I inherited two things from my maternal grandmother: my red hair, and her rice pudding recipe.
Her name was Lorette Picher, but everyone—from the customers at her hair salon to the scores of relatives who lived nearby—called her Mama Lorette. She mostly spoke French, or more precisely, the dialect of French spoken by all second-generation French-Canadian immigrants to her New England mill town.
I never knew her, because she died when I was six months old, but by all accounts she was a pistol: funny, hard living, hard loving; a wife, mother, sister, aunt, and grandmother. She raised her family through the Depression, and though they were poor, there was always the right kind of abundance.
When Mama Lorette got older, her hair turned from red to strawberry gold to platinum blonde. “Lorette,” her customers would say, “I want whatever color you’re using.” But years of working with harsh dyes had given her a sensitivity to the chemicals, and she couldn’t use them on herself. Nobody ever believed it was natural.
I guess I have something to look forward to.
Mama Lorette’s Rice Pudding
Six servings
Ingredients
1 quart milk
1/3 cup white rice
3/4 cup sugar
2 Tbs butter
freshly grated nutmeg
Preheat oven to 350ºF.
Mix milk, rice, and sugar in a 9″ x 13″ baking pan. Dot with butter and a sprinkle of nutmeg. Bake about two hours, stirring once after 15 minutes.
