Snapshots of my Culinary Upbringing

by gretchen

Here, a few culinary images from my childhood.

1. Pizza with Ketchup. We never knew Mom did this, never knew the difference. Until we had real pizza. And then we were (OK, I was) pissed.

2. Carnation Condensed Milk With Rice Krispies. You think skim is bad? Skim milk is nectar from the gods compared to this opaque, watery, "emergency" milk.

3. The Year of the Smelt. I don't know why. I'm not sure I want to know why. I just know for a year, Mom kept serving us smelts as if we were her cats. The Year of the Smelt was followed by the Season of the Squid, a delightful time where we threw the little squids off of our plates to the open mouth of the cat and watched him chew and chew, little tentacles hanging out all the while. When I was a senior in high school, we had The Summer of the Greek Salad, which was made every #($)@#(*$ night. This had thankfully replaced the Decade of the Tuna Casserole. Which followed The Season of the Squid.

4. Penny Pinchers: The pre-BJs Bulk-Food Shopping. You placed an order and then went to pick it up -- everything was in bulk, in warehouse-style brown stamped boxes. At the time, the portions were absurd -- now its the standard size at BJs. That night we would haul out gigantic boxes of cookies, huge packages chicken fingers, smelts (of course), pickles (I think some are still in the fridge), and on and on. Penny Pinchers day was THE BEST. The day before Penny Pinchers day was THE WORST. You ended up eating stale taco shells. With ketchup.

5. Apple on Top. Every single brown paper bag my mother packed for my sister and I had the apple on top. Apple on Top means you fragile little sandwich below the dead weight would be squished and soggy in the middle and about 2 cm high. Every. Single. Day. BTW, by squishing the sandwich, the apple released the sandwich stench, thereby ensuring at least one person in the room (at Catholic school, you ate in your classroom because there were no cafeterias) would whine, "Ewwww, who has the stinky tuna?" And everyone stared and you slunk down in your seat. Shamed. Again. With you soggy, squished sandwich. And you took it out on the apple, which you slammed into the garbage can. Every. Single. Day.

6. Wegman's Orange Soda Refrigerator. Not sure why, but we ended up with about 47,024 cans of it. I drank that stuff for at least a year and when it was gone, the extra fridge in which we kept it seemed to have a permanent orange glow, haunted by its former tenants.

7. Sandwich-Making Night. Once a month (or was it every two weeks?), my father would go to the Hostess store and buy white bread and chocolate zingers (on VERY special, very rare occasions, there would be vanilla zingers which are preferred by all those with taste). That night, would make up ham and cheese sandwiches for his lunches, freezing most of them. I remember laying out 30 pieces of bread on the ugly yellow counter above the dishwasher, mustard, then ham, then cheese, then bread, then slip the sandwich into the envelope sandwich baggies (long before ziplocks). And at least once a month, my mom, lacking any tuna or PBJ, would throw one of those frozen delights into our lunch bags (with the apple on TOP) and assure us that it would be thawed by lunch time.

This was never once true.

8. The Blue Vinyl Raggedy Anne Lunchbox. I paid my mother back for such lunch-letdowns by forgetting my Raggedy Anne lunch box in the cloak room (that's what they call it in Catholic school). For several weeks. The warm, humid air that wafted toward her when she opened the lunch coffin was probably fair payback. I never used that lunch box again. Somewhere, in a landfill, I bet it still reeks of moldy tuna and sour OJ.

9. Easter Pizza. We had pizza for Easter dinner one year. And oh yes, we're Catholic. And at the time, we were every-single-freaking-weekend Catholics. Pizza. (No ketchup.)

10. The Anointed One's Ho Hos. When my brother came home from college, he always got a box of Ho Hos. I was NOT allowed to eat them. You know I always did, citing the double standard in our house.

11. The Child Bakes. One day, while making cookies by myself, my mother walked in:
"What on earth are you doing, Gretchen"
"I'm making cookies."
"Why is your hand in the batter?"
"It said stir by hand."

12. Creative Cookies. We never had the right ingredients for cookies, so I made countless batches of chocolate chip cookies without the chocolate chips. Or brown sugar. Or shortening. Or butter. I'm sure you get the picture. You're starting to get the ketchup, aren't you?

13. The Uneaten Breakfast. I think my mother made me a hot breakfast which I refused to eat before she gave up. I picked this up from my sister who stopped eating her breakfasts in high school. Older sister = All things cool. To be cool, mimic older sister.

For what it's worth, aside from the Carnation Instant milk, my mom actually made pretty good breakfasts.

14. The Sunday Omelet. Dad made amazing omelets on Sunday morning. He made a fixed amount. If you got up in time, you got some. Sleep in, and you got none. Stay downstairs watching cartoons on Channel 31, and you got none. You had to pay attention, waiting and lay in bed or watch cartoons until you smelled the food and then you had to bolt to the table. A minute later and you were SOL. And out of omelet. However, if you decided to leave your bed or the TV and come to the table early, you could gain possession of the comics section. Which you could then choose to share with your siblings by tearing out each comic strip. One. Strip. At. A. Time. Starting with the really boring ones first.

15. Banquet Fried Chicken and Milk. This was ALWAYS the dinner you ate after my mom went shopping. And it was sooooooo good.

Now, I realize that this article was probably funny to NONE of you but my family. And that's fine. Haters.