Bohemian cooking and other quirks

They say bohemians are in a creative "freeze" when they suddenly go on cleaning and cooking binges. I don't often go wild with the cleaning mania thing, but I do entertain a cooking spree when I don't feel like painting. No one seems to think that I can cook, for some reason. Maybe it's the paint on my hands?

In the grocery store picking through the parsnips, a nearby woman will say, "Do you know what to do with bok choy? Oh, no, you wouldn't know, and by the way, why is your hair so short?" This just happened recently, and she didn't even know me! However, when seeing the exotic and copious variety of my order in the checkout line, many men have exclaimed, "Now that's a lucky man!" Referring to my husband, of course.

In fact, my husband's co-workers so admired his lunches that I started catering lunches at his office, which was a company owned by a gentleman from India. Being sort of a food chemist, I could taste a dish and decipher the ingredients, even dishes from the Indian subcontinent.

I go on soup-making sprees in particular. It's my favorite food – summer or winter. A standout is Pot Herb Soup, a recipe my grandmother got from a German woman living next door to her in Philadelphia. It involves buying prepackaged bunches of pot herbs. Without a large ethnic cooking population, the grocery stores down here don't seem to have those, but I've learned to put them together piecemeal.

My 89-year-old mother left me her house with a small kitchen and smaller refrigerator. She was a fabulous cook in a tiny space who said that she never liked cooking. I wish she had given me some of her recipes, but, unfortunately, she was more into the science of bed-making. I had little use for this knowledge, preferring to throw a quilt over myself, gypsy style. She was not interested in Tupperware either, sending me care packages of her wonderful soup frozen in repurposed Cool Whip containers. I use the plastic containers from the local Chinese takeout. I have plenty of markers, but none will work on these slippery plastic vessels. "Oh, well, I'll remember." However, I am only kidding myself, so I end up with a larder of mystery frozen cylinders in my small freezer. The answer is "Gypsy Goulash!"

A couple of years ago, I was asked to be on the Milton Holiday House Tour. I know this was an honor, but I politely declined. What would other women say of my minuscule kitchen? Some of them have kitchens the size of a small fire hall. Some even have two kitchens – one for show and one for actual cooking. What would they say about the pile of Chinese takeout soup containers? Although my husband threw most of them away, I've started over again. I tell him I'm not a hoarder, but “one-quarter of an ordered hoarder"! He doesn't buy it, but he enjoys my cooking too much to protest.

Before I married, I lived alone in a former smokehouse on Pilottown Road, and I would regularly have dinner with my mother. I once had a stint pretending to be the girlfriend of "confirmed bachelors" when their mothers came to town. I would often invite them to my mother's house for dinner. One time, I performed this service for a friend whose mother was the sister to the president of Mexico. She was wearing a black lace mantilla on her head since she was in mourning, and she spoke only Spanish and French. My mother took her into her small kitchen and showed her a collection of Red Rose Tea ceramic animals, declaring proudly, "These ... these are my treasures!" To this day, they still line my kitchen windows, watching me cook.

After all of her dinners, she played her baby grand piano as a marvelous ending to her three-course meals. One guy I had invited even sat down at her piano after dinner and played Chopin's "Polonaise" without any sheet music, to my mother's envious amazement. Her selections were from the ranks of "Blue Spanish Eyes" and "Danny Boy."

I was usually repaid for these "dates" by being taken to brunch at the top of the Henlopen Hotel, where mimosas ruled the day. Although I'd do almost anything to be taken out to dinner, there is still a lot of cooking that goes on in the kitchen of this gypsy bohemian! My old dining room table from Wilmington is covered with dried paint, glue and glitter. I used to paint on it every day and throw a tablecloth over it for dinner in the evening. My mother's dining room table remains pristine, since it is rarely used for dining. Now, with all children out of the nest, I dine on a TV tray table in front of that modern-day campfire, the flat-screen television. This will have to do for a contemporary child of Romany!