by Ree Drummond
The first couple of weeks of quarantining with my family were, strangely, kind of wonderful. Despite the scariness we were witnessing on the news, we all were in a bit of a honeymoon period, cooking together using pantry staples, playing board games, and enjoying what really just felt like an extended Christmas break. The kids taught me how to film embarrassing social media videos (which I didn’t realize were embarrassing when I filmed them, unfortunately for me), we hung out with the dogs, and we held friendly-but-competitive Texas Hold ’Em poker tournaments a good three nights a week, in which we played for real cash. None of us wore anything fancier than yoga pants—except Ladd, of course, who stayed in his jeans, thank goodness. I’m pretty sure Ladd wearing yoga pants would have signaled the end-times, and we didn’t need that stress piled on top of everything else. Along with the rest of the world, we were officially in lockdown mode, and the uncertainty of what the virus was going to mean for everyone’s health and well-being only fueled the feeling that it was just us against the world. Family was all that mattered. We would hunker down and get through this together.
The honeymoon started wearing off about three weeks in, when the teenage boys started inquiring about when they could (and why they couldn’t) hang with their friends in town. In addition, every couple of days Paige started announcing plans to drive back to her college town to meet up with some of her closest buddies. I’d look at all of them like they were bonkers, which they were. “What are you talking about?!” I’d snap. “We are in a pandemic! There’s no hanging! There’s no driving! There are no buddies!” After a while, I began to resent their asking, as I’d just have to keep giving them the same answer (“absolutely not”) every single time, and I couldn’t for the life of me understand why they weren’t content spending all day playing poker with their middle-aged mother. My kids had all been just fine hanging with me (or I should say in me, har har) during their nine months of gestation—surely they could endure quarantine, which hopefully wouldn’t last that long?
Other things slowly started creeping in and wearing on my nerves as well. For one, these creatures in my house all wanted to eat. As in, food. As in, all the time. I’m not talking about simple ham sandwiches, which are easy, quick, leave very little mess behind, and allow me (a cooking show host, by the way) never to have to cook. No, these hungry life-forms wanted to eat meals: proteins cooked in pans, vegetables sautéed in skillets, and potatoes baked in casserole dishes. And, okay, I can understand this to a degree. It’s not that unreasonable once a day. But during quarantine, it seemed that as soon as one meal was over and the last dish was in the dishwasher, they’d invariably return to the kitchen for another round. The last straw happened one Sunday, about a month into the lockdown. I’d made blueberry pancakes, fresh fruit salad, scrambled eggs, and bacon for a late morning brunch, and by about 1:00 p.m. the kitchen (which had been completely wrecked by the whole ordeal) was finally clean and the stench that came from frying three pounds of bacon was finally starting to lift. I went to my bedroom to veg and work a crossword puzzle, my quarantine antidote to losing my mind, and then around 2:00 I started hearing banging and sizzling coming from the direction of the kitchen. I investigated and discovered, to my horror, that one of the boys was . . . frying bacon.
“What,” I barked, “are you doing?!?”
Startled, the kid looked up from his skillet and answered, “I’m . . . making a bacon and egg sandwich?” What an absolute animal.
I was utterly and completely dumbfounded. “Why would you do that?” I demanded.
“I’m . . . hungry?” he answered. These question marks on the end of statements were starting to tick me off.
“No, you’re not,” I stated, before ordering him to abort his mission and leave my kitchen (not the family’s kitchen, mind you) immediately.
