It’s lunch hour, on my first day back at full-time work, and I’m thinking about food. I’m in transition; all summer I’ve been mostly at home, in part because I’ve been laid up by knee surgeries and some surgeries, but that excuse doesn’t work any more because I’m mostly recovered. My wife has been working a regular 7-3 workday most days, so I’ve gradually evolved into a house-husband. I do most of the cooking, and also laundry and dishwashing…yeah, you could say I’m whipped. And that’s OK. After years of leaving most of the housework to my wife, I’m gaining a new appreciation of household labor.
One of the things I was thinking about was that I’ve got it pretty easy now, since it’s just me and my wife cooperating to run the house. Two people. Simple. Manageable. But still a real amount of work, and while I enjoy cooking, I don’t enjoy cleaning up the aftermath, even though it must be done.
But then it struck me: my parents had six kids, one after another, and I realized that I didn’t see a sink piled high with dirty dishes until I moved out and lived alone and was a lazy sloppy bachelor. My late mother must have had a system: with as many dirty dishes as 8 people would produce at every meal, she must have been diligent about not letting them accumulate — I had never properly appreciated all the labor my mother must have invested in basic maintenance. Thanks, Mom, I’m sorry I never said so while you were alive.
It also made me appreciate the reason that my parents almost divorced when I was 7 or 8 years old. Mom wanted to get a job outside the home, and Dad reacted with great hostility. He, and the rest of us, were dependent on all that hard work Mom was doing. (They must have figured out how to manage the situation, because they reconciled, and Mom got a part time job at Boeing.)
Remember, though, I was thinking about food, and I was trying to remember what Mom did for dinner. Eight places were set at the table, and she had to provide bowls of food we’d have to pass around and serve ourselves…something. That’s where I drew a blank. What the heck was I eating while growing up?
Maybe you have a better recollection than I do. I was getting mostly forgettable, bland food.
There was a very anthropological distinction between my parents’ roles. Dad did the glamorous, high protein stuff: a big slab of smoked salmon, a beach trip where we’d come back with buckets of clams, barbecue in the summer. But that was an occasional treat, not even every week. Mom would do the basic low-budget, economical stuff every day, which now I’ve mostly forgotten. Lots of peanut butter sandwiches for lunch, cereal for breakfast, and potatoes, corn, broccoli, etc. for bulk at dinner, and I recall tuna casserole a few times a week (which was OK, I liked tuna casserole), but probably the most memorable favorite was putti klub, a potato dumpling wrapped around a bit of meat, and then sliced and fried and soaked in maple syrup. We also had a filling stew with root vegetables and mystery meat (I knew exactly what it was, heart or tongue, cheap organ meats, cubed and cooked to be unrecognizable), and sometimes a platter of breaded pork chops, or better still, liver and onions. I used to terrify my kids with threats of serving liver and onions for dinner, because I actually liked it, while they were grossed out at the very idea.
But man, the work involved in making meals for 8 people every day, and doing it on a very tight budget–I couldn’t do that.
Now you might be thinking that I had 3 kids and had to have known the struggle of feeding 5 people every day, but I don’t. I remember cans and boxes from the grocery store, and that’s about it. Maybe I could ask them what they remember, but I think they all died of malnutrition, kwashiorkor, beriberi, rickets, and scurvy, and even if they had survived, wouldn’t have good memories of family meals.
How about you? Do you have fond memories of good food on the table?
Nice Latvian-English mix; komm morgen wieders, kotletes, galerts, roast beef and Yorkshire pud, toad-in-the-hole, steak and kidney pie, and yeah, lovely liver and onions!
I have fond memories of pancakes, and of broccoli. The pancakes because pancakes, the broccoli because it was one of the few items we were allowed to eat with our hands. I have enjoyed liver and onions, largely due to it being a very savory meal.
How did we ever get along without bottled water, before bottled water?
Mostly I remember that whenever Mom made a labor-intensive dinner that was out of the ordinary (and hence fun and tasty) I grumbled because it meant sis and I would be tasked with doing the dishes.
Sorry for being such an ungrateful shit, Mom.
Kudos to your hardworking Mom. PZ! Seven people (3 generations) in our small house while I was growing up. Grandma did most of the cooking (Mom and Dad and Grandpa all worked outside the home). But all of us, including me and my baby brother, were drafted into dishwashing service immediately at the end of dinner. Never a dirty plate left in the sink or anywhere else.
And I remember great meals. Roast chicken on Sundays, Grandpa cooking hamburgers and corn on the grill in summertime, Mac & Cheese to die for, Irish stew, etc…. Nothing bland and plenty that was memorable. Still trying to emulate some of my grandma’s recipes!
