Conjuring grandmothers and earthquakes - includes two recipes, shrimp creole, and earthquake cake, for the holiday season - Brief Article

American Visions, Dec-Jan, 1997 by Donna Pierce, Melba Newsome

The Christmas season brings its share of parties, filled with food as well as good cheer. And for those get-togetherness nothing makes a host's life easier than a guest who arrives with a special dish. Since the season is upon us, we asked two of our regular contributors to select their favorite hospitality dishes, ones that not only serve to fulfill a social obligation but that also tickle their fancies with memories of the past.

We waited for the train to pull into St. Louis' Union Station whenever either of my Mobile, Ala., grandmothers arrived for a Midwestern Christmas. My mother's mother and my father's mother had very different styles of grandmothering. Granny, my maternal grandmother, was a widow. She had a hands-on, "I want to hug you so hard, I might squeeze you to death" approach. Gran, my paternal grandmother, was more reserved. When she stepped from the train, she leaned her cheek down for a polite kiss from each of her four Missouri grandchildren.

Their personalities may have been different, but their traveling style was the same. They never visited at the same time. But when either grandmother arrived at the station for the holidays, we could count on seeing two Gayfer's Department Store shopping bags. One was filled with giftwrapped presents. The other held carefully packed homemade penuche, fudge, divinity and pralines. When the baggage porter appeared with luggage, there would always be a large brown cardboard box packed with dry ice and seafood.

In the days before next-day shipping and flash-frozen seafood, we planned our holiday meals around the Gulf Coast seafood Mom and Dad missed from home. The grandmother-delivered shellfish guaranteed shrimp creole for our Columbia, Mo., Christmas Eve dinner. On Christmas Day, our turkey was accompanied with oyster dressing made with what my dad called "the world's sweetest oysters." Later the turkey carcass would be the beginning of our favorite seafood gumbo. And we spent the next week feasting on gumbo plus oyster loaves, fried shrimp and deviled crab.

Today, when we gather around the holiday table, someone always tells the story about the long-ago annual Christmas boxes of seafood delicacies and the grandmothers who delivered these flavors of home.

SHRIMP CREOLE

Serves 6 to 8

1/3 cup extra-virgin olive oil
1/2 cup celery, chopped fine
1 large onion, chopped
1 green pepper, chopped
2 cloves garlic, chopped
1 28-ounce can crushed tomatoes
1 6-ounce can tomato paste
1 cup water
1 teaspoon sugar
1 tablespoon Worcestershire sauce
Hot pepper sauce, to taste
Salt and pepper, to taste
2 1/2 pounds cleaned large shrimp
Cooked rice