The environment in which my immediate family ate our meals was somewhat affected by my sometimes single mother's work schedule and whomever was our caregiver of record. But I'll tell you, it certainly was an interesting trip, and it affected my early adult life, career-wise (I was a line cook for fifteen years). My maternal grandmother had the deepest influence on my life and eating behavior--she was an excellent professional cook and I spent a great deal of time with her. She was from the south, Arkansas, (Southern cooking is what has informed my sensibilities). She loved to cook and loved to make people happy with her cooking. She would watch you eat and wait to see the expression on your face. This was a performance for her. She and my Grandfather had their own garden as well. (One of my favorite meals was and is fried summer squash, sliced tomatoes, and fried potatoes with cornbread and beans)! My other Grandmother was a School Cafeteria ("Lunch Lady", but not as nice) cook, and cooked like it (egregious-ly). My mother wasn't much of a cook, either. She perused those weird trendy cookbooks of the sixties and early seventies and generally made stuff that looked cool but tasted pretty awful (think: Cher in "Mermaids"). Depending on her shift, we would attempt family sit down dinners every day until high school band activity and teenage ennui fairly well stopped that. I learned to cook for myself and my siblings at an early age, around age 11 or so, mostly out of self defense of my mother's horrid cooking skills. We shared (my brother and sister and I) meal preparation tasks quite a bit. Our babysitter was Pennsylvania Dutch who grew most of her own veg. We had very regular eating times and prayed like maniacs morning noon and night (which we never did at home). My first drinks were at quite a young age ("Lunch Lady's" peppermint schnapps) coming from an imbibing german catholic bunch--i didn't like it as a kid--but miracle of miracles i turned out, later, to be QUITE a lush (now an ex-lush, fortunately). I used to be quite a foodie, but I quit that. (I stumbled on to your site because I was quite disturbed by that television program, the Restaurant with that Rocco fellow.) Elbows were not allowed upon the dinner table, and there was the rhyme "Mabel, Mabel, get your elbows off the table!" if you were an offender. We ate out at places like Burger Chef and McDonalds for normal everyday sort of food and Ponderosa or Bonanza for "fancier" fare (sounds pretty awful, huh?--well, this was small town central Indiana--not much in the way of "The Four Seasons" going on there). One place we frequented most often, however, and this was my "good cookin'" Grandma's favorite place, was a truck stop out on the state highway near the then-new Interstate. I don't remember the attraction, really, foodwise. But I would say that food was a common gathering point for our family, especially at holidays, and important. And there were ritual foods and behaviors (including holiday prayers and a children's table). When I'm preparing a dish for a family event (and this is a new family, mostly my spouse's) I get jazzed up and go to great lengths to make it nice because, ultimately, there were people in my life that loved food, not just to eat it, but to make it, to grow it, to make it nice for people. I like to make it nice for people. Sometimes I'd rather do that than eat it, (just not 400 times an evening!)