I grew up on vegetables boiled to death and meat either roasted or fried; think of the bad reputation that English food had post-war and realise that that was what my parents had been taught to cook (the existence of rice was a revelation to us during the potato shortage of 1973). I think the reason I like chicken so much now is because we always ate it as a stuffed roast (with leftovers often fried the following day, as the quickest way to reheat them) and the stuffing was the only thing that ever provided any significant taste. I used to put tomato ketchup on everything except roast chicken.
I was cooking for the family by the age of 11 (on the days when my parents were both working nights), and I think that taught me how not to cook. Once I left home and had time I became very careful about how I cooked veg, and I eventually got it to the point where a cooked meal reliably retained flavour and bite. Now when I cook English dishes I use apple sauce and mint sauce only occasionally, salt very sparingly, and reserve the tomato sauce purely for chips. I also learned to wash up on the go.
As I write this, I have just finished an evening meal of honey and mustard grilled chicken breast, a baked potato topped with a small amount of butter, and broad beans simmered with mint. Tomorrow I’ll probably make a stir fry with the remainder of the marinated chicken, along with mushrooms and onion. That’s my two (usually just the two) meat-eating days a week accounted for, so on Wednesday or Thursday I’ll probably do a big vegetarian curry that’ll last me for three days.
I remember typical Spreewald food: Plinzen, Saurer Hering (still my favourite dish) or potatoes with quark and lineseed oil.
Cereal, typically porridge, toast and milk or tea for breakfast. sandwiches for lunch on weekdays. Typically peanut butter or the Aussie stand-by, Vegemite. If we were lucky we would get a slice of deli meat. Dinner was typically meat and two or three veg with my mother threatening us if we didn’t eat our pumpkin. The dislike must be genetic because she never ate it herself. Mixed up with the occasional casserole or tuna with Mac and cheese. Saturday or Sunday was always a roast either chicken or lamb. Dessert was typically Ice cream and tinned fruit. Roast lamb would go into sandwiches for Monday’s lunch or sliced and mixed with flour and served as pancakes for dinner. My father was a keen fisher so seafood was often on the menu.
My mother taught me well. By the time I was 12 I could prepare a 3 course meal and was often left in charge of the weekend roast while my parents collected my grandmother from her nursing home.
[0-12]
Before I can remember, when I was a tot, I am told i absolutely loved sesos rebozados (battered and fried brains).
A fair bit like fried breaded cauliflower, but lighter and fluffier.
I remember walking to school with tocino entrepan (a thick slab of pork fat in a baguette).
Cheap, delicious food: sangre encebollada (fried blood & onions). Could buy the coagulated blood from butchers, back then.
So a lot of stuff that is either exotic or nasty by today’s standards.
Lots of veg, garbanzos, lentejas, rice, that sort of thing.
Not entirely carnivorous.
Oh, as an aside, it is I think harder in some ways to cook for only two people; economies of scale defs apply.
Right? Cook a big bowl of spag bol, will serve a family 8 for one meal, but will be 4 meals for a family of two.
Lots and lots of leftover, or buy/prepare/cook small batches only. Which is a hassle when shopping, and costlier.
Especially for two ageing people who don’t eat all that much to start.
(2/10 is 20%)
John, in my experience economics of scale work great with cooking for two – we just eat the same thing over 3-4 days. Or freeze half for some other time.
As for what we ate in my childhood: soups: chicken (with lots of noodles), mixed vegetable (mostly cauliflower), beans with those tiny square noodles. Mains: paprikás, goulash, cholent, fried breaded chicken breasts, stuffed cabbage leaves, stuffed peppers in thick tomato sauce, baked layered potatoes and eggs, szilvás gomboc (potato dumplings stuffed with plums). The main cooked vegetables were potatoes and cabbages. Mixed vegetable salads (mostly tomatoes, cucumbers, and peppers) were for light suppers. Hot lunches were accompanied with either lettuce or cucumber and onion in lots of vinegar dressing.
When we lived in Italy my mother learned about pasta, and added fried mushrooms to the menu. In attempt to save money she fed us a lot of liver that year, the butcher asked her how many dogs she had that she was buying so much liver.
In the Netherlands we learned about extremely thick pea soup. As well as using apple sauce as a side for chicken.
It took my mother many years to start making Middle-Eastern and Balkan foods
My father learned to cook in his 40s when he was working abroad, away from us. Good thing he did, as it allowed him to take over the cooking when my mother’s dementia prevented her from continuing.
Dad used to cook Tuna Surprise. Which was anything that didn’t have Tuna in it.
The specific things that came to mind was Mother’s Marvelous Mess. Ground beef broken apart and browned then mixed into a big pot of mashed potatoes with peas, sliced carrots, kernel corn, and sometimes green beans. Everybody got a bowlful.