Before I continue, I need to elaborate on bacon in general. It is a beautiful creation and I will love it forever. I am its biggest fan and advocate. But cooking bacon for a houseful of human beings who are all over six feet tall is a no-win proposition. First, you can’t cook it fast enough; say you fry eight strips at a time, and each person in your household “sneaks” a piece before the meal is ready . . . and say they do this twice, which is a conservative estimate. In order to accumulate enough bacon to make it to the table, you would have to fry bacon until the year 2028, stopping only for bathroom breaks. Second, cooking that much bacon turns the kitchen into one of those Folgers cans of bacon grease that my grandma Iny had under her stove for forty years. Except all the grease is on the countertop, the stove, the ceiling, and the floor—and not in a can. And third, cooking that much bacon at one time causes the entire house to smell like bacon, and not in a good way. You know when you smell that first spritz of perfume in the mall and you love it, so you buy the large bottle and then wind up hating it because you spray on too much? That’s what cooking bacon does to me, minus the floral and citrus notes. So this is why the (nameless, to protect his privacy) teenage boy’s bacon and egg sandwich at 2:00 p.m., which followed our sizable Sunday brunch, made me want to blow my stack.
And blow my stack I did. I declared the whole kitchen area a disaster zone and announced that it was closed to the public for the foreseeable future. This madness—this eating—absolutely had to stop, I told my family. This careless, reckless snacking and cooking is over, I told them—and they all needed to get on the same eating schedule, and fast. They responded by asking what was for dinner that night.
During the pandemic, I became really good at blowing my stack regularly and making really big declarations. Another involved laundry. My laundry manifesto stated something along the lines of “You all have to do your own laundry from now on because I’m done.” A reasonable statement on my part, but it happened so suddenly, no one quite knew what to do. Ladd was a little confused by this sharp turnabout, but he wasn’t about to pick this hill to die on. (And he definitely would have died, given my deteriorating state of mind.) A follow-up laundry situation arose about a week later when I discovered that none of the boys had done their laundry but instead had stacked their dirty clothes in their rooms, and I threatened to incinerate (in a beautiful, blazing inferno, I think I said) any dirty clothes I found on the floor from that moment forward. I actually followed through with this a few days later, except I put the dirty clothes in a black trash bag and hid them in my closet, where they still reside today. (“Incinerate” means different things to different people.)
God knows I love my family. I’m so grateful that during a time of national crisis, we were able to ride it out and have a period of concentrated togetherness. Being together, after all, did help us process the uncertainty and fear. But on the flip side, I see now that I was being slowly driven batty by a complete lack of social isolation. I’d notice some of my favorite social media personalities saying things like “I miss hugs” and “I can’t wait to be with people.” This one in particular stuck out: “I don’t ever want to feel this alone again.” I would read these posts and absolutely scratch my head. I couldn’t relate to them at all. It was all I could do to keep myself from replying publicly with comments like “Yeah, well—I miss solitude, man” and “That’s funny that you say that, because I don’t ever want to see another person again as long as I live” and “I long to feel alone again. How do ya like them apples?” This one was a little more obscure, but I considered it, too: “Ban Bacon Forever!!!!!” (I never posted any of this, regrettably.)
Around the sixth or seventh week of being quarantined with my family, I actually began to get irritated at the attitude I had developed, and I started looking at the reasons for it . . . or at least a bright side. After much contemplation and a little bit of wine (or maybe I have that backward?) I finally found it: When my girls left for college, I was devastated. I longed for things to be back to the way they were when all the kids were little, back when I was cooking a million meals a day and drowning in laundry and we were all one big, happy, chaotic family. Now, because of a pandemic,
I finally had that back . . . and I didn’t really want it, at least not on the same scale. And don’t get me wrong: I still love being with my children and look forward to many years of Christmas breaks and holiday togetherness. But if there’s one thing this time has shown me, it’s that motherhood has its many seasons, and I am in the season of loving my children as much as ever, wanting to celebrate their accomplishments and to be a soft place for them to land . . . but needing some dang space.
And needing people to wash their own socks and just eat a ham sandwich from time to time.
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The Absolute Best Sandwich I Made During Quarantine
* * *
(a.k.a. Drip Beef with Caramelized Onions and Provolone)
* * *
Of all the cooking shenanigans that went on in the Drummond kitchen during the 2020 Covid-19 quarantine, this blessed sandwich was the clear winner and received 5+ stars from everyone. It feeds a houseful of hungry teenagers who are depriving you of solitude.
