undisturbed, it is harmonious.
After watching for a few minutes, I realized that the FoodTV stew recipe was really not going to work for me. I don’t understand “experts” giving the average a person a recipe for anything when the ingredients are not available in the local supermarket (if they exist at all). Where was I going to find “guajillo chile” and “ancho chile”? Chile is chile and this hybrid chile was way beyond me. As far as “Mexican oregano” goes, is there really a difference between oregano that my average palette (Mr. Beer and pizza) can discern?
Hell, all I wanted was some beef stew, not a vacation south of the border. After a quick search through a bunch of boxes in the basement… Voilà, my mother’s old index card recipe box. There was that old friend of mine…a well frayed 3x5 index card labeled, “Hobo Stew”. You’ll love the preciseness of the first line of the recipe, “If any ingredients are not in the pantry, use anything that is on hand.” Simplicity at last.
This was going to be easy. I had some beef, canned broth, potatoes, carrots, onion, celery, garlic, paprika, salt, pepper, bay leaves, and Worcestershire sauce. Lifting my time worn and tried cast iron stew pot onto the burner, I was ready to start cooking.
Per instructions, I first browned the meat. Next, I was supposed to add the broth. But, I’m not my mother and I decided to alter a proven recipe and do it my way…the “new way”. Why should I have cared that for my entire lifetime Mom’s Hobo Stew had been consistently delicious? I have the right to mess with tradition and fix things not broken…it is my entitlement.
The cubes of browned beef were so singularly beautiful, who was I to rape them of their solitary identity and mix them with the broth? No, in this stew, everything would remain separate. It was easy; I just bisected the pot and cooked both sides equally with their unique identities intact.
The remainder of the cooking was equally as easy and daring. I just continued to further segment the cooking pot until I had 12 separate cooking compartments. It was a joy to view. One big happy family of ingredients…each sitting comfortably in its own little simmering nest…true to its original identity. Nothing was left to do except cover the pot and allow the simmering time to force a unification of these separate flavors into a glorious stew. So simple…so one-dimensional.
With two hours of simmering time left on the clock, I kicked-back and cracked open a beer. With a smug look on my face and even more smug thoughts in my head, I sipped my beer and started to think how presumptuous the concept of a stew pot was. Not only was the stew pot presumptuous but also, my Mom’s recipe smacked of the Eisenhower years.
Did the cookware manufacturer just assume that every ingredient wanted to be lumped together in a single pot? How totally chauvinistic and insensitive of that manufacturer to produce a product that forced all of those helpless little ingredients to be lumped together in a single pot at the expense of their solitary identities.
And my Mom’s recipe; well, that alone demonstrates what a biased and socially bankrupt moral field she was harvested from. Again, with no sensitivity, urging the destruction of singular identities by continually adding ingredient onto ingredient and de-Balkanizing the intent of the recipe. What the hell did she think she was doing; adding note after note to a musical composition in an arrogant attempt to blend 30,000 separate notes into a unified and harmonious composition of beauty?
Certainly, the final slap in the face is the name of the recipe, Hobo Stew. What a slur on the fine and dignified people of the railroad fringes. As if these worldly travelers should be compared to an amorphous mass of stew degraded from its previous state of glory as diverse, separate and one-dimensional ingredients. You may not realize it, but each person of the railroad fringes (hobo) is a vital and distinct individual far more worthy of a soufflé than a stew.
It was almost dinnertime and my beer (third beer) was empty. Nothing left to do except uncover the pot and bask in the glory of my newly formulated creation…formerly known as stew. This moment was about to show generations of stew-makers how thoughtless, insensitive and myopic they had been. With profound anticipation that bordered on the arrogant, I lifted the cover of the stew pot.
YIKES…I F___ing burnt myself. Shit…I forgot the potholder (somebody’s going to get sued)! Mom always said to use a potholder and not to leave my face over the top of the pot when removing the cover. This must have been one last gasping attempt at legitimacy for the wisdom of my parent’s generation. Undaunted by this minor glitch, I removed the cover (with a potholder) and unveiled my pièce de résistance.
WHAT!!! I was staring into a pot full of the most boring and unappealing collection of food redoubts that I had ever witnessed. There laid each noble ingredient with its one-dimensional characteristics intact. It was like witnessing a dozen fortified battle encampments on the Yorktown plain. There was no synergy in my stew pot.
I don’t know if you have ever been to the Yorktown battlefield, but there are a series of fortified positions known as redoubts. Each position is its own mini-fortress. However, I had a huge problem with the little redoubts in my stew pot. Try to envision a dozen redoubts with each of the dozen containing only one component of defense. In one redoubt, there are only people. In the second redoubt, there are only cannon balls. In the third, you find only cannons. And, so on and so on…. And, so it was with my stew pot.
I had a few choices: (1) I could try to force all of the ingredients together without their having had any time to mix and blend their flavors into an assimilated whole, (2) I could just dump the separate ingredients on my plate and not enjoy a very boring mix of food groups or (3) I could make an emergency call to Mom and tell her I was really craving some Hobo stew in the hopes that she would cook me up a batch. I called Mom, made dinner plans for this coming weekend while dropping a million “Oh, God Mom I really could go for some Hobo Stew” hints and then sat my sorry butt down for another beer and a piece of cold pizza (cooked with all of the ingredients together).
As I looked at that pathetic stew pot on the stove, I was once again reminded of how complicated life had become. Only, this time, I had a bit of humility that looked me in the eyes and reminded me that sometimes we make our own complications. I was haunted by the refrain from one of my Mom’s favorite sayings…”If it isn’t broken, don’t fix it.” To that bit of wisdom, I would like to add one of my newly discovered truths…”Don’t mess with tradition, at least not before you really think about the consequences.”
I’m not sure if it was the beer or the bogeyman, but as I was cleaning up the mess from my Hobo Stew fiasco, I swore I could hear the whistle of a far distant train beckoning me down the tracks (or was that my $20 Timex going weird on me again?). Should I consider counseling and Prozac?
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