An acquaintance of mine had three kids and was expecting a fourth. A friend asked her “don’t they take all of your time and money?” Her answer “If you have one kid, he takes all your time and money. If you have four kids, they take all your time and money. What’s the difference?”
Five kids, two parents, sit down dinner every night. Mom was proud of making a dessert every night as well. Oldest kid cleared the tabled, next one down washed, third in line dried and put away. When oldest moved out, the duties all shifted down one kid. When money was tight there would be meatless meals, in richer times there was hamburger and pot roasts.
Let’s see. My mother was half Norwegian and half German. However, the favorite recipe was for spaghetti and lamb. This we got from my Great Uncle who was a marine in the Spanish-American war. Supposedly, he was good at poker and when some French chef couldn’t pay him, he took the recipe instead. (I think it is a Greek dish.) We still serve it for Christmas. But there is also a wonderful stew, lamb with carrots and (green). And fårikål–I still make it. From the German side, lapskaus. And cauliflower and veal stew. Also “schling”, boiled beef heart (with some spices). When I looked it up, “Schling” means heart, so I don’t know about the name. And of course liver and onions–like you, I like it fine and will cook it sometimes (and my wife will have something different).
When my Mom was working (industrial nurse at International Harvester), we had a lot more casseroles based on, I think, Campbell Soup recipes printed on the sides of the cans. Tuna noodle, beef noodle, etc.. She also had a killer recipe for hamburger stroganoff (which we still cook).
Thanks for the trip down (my) memory lane.
@ 9 Morales
You remind me I loved black pudding as a kid (which is blood). So delicious! I haven’t had black pudding my entire adult life (is it even available?) but it was such a yum breakfast treat.
I even knew what it was but wasn’t turned off despite being a very fussy eater. X-D
My mother loved brains. Yes, like a zombie except they were lamb’s brains. It was a family joke. I and my brother would be gagging at the table while mum scoffed down her crumbed and fried brains. (Dad could take them or leave them.) X-D
(My parents were Australian born but of Scots ancestry and offal figures prominently in the traditional diet unfortunately. X-D
Haggis is sheep’s stomachs.
I wouldn’t have a bar of anything like that.)
Grew up in the UK. I loved liver and onions. Sunday lunch was roast lamb, roast potatoes and veggies most often followed by apple crumble. Loved the crumble. I always said if I’m taken ill giver me IV crumble and I’ll be fine. During the week it was convenience foods, sausages and onions, spaghetti on toast, boil-in-the-bag cod in butter sauce or fish fingers (sticks) and crinkle-cut chips (fries). Now I’m hungry.
Grew up in the UK. I loved liver and onions. Sunday lunch was roast lamb, roast potatoes and veggies most often followed by apple crumble. Loved the crumble. I always said if I’m taken ill giver me IV crumble and I’ll be fine. During the week it was convenience foods, sausages and onions, spaghetti on toast, boil-in-the-bag cod in butter sauce or fish fingers (sticks) and crinkle-cut chips (fries).
Our meals were strongly influenced by wartime scarcity. Dad would cook up panfulls of tripe – sheep’s stomach linings – as he loved tripe and onions . I always thought it was gross. If we had a turkey for Christmas, we had some hot for the main meal, then cold in turkey sandwiches the next couple of days and finally he would boil the carcass for turkey soup.
Now I’m hungry.
Cereal or toast for breakfast, sandwich lunches, and bland and sometime uneatable dinners. My Mom could not cook. Really. As my Aunt told us, she was pretty and popular so she was out chasing boys and never was in the kitchen with her and her Mom. Mostly cheap cuts of meat with boiled-to-death peas and watery mashed potatoes. The real danger was if she tried making some new recipe in a magazine. She would substitute things in if she didn’t have an ingredient. Not based on similarity of what she was missing, but if it sounded the same. It was sometimes ghastly. My Dad usually cooked one day on the weekend, and it was tasty because he fried burger or the very rare steak. And my sister and I took turns doing the dishes. My life long chore.
We seem to have always had some sort of root vegetable for dinner. I liked most of them but never the rutabaga.
Lots of beans and corn bread.
I remember many almost inedible meals as a child. Canned peas boiled until they resembled war surplus rations, etc.
Hey, PZ, paper plates and sandwiches! No dishes to wash, simple preparation and cleanup.
Now, I do like a meal of a single sauce pan of rice, beans, corn and seasoning with grated cheese on top.
One of my earlier memories of food is connected to Minnesota.
An assistant Scout Master and three scouts traveled from Ellsworth AFB to join up with his old Minneapolis troop and spend two weeks at camp Many Point. Food was delivered but it was up to us to cook it.
We even had a baking contest. You can bake a pie in a dutch oven.