1 chuck roast, about 4 pounds
1 tablespoon kosher salt
1 tablespoon freshly ground black pepper
4 tablespoons (½ stick) salted butter, plus more for the rolls
2 tablespoons vegetable oil
2 cups low-sodium beef broth
2 tablespoons minced fresh rosemary leaves
One 16–ounce jar pepperoncini, including juice
2 large yellow onions, halved and sliced
10 kaiser rolls, split
10 slices provolone cheese
(NOTE: Can be made in non-pandemic times as well.)
Sprinkle the chuck roast with the salt and pepper. Melt 2 tablespoons of the butter and the vegetable oil in a heavy pot over high heat. Sear both sides of the roast until very browned, about 5 minutes total. Pour in the beef broth and 1 cup water. Add the rosemary, then pour in the pepperoncini with their juices. Cover the pot and reduce the heat to low. Simmer until the meat is tender and falling apart, 4 to 5 hours.
Remove the roast from the pot and use two forks to shred the meat completely. Return the meat to the cooking liquid and keep warm.
Heat a large skillet over medium-low heat and add the remaining 2 tablespoons butter. Add the onions and sauté until caramelized, stirring occasionally, about 20 minutes.
Preheat the broiler. Butter the cut side of the kaiser rolls and toast them in the oven until golden. Set aside the top halves.
Spoon some of the shredded meat and juice onto the bottom halves of the rolls. Top each with a slice of provolone, then broil until the cheese is melted and bubbling. Remove the pan from the oven, arrange some caramelized onions on each sandwich, and top with the other halves of the buns.
Make your teenagers do the dishes! ☺
The Whole Fam Damily
Sugar Lips
Ladd’s older brother Tim is one of my favorite people—a great guy in every sense of the word. I don’t say that in any sort of flippant or insincere way: He truly is a stand-up brother-in-law who would do anything for me or my family, and he and I have never exchanged a single cross word in the nearly quarter century Ladd and I have been married. I think if we ever had any sort of argument or confrontation, we’d probably both start cracking up at the absurdity. That said, Tim has a certain “side” to him that is . . . well, interesting. To paint a little picture of what I’m talking about, I need to go back a bit.
My dad used to tell me a joke he’d heard from some buddies when he was serving as a physician in the Vietnam War. It was a joke about a man named Sugar Lips, who was given his nickname because—the story went—“he had a way with words.” If ever there was anyone in town who always knew the right thing to say, it was most definitely Sugar Lips—and so when Mr. Brown, a pillar of the community, was tragically hit by a train one day, there was only one person who was equipped to break the news to Mr. Brown’s wife. That person, of course, was Sugar Lips. He had a way with words, after all. He accepted the task of delivering the terrible message, and immediately walked to the Brown residence. Sugar Lips gently knocked on the front door, and when a woman opened the door, he asked, “Excuse me . . . are you Widow Brown?”
Confused, the lady at the door replied, “Well, I’m Mrs. Brown . . . but I’m certainly not a widow.”
Sugar Lips looked at her, raised his eyebrows, and replied, “The hell you ain’t!!!”
(I could write a whole book about the jokes my dad learned in Vietnam.)
So basically, my brother-in-law Tim is the modern-day Sugar Lips. He definitely has a way with words.
A mere nine and a half months after Ladd and I were married, Tim walked into the hospital room where I was attempting to breastfeed my hours-old baby. Now that the drama and craziness of the middle-of-the-night childbirth process was over and Ladd, the baby, and I had spent a few hours together, I’d sent Ladd home to the ranch a little while earlier to clean up, regroup, and change clothes. Tim knew his brother was heading home for a few hours, so he wanted to come keep me company and meet his new niece Alex, of course. Once I saw that it was him, I hurried to pull up the baby blanket to conceal the reality of the newborn latching-on process, because let’s face it—Tim had not grown up with sisters, and knowing my husband’s baseline cluelessness about girl things such as this, I didn’t want to presume that my brother-in-law had any level of understanding of (or stomach for) female bodily functions.
