Food Memories

FOOD MEMORIES

Although we didn’t have much money, we found a way to buy what was important to us. Food was important. My family always relished eating from near the top of the food chain, at least our definition of that gustatory summit. Everywhere we lived or traveled, food purchase, preparation and consumption were vital, interesting and even instructional. Dad brought to the table his Mexican preferences and heritage, come by honestly in the Mormon colonies in Mexico. Mother brought a certain elegance and taste for quality and variety. We children brought little but hunger, a pinch of obedience, and a naive willingness to try things. Some fare memories pucker my lips like too much garlic or lemon juice. Other recollections like Mom’s creamy hollandaise or Dad’s piquant vinaigrette continue to have a pavlovian effect on my salivary glands.

Favorites

None of us can forget Mother’s potato sausage casserole. There were two variations on this cholesterol laden succulence. One called for small, peeled potatoes, onions, sausage patties broken into smaller pieces, salt, pepper, and an hour. After baking, the fusion consisted of wonderfully flavored potato and sausage chunks swimming in a saucy sea of an onion/sausage-flavored broth ridden by glimmering, translucent pork globules. Variation 2 of this favorite required more work with the same effect on the taste buds, was made with link sausages and cored potatoes. Mom cored the potato and inserted the link sausage. It was simply a matter of presentation. All the other ingredients were the same as was the result. Short term – delicious! Long term – coronary disease! We were not visionaries.

We often were served corn nibblets resurrected from their dried and stored state of previous harvests. The corn was reconstituted by simmering it in whole milk. Another favorite was Hubbard squash, drawn and quartered in the time honored and proven way - with an axe. Each serving resembled a small, squarish section of the Hubbard globe. Pieces were baked after being laden with ample butter, brown sugar and just a touch of salt. Half the joy was breaking through the sugar and butter crisped crust to scoop out steaming, orange squash meat.

I loved leftovers. Two- or three-day old salads were favorites. Everybody loved Mom’s spaghetti. But I was the only one who loved it more on the second day than on the first. All the flavors seemed to have integrated and intermingled. For me, one plus one really did make three in terms of day old food. Mother’s original effort made the offering tasty. Properly aged, it became delicious.

I remember vacationing as a boy with the family in San Francisco. We had driven there in our 1948 grey Ford 2-Door Coupe, so I suspect there were only five of us, Mom and Dad, Mikey, Wendy and me. Of course, while there we rode the cable cars and walked past the hundreds of bobbing fishing boats docked at the wharf. We drove over the famed bridges. We saw the seals. We went to Golden Gate Park. Nothing compared however with the only meal I remember eating there. Mother and Dad bought as much fresh cracked crab, cocktail sauce and sourdough bread as their wallets would allow and heaven would condone. We selected the specific live crab to be quickly steamed and cracked for us. It was my first experience with crab and certainly not my last. We simply parked by the fisheries near the bay and splintered, sucked, smacked and savored away the afternoon. We didn’t even leave the car. I think the real purpose of our going to the Coast was to get the crab.

And then there were artichoke hearts. We bought, boiled and consumed, all on the same day. My youngest sister had a particularly interesting habit. Stripping off a single leaf, she would dip it first into the melted butter and then into the mayonnaise. She would then lick off both condiments, leaving the artichoke meat untouched. She viewed the leaf as a spoon for butter and mayonnaise. One doesn’t eat spoons. Properly refrigerated and cared for, a single artichoke would last her for years.

Kathryn and I had an artichoke-related experience in Boulder Colorado. We went to dinner at a new place called “The Cork and Cleaver.” Their specialty was steak and artichokes. We had ordered our meal and watched with interest as a young couple, obviously on a first date, were seated next to us. He was properly observant of her needs and she fluttered at the appropriate times. We overheard their order and knew that it was much like ours.

Artichokes were the appetizer, so ours was tabled at about the same time as theirs. They each looked with suspicion at the olive drab appetizer, which looked more like a huge green pine cone that something to eat. They each stripped off a leaf, dunked it in mayonnaise and put the entire leaf in their mouths. They chewed and chewed and grimaced. They looked for a way to get rid of the masticated pulp. Nothing seemed available so they both swallowed with difficulty. You could see their Adam’s Apples plunging up and down to send the unseemly mass to the next stage of the digestion process. She then looked at him and said, “These are kind of tough tonight, don’t you think?” To which he replied, “Oh, that’s the way they’re supposed to be!” Ah, the innocence of youth!

