I realized that it has been three months since I last mentioned my late mother-in-law’s old recipe collection in this blog. (For background information about her recipe collection, click here and here.) To be honest, I haven’t even touched it until today. It’s basically because I’ve been dealing with arts and crafts shows, travels, my husband’s two-week business trip to Florida, my ill mother, and the upcoming Christmas holiday season.
As I was thumbing through my mother-in-law’s recipe collection, I found one for corn chowder. Unlike many of the others in her collection, I already had a copy of that recipe in my own collection because I obtained it a few years ago. This recipe is one that my husband’s family had enjoyed every Christmas Eve for years.
It all started when my mother-in-law attended a midwestern college and she became roommates with Annette, which blossomed into a close friendship. After they graduated from college, they maintained their friendship. When my in-laws married and relocated to Long Island, they were able to look up Annette and her new husband, Joe, who had already moved to that area. Annette and Joe started a tradition where they invited my in-laws to their home every Christmas Eve and Annette would serve her corn chowder. As the years went on and as both couples started having children, both families would continue to congregate at Annette and Joe’s home every Christmas for corn chowder. This tradition even continued as the children graduated from high school and started to attend college.
When my in-laws’ marriage collapsed, my father-in-law married another woman soon after the divorce was finalized, and he converted to his second wife’s Orthodox Judaism. As a result, he had to stop observing Christmas and eating any food that was cooked in non-kosher kitchens like the one in Annette and Joe’s home. Annette and Joe continued to invite my mother-in-law and any of her grown children who were in town for the holidays to their home where they continued to enjoy the corn chowder on Christmas Eve.
When I started to date my future husband and our relationship grew serious, he took me to New York to celebrate Christmas with his mother (who was living alone in a condo near Yonkers since her divorce). On Christmas Eve the three of us trekked to Long Island where I visited Annette and Joe’s home for the first time, met their three children, and I got a first taste of the family’s corn chowder. After dinner we retired to the living room where the two families socialized and played board games together. I really loved that tradition and how close-knit Annette and Joe’s family seemed.
From that time onward, my husband and I spent the next few years going to Yonkers to stay with his mother for Christmas, make the drive to Long Island to spend time with Annette and Joe and their three children on Christmas Eve, eat the corn chowder, and socialize with each other. I really grew to love that tradition.
Unfortunately, that tradition came to a sudden halt one year. Despite the family closeness I observed each Christmas Eve, there were tensions in Annette and Joe’s marriage. I don’t really know all the details about what happened in their marriage so I can’t really explain anything here. Apparently these tensions were so serious that they eventually grew to a head and they got to the point where Annette felt the need to file for divorce a few months before Christmas.
Even though the couple were legally separated, they still stayed in the same Long Island home. Annette and her youngest daughter, who was a high school senior at the time, stayed in the main part of the house while Joe stayed in a small apartment located in the back of the house that was originally set up years earlier for an elderly relative who lived with them for a while. (The two older children were already in college but they basically stayed with Annette and their younger sister whenever they were home on school break.)
When the Christmas season started to arrive, my mother-in-law worked out an agreement with Annette and Joe regarding the traditional Christmas Eve visit, which was endangered with the impending divorce. The agreement was that my mother-in-law, my husband, and I would show up in the main part of the house and spend Christmas Eve with Annette and her three children like in previous years. The following day, my husband and I would go back out to Long Island and spend some time with Joe in his apartment.
It was the perfect plan until Christmas Eve actually arrived. My husband and I arrived to my mother-in-law’s Yonkers condo and we got word that Joe had changed his mind about the agreement. He demanded to be included in the Christmas Eve visit because he said he wanted to see my husband and I and he wasn’t willing to wait until the following day to see us.
So the three of us made the trek out to Long Island one more time and dinner was different in a lot of ways. Annette decided to make minnestrone instead of corn chowder for the main meal but that was nothing compared to the rest of the evening. Joe was acting cheerful while Annette did her best to put on a happy face but she seemed far less jovial and happy than Joe was. The tension between them was so thick that you could cut it with a knife. All conversations were stilted and everyone was on eggshells out of a fear of seeing Annette and Joe suddenly break out into an arguement with each other. Annette and Joe’s three children left the house as soon as dinner ended because they said that they all had parties at friends’ homes that they needed to attend. Personally I envied them and I found myself wishing that I could join them in their post-dinner outing instead of staying behind at the house to deal with a divorcing couple.
So the five remaining people congregated to the living room where we made lots of small talk. Joe seemed to be very cheerful and jovial as usual while the rest of us were on eggshells and trying to do our best to avoid saying anything that would provoke any kind of drama.
When my husband, mother-in-law, and I were driving back to Yonkers, the first thing my husband said was "I never want to go through that again." My mother-in-law was fuming about the evening. She was especially pissed at Joe for violating that agreement and insisting on being there for Christmas Eve and she blamed him for ruining that evening.
It turned out to be the last Christmas Eve we ever spent in Long Island. Soon after the divorce was final, Annette and Joe sold the home in Long Island and they both lived in other places. My mother-in-law managed to obtain a copy of the corn chowder recipe from Annette and for the next few years she would serve corn chowder in her Yonkers condo on Christmas Eve.
But then my mother-in-law remarried and moved to Phoenix. While she continued to serve corn chowder on Christmas Eve, my husband and I couldn’t fly out to Phoenix every Christmas. So my husband asked his mother for a copy of the recipe and she gave it to him during one of our visits.
Now I’m the one who fixes corn chowder every Christmas Eve. I’ve done some modifications in order to make it lower fat by using skim milk and kielbasa made from turkey meat. But it’s still the same basic recipe that Annette and Joe used to serve in their home.
My husband and I continue to see Annette every now and then and we last saw her in Western Massachusetts (where she now lives) as she was among those who attended a special memorial service for my mother-in-law that was put on for people who couldn’t fly out to Phoenix for the original funeral back in March. We lost touch with Joe for several years until back in 2000 when we met again at the wedding of Annette and Joe’s son. Joe had gotten remarried and we met his new wife briefly. (I’ve since forgotten her name but she seemed nice enough on the surface. I never really got to know her very well during the one time that I met her.) Joe talked about how he wanted to get together with my husband and I in the future but we never pulled it off due to scheduling conflicts and the fact that we lived in different parts of the country. Sadly Joe suddely died of a heart attack about a year ago so we’ll never see him again.
I still have the corn chowder recipe to remember the good times of previous Christmas Eves by. I’m looking forward to fixing it and eating it tomorrow. It’s a really easy meal to prepare. (All you need is to do some chopping of the meat and vegetables and that’s it for the prep work.) Here is the recipe below.
Corn Chowder
1/2 cup chopped onions
1/2 cup chopped celery
1 lb. of either knackwurst, kielbasa, or hot dogs
1 1 lb. can cream-style corn
2 12 oz. cans whole kernel corn
1 tsp. salt (can be omitted if you’re watching your salt intake)
1 cup milk
1/2 tsp. pepper
3 small potatoes, cubed
2 cups chicken broth or 2 cups boiling water plus two cubes chicken boullion
1 1 lb. can tomatoes (optional)
Cut up knackwurst/kielbasa/hot dogs into smaller pieces and brown in pan. Mix all ingredients into saucepan and simmer on stovetop for anywhere between 45 minutes-1 hour. Serves between 4-6.