It was great to see Tim’s kind face. He set down a bouquet of carnations he must have snagged in the hospital lobby, then began a casual conversation with me, asking how I was feeling and conveying his excitement over becoming an uncle for the first time. He was sweet, but I could also tell he was trying with all his might not to look anywhere south of my face, as it was impossible to ignore the newborn smacks and slurps that were going on under the pastel polka-dotted blanket. It was painfully obvious what was transpiring under there, and he was avoiding it like the plague. He kept looking at the monitor . . . the TV . . . the plastic water pitcher on the table near my bed—anywhere but the general vicinity of my bosom. Not that I was eager for my brother-in-law to see anything sensitive, but I felt comfortable that the blanket was an adequate shield. I really wasn’t worried about it.
Since it was only day one, there wasn’t much milk to be had yet, so I discreetly slipped Baby Alex out from under the boob blanket and presented her to her eager uncle. Bless Tim’s heart, he was clearly moved by the moment, and he gave a tender smile before saying “Hey, you” to the new baby in his arms. Then he continued shooting the breeze with me, asking, “So, how long do you plan on breastfeeding her?” I was a little taken aback that he’d just allowed himself to utter such a clinical term.
“Um . . .,” I replied. “I’m really not sure.” And I wasn’t. I was taking this whole marriage and motherhood adventure one day at a time.
“Well . . .,” he responded. “I just want to let you know, you need to be careful not to get a sour bag.” And that was it. He didn’t laugh. He didn’t smirk. He was serious! And immediately after he said it, he looked down and resumed staring at his newborn niece. Thanks for the livestock lactation advice, Tim.
But this wasn’t my first experience with a Tim-ism. Months earlier, just after my previously flat belly had begun to show, Ladd and I had Tim over for dinner. He greeted us with a smile, but did an obvious double take when he saw me, as it had been a good month since our last visit. I thought maybe Tim was taking notice of my pregnancy glow, or perhaps was thinking to himself how great I looked for someone in the sixth month of pregnancy.
“Oh, wow,” Sugar Lips said to me as he entered our kitchen. “For the first time, I can really tell you’re pregnant just by looking at your face!” And as he said this, he cupped his hands under his neck, as if cradling some imaginary double (or triple) chin, which he then inexplicably bounced around in his hands. I sort of looked up to the sky at a forty-five-degree angle, pondering the combination of words that had just come out of his mouth. “First time . . . pregnant . . .
face.” The thing is, Tim was neither kidding, nor being ornery, nor necessarily being inconsiderate. He simply had an honest thought—and when he’s around people he knows and trusts, honest thoughts make their way out of his mind and through his lips. His sugar lips, to be exact.
This lack of a filter, I’ve determined, has to be rooted in cowboy culture, which Tim had been immersed in at an early age. While cowboys are notoriously gentlemanly, when they’re in the cattle pens for hours on end they give one another a hard time—usually in the form of brutal honesty. I’ve observed that most cowboys are able to (pun intended) rein it in when they finish their work for the day and go back into society. But with Tim, that usual cowboy filter just never seemed to develop.
I have countless memories of Tim’s Sugar Lips moments through the years, and to know him is to understand and love him. But what is perhaps my favorite Sugar Lips story occurred very early on, at Ladd’s and my wedding. Sally, the daughter of an area rancher who at one time had been engaged to Tim (they’d mutually called it off a few months before their wedding date), was in attendance, and by now she had not only married a different cattleman, she was eight months pregnant with their first child. Tim hadn’t heard the pregnancy news, but when he saw Sally at the reception, he greeted her with a hug and asked her all about how she and Kent, her husband, had been doing. The exchange was a little awkward considering their relationship had ended in a broken engagement a handful of years before, but he went out of his way to make her feel comfortable, which Tim is (very ironically) really good at doing.
“Man, Sally,” he said after a few minutes. “Looks like you’ve put on a little weight!” He chuckled a little, as he and Sally had always had a jokey relationship that involved jabs and teasing. At this point, Tim still didn’t know she was expecting. (I told you . . . he didn’t have sisters.)