Other family food favorites were home made chili sauce, home made mustard pickles, home made jams and jellies, home made pickled beets, homemade pickled cherries, homemade pickled cucumber chips, canned peaches, canned pears, tossed salads lightly graced with Dad’s vinaigrette, hamburger steaks slathered in grilled onions, T-bone slabs subtly sprinkled with garlic, and finally milk toast on a Sunday evening. This last item was immensely popular in winter. Preparation was simple. Toast your favorite bread (white in those days and homemade whole wheat now.) Spread on ample butter and a bit of honey or favorite jam. Flavor whole milk with a drop of Mexican vanilla and/or ginger and heat until there was a skin on the surface. Cube the toast. Place the cubes in your favorite bowl (we each had one.) Add hot milk and enjoy.

Every gustatory experience was not perfect. Stewed tomatoes were a trial for me, even though they were prepared from home grown fruit, onions, salt and pepper. Mom and Dad loved them so they (the tomatoes) appeared often at the dinner table. Their appearance made me giggle. They looked like terribly sunburned butts in a punch bowl! Their texture made me gag. The tomatoes were often stringy and the onion/pepper chunks distinct but malleable. It was like trying to swallow the internal waste of a pumpkin. Mom also loved to fix diced toast, and then ladle a tuna-and-canned-green-peas cream sauce over it. I could down it, but I never asked for seconds.

Spam was invented to help the country through World War II. I guess it was meat, but where it really came from, I can only guess. Were a squeegee and the butcher room floor involved? It was an organic emulsion created to resemble animal flesh. Anyway, Hormel gave us Spam. We diced it, fried it, sliced it, ground it, baked it, boiled it, broiled it, and sometimes ate it. It was a bit rubbery, always packed in a square can. The top had to be taken off with a key. The sealed lid had a little metal flap on it, which fit through a hole in the key. To open the can, one simply rolled the key across the top of the can. The top simply twisted up around the key. The spam was invariably packed in a clear gelatinous slurry, not intended to invite. When a slab of Spam was fried, it curled up like an old dried out piece of shoe leather, seared on the edges.

My worst experience with this ersatz stuff consisted of fried spam, fried eggs flavored with sugar, and pieces of soggy toast. Once in a while, we got sandwiches made of wonder bread, mayonnaise, spam and velveeta cheese. Velveeta was another of those WWII emulsions given us by the miracle of modern science to win the war. I suppose thoughts of velveeta and spam caused guys to stay on the front lines and fight rather than go back to the chow line to eat that stuff. I want to try it again to see what it really was like. On the other hand….

Ejection Reflection

One meal could induce the gag reflex in me like yanking the release trigger on a catapult. Periodically, Mother bought a ham from Savage’s Market three doors down the street. Eventually, the porcine roast was reduced to a bone stump, scraps of fatty meat, and gristle. She cut the meat and gristle from the stump, mixing these harvested remains with Campbell’s Cream of Mushroom soup. Warning odors arose from this gray, lumpy paste like dank, swirling mists from an ancient swamp. The glistening mushroom cubes shimmied and wiggled like bits of brindle colored jello. When stirred, the mire reminded me of those nauseating gas bubbles rising and bursting around you, displaced with each labored step when you’re slogging through a salt slough.

Dad’s two-fingered whistle, piercing from two blocks away and hated by every dog in our neighborhood, signaled dinner time. In ham season, I resisted his summons to this recurrent last supper with every ruse I could create. But, ignoring his siren was as unthinkable as the impending meal was inedible.
We usually ate dinner together around a large, rectangular table in the dining room. My back was to the window. Dad, stern on my left, presided. My brother and oldest sister sat across the table from me, programming their avoidance systems for incoming ordinance, and practicing their ducking motions. Mother was on the west end of the table, sinfully proud of her creation. Her pride “wenteth” before my fall. My next younger sister burped and drooled in a high chair to my right. I longed to trade my expected pasty entrée’ for her pabulum. A third sister avoided the meal altogether by refusing to be born yet.

We often used mealtime as an occasion to give thanks for and bless the food. Dad would ask one of us to offer a simple prayer. Although I am a believer in the power of prayer, I considered these utterances particularly hypocritical and thus ineffective. I was never thankful for what lay before me, nor did I ever see or sense any improvement in the taste, smell, or look of the concoction as a result of the blessing. This tested my childlike faith.

The menu and my reaction never varied. There, marshaled before us, was the triggering, shimmering, grey sludge, white rice on which it was to be ladled, milk to choke down every bite, and a green salad. Dad served us. I sought to avoid the inevitable. I pleaded with him for a tiny portion. “I’m still full from lunch!” “I’m too tired to eat!” “Let’s save mine for Grammie!” It would not have been wise to suggest that the dog hadn’t eaten yet. Besides, I really liked our dog. No response to my petition. Dad was either deaf or cruel. Perhaps he had whistled shrilly too often. However, I knew his credo; “Real men ate big portions and never gagged!”

All too soon, the stuff was placed before me. I squirmed. I sulked. I slumped. I succumbed. Finally, I maneuvered as long as possible before reluctantly, cautiously, grimly edging two or three gigantic, slime-covered rice grains onto my fork. Slowly, I winched the noxious freight upwards. Up to the lips, over the tongue, watch out stomach, here she comes. “Fire in the hole!” Gag! Wretch!! Rejection!!! I never hit anyone, but my ejection always fouled table cloths and disrupted family meals. I shed tears and endured contempt. “You ungrateful baby! Think of the starving children in China!” I thought of them. I saw them in their millions trying to eat that gelatinous ham gruel. It made me gag, again.

After others had consumed their meal, they left the table. I slumped, alone, sullen and tearful, sentenced to the dark, dining room table as if manacled by ham, rice and mushroom soup. “You will stay here until it is finished, or I’ll know the reason why!” I dared not tell them the reason why. Each bite convulsed me.

Years later, Mother described her best recipes, touting her mushroom, ham and rice muck as one of her children’s favorites. Excuse me?!! She had no memory of my revulsion and rewarded us one day with the cherished recipe. Kathryn even made it once. I had not come home from work soon enough to prevent it. There was that old, familiar odor. I warned her about the likely response. I reminded myself where to find the mops and sponges. But, she and the kids loved the stuff! Frankly, I now kind of like it myself. Truly! Well, sort of.

Just Ducky

My cousins, the Rideouts, were duck hunters. They were not duck consumers. Most weekends during duck season, Uncle Joe and his three boys, Dave, Steve, and Danny, hunkered down in duck blinds at the Harrison Duck Club west of the Salt Lake airport. They sported waders, shotguns and camouflaged vests, coats and hats. Each shooter was wrapped in various duck calls, decoys and ammunition belts, with sufficient 12-guage shotgun shells to keep the invading duck flights in firm control. My cousins should have been at Pearl Harbor! Always in their party was the faithful Rowdie, a finely trained, smart German short hair bird dog. Rowdie was willing without hesitation to leap on command into that stinking, frigid marsh water to retrieve the latest duck casualty.

The Rideouts usually returned from the marshes with legal limits of limp widgeons, teals, and mallards. These carcasses were taken to a local butcher to be skinned, gutted, cleaned and wrapped in waxed paper, body bags. They were archived after each hunt in a freezer in my cousins’ garage. When there was not room enough in one freezer to bury another duck corpse, they bought a new chest or upright appliance. When my cousins moved to Holladay from their home across the street from us on 5th South in Salt Lake City, they bought a huge garage with an attached house. To their new storage barn, they hauled seven freezers stuffed with dead ducks, the mounting yield of who knows how many years of harvesting the fowl users of the Western Migratory Bird Flyway. Core drilling those freezers could have revealed the history of duck hunting in Northern Utah for the past quarter century. Shooting, wrapping and freezing continued unabated until Uncle Joe died. Dave, the oldest son, continues the tradition to this day.

Annually, Aunt Virginia prepared a duck feast to relieve the burden warehoused by those overworked, overflowing freezers. The recipe called for much wine and spice. For some, the roasted fowl were as unwelcome as meringue and sugar Easter chicks in April, zucchini in August, venison in October or fruit cake in December. But I relished roasted duck breast. I loved those little, hockey puck sized slabs of dark gaminess, marinating in a rich, red wine sauce. Consequently, I often found them in my school lunch sack, packed between two slices of homemade wheat bread, or slipped as finger food into a small plastic bag. I was the envy of some friends who labored on less exotic fare. Others were repelled.

During lunch at Roosevelt Junior High one spring day, I was thrilled to find two fillets of duck breast in my lunch fare. I bit hugely into the first and was rewarded with chewy, succulent duck. However, another bite hit something hard, like half of a piece of Chiclets gum. I shuddered as if someone had just grated their fingernails across the blackboard. I spit out the contents. The cap of a front tooth, broken and repaired years before, had broken off during the vigorous first bite. I crunched it on the second. Replacing the cap was expensive and painful.

A few weeks later at another school lunch, I was sitting near the football field with friends. California gulls, habituated to noontime strafing runs of the lunch area, flew by, screeching for a scrap of something. They had long since been weaned of Mormon crickets and were now partial to hostess cupcakes, wonder bread and peanut butter, probably crunchy style. Once again, I had breast of late duck. The experience with the broken tooth cap had made me a little more timid now. Just as I was about to bite, one of seagulls released a fecal bomb exactly on the slab of his roasted bird relative I was about to devour. I convulsed and threw the smeared carcass to the birds. Several unknowingly became cannibals. That was it! No more duck! No more help for the cousins! They must solve the duck corpse population explosion on their own. In the end, the eater could not keep up with the shooters.

I Smell Trouble

I suffered from a lack of coordination between my spoken words, my thoughts, and my physical senses, such as hearing, smelling, tasting, and feeling. These skills may be finely honed in me, but often they seem to operate independently. They don’t work together. They don’t help one another. They don’t learn from each other. For example, just because something tastes odd or unpleasant, that doesn’t seem to be sufficient to guide or construct properly crafted, sensitive sentences about the thing being tasted. In other words, objectionable odors sensed by nose and interpreted by brain did not prevent mouth from uttering something stupid. I often suffered for these lapses.

Mother loved to try new recipes. Dad loved to taste them. I loved to watch her prepare them. Dad and Mother loved each other deeply and he would brook no disrespect for her. One night, Mother decided to make Chinese food, which was entirely unfamiliar to me. I could only imagine the Chinese unwillingly eating my rejected ham, mushroom soup and rice gruel. On this particular evening, I entered the kitchen in the middle of the meal’s preparation. Strange, not altogether pleasant odors slowed my entry. I must have frowned or wrinkled my nose. Dad’s protective instincts for mother surged. I edged toward the large pot on the stove and watched the bubbling mixture. I took a giant whiff. “Does that stuff taste like it smells?” I frowned. I guess that was disrespectful. The next thing I remember is getting up off the floor and stumbling, weeping to my room. No Chinese food for me. I really don’t remember being disrespectful. My father’s open handed blow, however, seemed to reconnect my senses, at least with regard to Mother’s experiments.

Chef Dad

Dad’s had his own recipes. One morning, we asked for French toast. What appeared before us was army SOS, “s--- on a shingle;” creamed, chipped-beef gravy on toast. Our fear of him helped us down it without comment. He was quite volatile, and took rejections personally. To frown at food was to reject him. Part of his parenting style had to do with strength and volume. One of his favorite jokes had to do with the kids who had developed terrible language habits. According to the story, a baby sitter one morning asked the first child what he wanted for breakfast. “I’ll have some of those @#$% Cheerios,” was the response. The babysitter cuffed the youngster into silence. She then asked the next what he wanted. “Well, I’m sure not going to have any of those @#$% Cheerios!!!” Well, we sure weren’t ordering that @#$% French toast again.

Breakfasts from Dad rarely turned out well. There was a small, green linoleum-covered bar or counter at one end of our kitchen. We sat there, awaiting what was to be served. We were unfamiliar with the Charles Dickens character, Oliver. “Please sir, may I have some more?” was never uttered. The room was dark and warm, even though it was early morning. A few sunbeams had penetrated the hedge outside our back door and highlighted the speckled, linoleum floor. Dad whistled as he sweated over the stove at our backs. We could hear the spatter of bacon grease as it curled and browned the edges of fried eggs, sunny side up. I pictured each dip of toast into the broken, golden yolk. Usually, our anticipation for a tasty breakfast had already disappeared, fleeing like hot grease escaping water.

However, on this day, Hope’s smiling face peeked from behind the clouds of experience. The eggs were served us, two each. Flecks of black and white speckled each egg. One of us blessed the food and we attacked. Yyuuuckk!! Hope squeezed tight her eyes and fled. The salt had lost its savor! In fact, Dad had sprinkled the fried eggs with sugar. We finished them anyway. That was smarter. I’ll admit the sugar was probably a mistake. At least, I hope it was.

The nadir of Dad’s noontime menus was one school lunch he prepared for me. At Roosevelt Junior High one spring day, I opened the lunch sack. I had been anticipating something like peanut butter or bologna or tuna fish on soft, white bread, maybe a few Cloverleaf potato chips, an apple, and perhaps a little brownie. Nope! Inside the bag, I found an old, Wonder Bread hamburger bun, stuffed into a waxed paper sandwich bag, like plentitude crammed into a girdle designed for someone of more normal proportions. As I extracted the partially crushed bun, I noticed that small parts of the crust had crumbled away, liked the spalled concrete on a sidewalk. Creases lined its brown surface. I wondered if these cracks signaled to a skilled interpreter of such things, the bun’s tragic, short life line I guess we were breadless and Dad had found a lonesome old bun at the bottom back of the bread bin. Morbid curiosity, driven by hunger, forced me to carefully pry apart the two sides of the bun. Smashed on one half was a blotch of cold spaghetti and congealed meat sauce, garnished with dill pickle chips. Smeared thickly on the other was mayonnaise, partially covered by a limp leaf of lettuce, a little dark around the edges. I was just hungry enough to try it. It wasn’t at all bad.