Keep It Simple

This post is dedicated to my mother’s parents, who were gentle people with big, wide hearts.

Once, someone told me children didn’t start internalizing memories until after seven years old. I hardly believe that. If that were the case, I would have only vaguely remembered my grandparents. What I do know for sure is: when I reminisce about my childhood, close my eyes and try to recall details, it is them I remember, and sometimes, it is only them.

These days, when I’m in the kitchen experimenting and pairing spices together, I remember Granddaddy, crouched over the stove at 12 sharp. The television is on in the living room, and I’m seven or eight years old, freckle-faced and attentive. I know what he’s cooking us for lunch. I know what it is because I requested it. Smoke filters out of the kitchen in tiny waves and attaches to the sunlight billowing all around me, warming me up. He brings me a napkin and a glass of iced Mountain Dew and I thank him. He goes back into the kitchen for my lunch and his, and when he appears again, he has a bowl: noodles and broccoli. He sets it down in front of me. I’m sitting on a bathtowel in front of the television. “Be careful,” he says, voice pleasant and soft. He created this dish. As far as I’m concerned, no one in the entire world paired noodles and broccoli together before he did.

My grandparents were minimalists. For them, it was a way of staying healthy—eating meals that have long been familiar, occasionally spicing, but never straying too far from tradition. Granddaddy did most of the cooking for Nana, egg beaters and turkey bacon in the morning, chicken chow mein at night as they watched Murder She Wrote on TV trays. He cooked what she liked, simple food with few ingredients, but it was what they loved, what they never grew tired of, and so, it was what they ate for years.

I’ve decided to make sausage balls this week, partly in accordance with my classmates’ request, and partly because lately I’ve been thinking about how poignant it is to eat the same dishes year after year with a person you really love. Never experimenting, but never wanting to, the delight of your company a primary joy, the food, an added bonus.

Even now, years after their deaths, we eat sausage balls every Christmas, before dinner as an appetizer. I can’t remember a Christmas without them on the kitchen table, swaddled in paper towels inside a tin. They have three ingredients: hot sausage, cheddar cheese, Bisquick. There are ways to complicate them (onions, for example), but I never wanted to alter the recipe, afraid they may lose some of their luster, taint my years of memory somehow. When combined into a dough, these three ingredients result in a crispy biscuit, all of the flavors distinct and utilized, pleasing and delicious.

This time, I replaced regular hot sausage with lean sausage, used Heart Smart Bisquick, and reduced fat cheddar cheese. The sausage balls tasted the same as I remember, which, as you can probably assume, was a relief to me.

Sausage Balls
1 lb. lean hot sausage
3 cups Heart Smart Bisquick
12 oz. reduced fat sharp cheddar cheese

Brown sausage in a pan, drain completely and let cool. Next, in a large bowl, combine sausage, Bisquick, and cheese. In case you've either a) never seen these three ingredients in a bowl or b) forgotten what these three ingredients look like together in a bowl, here's this:

With your hands, knead the ingredients together until they form a dough. Unless you have ferocious upper-body strength, this will take a while. When you're done, all of the powder of the Bisquick and cheese should be moistened, but the mixture will still be quite crumbly.

After you've made your dough, started rolling out small spheres. This mixture should make about six dozen sausage balls, so keep that in mind. Then, bake them for approximately fifteen minutes and let cool. Feel free to half the recipe, or even quarter it. I made so many sausage balls, there was enough to feed a family of hungry bears. Or for this: