I recently had a chance to talk to an inventive chef with forty years of kitchen experience--a web-savvy culinary veteran known for an adventurous palate and resourcefulness under pressure. Someone as comfortable preparing crème brûlée as they are wild game. I'm referring, of course, to my friend Carl's mom.

Carl is extremely Scandinavian. One of four children of a mixed-marriage (father is Norwegian, Mom is...if you can believe it...Danish), he looks so Nordic I always expect him to be skiing and carrying a rifle. Turns out, he's more Frisbee golf than biathlon, but he looks the part. He's from Willmar, Minnesota, doncha know....

Willmar is a town of about twenty thousand people almost exactly halfway between the equator and the North Pole. Machine Gun Kelly pulled off a notorious bank heist here in 1930. Big railroad town. According to the town's website, it's "the fastest-growing non-metropolitan area in Minnesota" (just a tip, city planners--when choosing a slogan, shorter is usually better--think in terms of 'City of...something').

We were talking about the book and Carl said I should talk to his mom and I thought, why not interview her? I figured I'd get a couple of cute homespun stories and a little local flavor. I ended up getting a cooking education. But it's weird interviewing someone's mom.

I figured I would dial down the snark a bit -- again, this is someone's mom...also, what do I call her? Her name is Mary, but that feels way too familiar. I guess I think of moms the same way I think of ex-presidents -- whatever I might think of the person, I always respect the office. So I think I'll go with 'Mrs. Olson.'

a real 'Top Chef' in action...

For you children of the tube, I don't mean the 'Mrs. Olson' from Folger's commercials who spent most of the seventies showing up at strangers' homes and pushing coffee on them. To be fair, she did tell me Folgers's is their 'everyday coffee' but that it's 'not for company.'

No, this Mrs. Olson took some time out from a vacation to give me a little insight into the world of an unheralded chef / caterer / party planner who has spent decades in the cooking trenches. And you want authentic? During the course of our half-hour interview, she gave me two "there ya go"s, one "oh my word" and a "you betcha." So have a seat, get your elbows off the table, and pay attention to Mrs. Olson.

At least twice a month for forty years, Mrs. Olson has made some version of what we call 'hotdish' (state law requires any interview with a local chef to include a question about 'hotdish'). That's over a thousand freaking casseroles and at least a thousand cans of Campbell's Cream of Mushroom Soup, but when I asked her if the thought of all that made her tired, she just said, "Noooo, it's part of motherhood.'

Do the math -- this woman has prepared at least two meals a day for almost half a century. Oh, and she's been doing it without a lot of gadgets. Sure, she owns a food processor, but she bought it to make one specific thing (a British shortbread recipe) and that's all she uses it for. When I asked her what her favorite utensil would be, she thought for a few moments, and then said "It would have to be my wire whisk."

Mrs. Olson learned about cooking at a young age.

My mother cooked absolutely fabulous...and (she was) a baker! I used to envy the kids that could have Wonder Bread—all our bread was homemade.

She was a fabulous cook. She was happy in the kitchen…she was ten when her dad died and there were nine children in the family, and she said she got stuck in the kitchen and learned to love it…"

Carl's maternal grandma may have been a 'fabulous cook,' but to hear him tell it, she made one horrible mistake. Allegedly, one day she made beet jello. Now I'm with you -- the words 'beet' and 'jello' should never be that close to each other. I don't even want to hear someone say "I had some beets, and the later had some jello." There should be at least a paragraph between those two words at all times. But let's have mom address the issue...

"She knew he liked beets, and she found a recipe for it—it wasn’t beet jello it was beet gelatine (oh, now it sounds much more appetizing)…it was formed, and to him it was jello...she was just so pleased when she brought this to the table, and he couldn’t eat it."

In the spirit of full disclosure, I asked if she tasted it...

"No, no, no...it had chunks of cucumber, and diced celery…it's like she had cooked them and ground them up…almost like an aspic? And it just…ohhhhhhh. (By the way, in print you can't tell, but it wasn't a good 'ohhhhhhh.')"

Before I talked with his mom, Carl told me that "she was at the vanguard in bringing ethnic cuisine to small-town Minnesota," and I love having friends that use the word 'vanguard.' However, Mrs. Olson was quick to deflect any praise --

"Noooooo, that was his take on it...but one of my favorite things to do is to walk through the grocery store, and if there's something I haven't seen before and I don't know what it is...then I look at the package (for) any directions, and if there's not I buy it, bring it home, and go online --the internet is indispensible!" I didn't have the heart to tell her that some things on the internet aren't true.

In addition to her cosmopolitan (and seemingly random) approach to meal planning, she hasn't lost touch with her Scandinavian roots. She mentioned römmegröt, which I've since learned is a porridge made from sour cream, whole milk, wheat flour, butter and salt. Apparently, you can add cinnamon to it to make it more like...food.

And not many people rave about lefse, a traditional Norwegian flatbread (probably because it's traditional, Norwegian, and flat),  but Mrs. Olson told me, "There's nothing better than soft, fresh right-out-of-the-pan lefse with butter and sugar..." She makes the dough, but the boys still do the rolling and baking..."It’s the kind of thing, when everyone’s together right before Christmas, you like to keep people busy…"

For many years, her husband "wasn't around a lot --he had a very intensive, demanding job, so he would show up for meals and take off again." This quote really makes me want to believe that her husband was some sort of spy, working dangerous undercover missions under an assumed name, but I have no proof of this.

Even without an espionage subplot, I figured with four kids, there had to have been some drama at mealtimes, so I asked her how she handled the inevitable 'finicky eater' ...

"I don’t have a lot of patience with that. You know, you say grace, you bless the food...and you don’t wanna eat it?"

And to the age-old problem of getting kids to eat their veggies, there's this:

"You can put vegetables in places where they don't take 'em out so easily ("LOOK OUT--THEY'RE IN THE LEFSE DOUGH!")...you can sneak 'em in places. And even the most finicky eater will eat them raw with a dip. I always figured they had to take three bites of something, and if they didn’t like IT, I didn’t push it…because sometimes kids have a definite aversion to something...I wish you were my mom--I couldn't have gotten away with telling my mom I didn't want to eat something because I had an aversion to it."

I thought I'd turn the tables and ask Mrs. Olson if there was anything she wouldn't eat. When I mentioned my antipathy toward beef liver, it seemed like I touched a nerve...

"Yeah, I don’t eat that anymore…we had to eat it once a week when I was growing up and…I will never eat that again."

As adventurous as she might me, Mrs. Olson knows her limitations. Here's a lovely, pastoral story of a Carl's brother, a fox, and a crockpot...

"One day he did shoot a fox and he skinned it and he says, 'Mom, you gotta cook this — it was like skinning our dog!" He said 'I just hate to waste it'…and so I called several of the older women whose husbands hunted and said, 'How do you cook a fox?' and one of them says, 'Mary, I’ve never heard of anybody cooking a fox. I don’t know if it can be done'..

So, I put it in the crockpot, with lots of…celery, and onions, and tomatoes, and it wasn’t too long and the smell of wet fur filled the house.  I brought the fox out and I said to Mark, 'You take the first bite,' so he did, and he said 'Mom, why don’t you just take it outside. Just…take it outside.'

Years later, I read 'A Year in Provence'—and there's story of an old guy who would tell people how to cook fox—and it was a joke! You cannot cook fox."

We went to happier memories when I asked her about a dinner for Carl's groomsmen. There were about forty people (I'm assuming not all groomsmen), and she prepared a whole twenty-five pound salmon. Of course, she also made baked potatoes with rosemary, lemon, and balsamic vinegar, and a whole head of cauliflower that was on a bed of baby peas with a smoked gouda sauce, and two kinds of salad, and four kinds of pie--you know, like anyone would...anyway, back to the salmon...

"I did not think ahead…I didn’t have a pan for anything that big—so I had to construct a pan...I  put two jelly roll pans together with layers of aluminaum foil…filled up the whole oven, so of course then the air couldn’t circulate, and the salmon took forever…GAAAH...so embarrassing...but it tasted fine."

Even the most seasoned chefs have their stories of dining debacles. Mrs. Olson shared a few of hers, along with one of the benefits of making everything from scratch...

"My most favorite thing to make is a scratch thirteen egg-white angel food cake…Once I took it out of the oven too soon, and you tip it over a bottle, and the whole thing  just fell, all over the countertops…but I decided, well, there ya go…so I scooped it in dishes with fresh raspberries, and it was something no one had ever had before.

"My daughter was having a birthday party in fifth grade…so I thought, what I’d do with all these girls is I’d put them in teams of two, and I put all the ingredients for a cake on the table, and they would have to put the cake together without a recipe…

Well, one of the girls got the garlic powder out…The whole house smelled very strange…and because there was no proper measuring of the leavening agent, the oven--there were flames in the oven, smoke in the house…that was a wonderful disaster."

"Soon after we were married, we invited some of the relatives over…and I had never, as a single gal, put together a meal with various courses, and nothing was ready together--some things were overcooked and some things weren't started, and it was so embarrassing…"

Forty years, and those are your worst cooking disasters? None of those stories even involve injuries, or things blowing up! But she gave me some insight into one of the biggest advantages to making things from scratch, despite the risk of mishap...

"To keep it interesting, I used to make my own graham crackers, for example, and all kinds of fun things...You know, when you’re home all day, and you have four kids in five years…you just give em each a bowl, and go to it… it’s a mess, but it’s two hours killed…"

Even when talking about making a romantic meal for her husband, Mrs. Olson demonstrates old-fashioned heartland practicality and thrift. Phil's favorite dessert is crème brûlée, and I mentioned that I'd like to make it, but I don't have one of those blowtorch thingies --

 "I was at a kitchen shop, and they are thirty-five dollars -- the cheapest one I found!  After its chilled, I just put it under the broiler with sugar on it….and they all get done at the same time—you have to watch it, (but)  that’s the way they do it in France. It's just something more to sell at the kitchen store."

Putting my usual irony aside, I can unequivocally say that meeting Mrs. Olson was, as they might say in Willmar, a hoot. But what I appreciated the most about her was that no-nonsense, heartland logic. It's helped her cook at least fifteen thousand meals (I did the math). You wanna talk about a healthy perspective on life? Check this out:

 ""My dad was a letter carrier (no doubt a cover for his spy activities),  and my mother never worked outside the home, so money was tight. But I remember meals when it was time for a paycheck to come, and we’d have oatmeal for supper with ice cream on top, and we all thought we were kings…"

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I'll leave you all with a recipe for Mrs. Olson's 'Piccadillo Chile' (which earned her a runner-up in a Betty Crocker contest!) but remember, this is from a woman who told me, "Any recipe is just sorta the beginning..."

Piccadillo Chile

1 lb ground turkey
1/2c sliced green onion
1(4oz) can undrained chopped green chilis
1 clove garlic ( minced)
1/2 c raisins
3T almonds
1 1/2 t chili powder
1/2 t cumin
1/2 t cinnamon
1/4 t ground cloves
2 ( 8oz) cans tomato sauce
1 ( 14.5 oz) can whole tomatoes
8 pimento stuffed olives ( halved)

Brown meat, stirring and adding onions, chili and garlic- cook 3 min, add raisins and remaining ingredients, cover and reduce heat, simmer at least 15 min.