Katherine

What was your family food culture when you were growing up? I grew up in the sixties, when “modern women”, although they were mostly still housewives, were no longer doing much cooking. My mother was very old-fashioned, and fixed everything we ate at home from scratch. She had a garden (poorly maintained and not particularly productive), and canned lots of tomatoes. We ate a lot of casseroles, “goulash” (macaroni in tomato sauce), fatty pork chops layered with potatoes and cream of mushroom soup (yum), big ol’ tough-and-gristly beef liver with onions (which I hated), sometimes swordfish or halibut, utterly plain and bland (which I cannot eat to this day), and homemade breads, cookies, and pastries. My mother was a “heath food fanatic”, and back then what that meant was you didn’t trust the government figures as to how much of various nutrients/vitamins/minerals you needed to ingest. Considering that at the time they were recommending that growing children consume large quantities of sugar to get the calories they needed to grow up strong and healthy, and that ½ of an orange was enough fruit and/or vegetable to fulfill your need for vitamin C daily, it made no sense to trust them. So if you figured the vitamin C requirement was way low, probably everything else was low, too, including the protein requirements. So mostly what we ate was giant slabs and piles of meat. I remember roasts of beef, pork, ham, and lamb, baked chicken, meatloaf, oven burgers (made always from a meat loaf blend). But most fondly I remember the flank steak. The five of us would polish off two full-sized flank steaks in a meal, and there was rarely a few little slices left for my father to eat with his eggs in the morning. My sister is a vegetarian now (no dairy, but fish), and says that meat never really agreed with her. Faulty memory chip, she was always first to be served, took the largest portion, and came back for more the most times. Was meal time important? Meal time was the default. There were no other options. Was cooking important? As with meal time, it was the default. Meals were always prepared from scratch. We occasionally bought frozen food as snacks, but mostly when my thrifty father found a real deal on something that was discontinued. So I clearly remember coming home from school and fixing myself a box of carrots with marshmallow sauce or corn with brown sugar glaze from the freezer. I think we had a case of each of those to use up, and they weren’t bad. But when you ask,"Was cooking important?" if you mean as an art form or vision or other ambition, then, no. What were the penalties for putting elbows on the table? They just corrected the miscreants, and they stopped doing it. Who cooked in the family? My mother did all the cooking (except for training us to make cakes and cookies) until I entered junior high and she to work to earn some money for college for us. Then, I would be home for a couple hours before she was, so my sister and I began pulling shifts in the kitchen. At first it was just things like spaghetti, made with homemade canned tomatoes and sauce, but after a while I started looking through the cookbooks for interesting ideas. I remember a creamy mushroom soup that I put through the blender. One thing that really stands out in my mind is that my own trajectory and my sister’s were so different. After a few meals of things like half-raw baked eggplant casserole, her cooking was no longer in demand, and she stopped. She only occasionally cooks now, and her husband does most of the cooking. Were restaurant meals common, or for special occasions? We used to eat out a lot, several times a week. We had restaurants all over the place (within a 45 minute radius) that we liked, inexpensive to moderate in price. Sometimes my father would come home, having heard about a restaurant that was more than an hour away (keep in mind that where we lived was more rural than suburban, so the restaurant density wasn’t very high), and off we’d go. I think we ate in every restaurant in the area that was suitable for families. Did children have a "kiddy table" when guests were over? We rarely had more than one guest at a time. I vaguely recall a time when there was a child’s table, but it seems to me it was because there were too many people for one table, and the adults sat at one, the kids at the other. When did you get that first sip of wine? My mother occasionally had a glass of wine, and I think she went through a case every year or two. We never drank it at home with meals. I think the first wine I drank at home was one that I made when I was in high school, fascinated by a British home-winemaking book I had gotten by mail from a book list. It was for an orange wine. The problem was that the gallon bottle called for was a 5-qt, not 4 qt like the ones we have here, and so after I put in all the ingredients and filled it up with water, it was a lot sweeter than the recipe intended. Fermentation was really slow, and clearing took forever, due to the nature of factory orange juice. When it did finally clear, about the time I moved away to college, it was like a dessert wine. Strong and sweet. Was there a pre-meal prayer? I recall an occasional prayer, but I don’t think they happened every day. It wouldn’t have been on Sunday after church, because we didn’t do a “meal” on Sunday, it was more of a grazing thing. One of our favorites was to buy baked beans at the local doughnut shop on Saturday night. The leftovers Sunday noon tasted completely different. That doughnut shop had ethereal Bismarcks, too. Was there a rotating menu (e.g., meatloaf every Thursday)? I seem to recall that back then and there, Wednesday was Prince spaghetti day, and Friday was Prince lasagna day. (Hey, Anthony!) We had pasta almost that often. How much of your family culture is being replicated in your present-day family life? I’m into quality food, and I’m into home cooking, but I’d have to say I think I’ve got the best of both my father and my mother in me. My father never cooked (specialty: jelly omelet—don’t ask), but he loved to eat, whereas my mother was an able cook who was so obsessed with nutrition and health trends that it minimized whatever pleasure she might have gotten from the food. It seems like maybe she really couldn’t tell the difference, and was operating on a different paradigm, where a tasty end product was good, but non-essential. She fed us all-natural snacks that were the precursors of power bars (which I cannot eat, and I have vowed to never again consume food that tastes like medicine), things flavored with yeast, blackstrap molasses, and other nasty stuff. Liver powder, anyone? I recall when I went away to college. I came back home for Thanksgiving, and she had gone low-fat, and we’re not talking minor adjustments here. She made the “cream” gravy for the turkey with skim milk. She was so pleased, telling us that “It tastes the same.” No, it didn’t. Neither did the evaporated milk she whipped into a foam with artificial sweetener taste like whipped cream. Ugh. So I live to eat, and I only eat things that are worth eating. My daughter and I always ate home-cooked meals at the table when we were home together (breakfast was a biggie), and she has told me repeatedly since she moved away how much she appreciates the meals, and the box lunches she got growing up. She is, however, spoiled by the quality of the food at home, and less willing to consume inedibles she encounters. I will close with a story to illustrate my philosophy. When my daughter was about 14, she and her girlfriend decided to go trick or treating. (She is small and could pass, her girlfriend is not.) Afterwards, they were chatting on the phone. Her girlfriend said that her mother had gone through the bag and inspected all the candy to make sure that none was tampered with. My daughter turned to me and asked, concerned that I had never cared enough to do this, why I had not. I told her that I hadn’t needed to, as I had so spoiled her with expensive high-quality candy that I knew she would never have eaten any of that stale junk. She realized that this was true. She wailed to me, “You ruined my childhood!”

Your lordship, this is just plain silly. Do you refuse to eat dishes that have a known provenance outside of the kitchen they are currently being prepared in, or do you merely pass judgement on those who make and eat them?

Have you successfully made blender mayo before? The first time I made it, I was impatient, and though the stream seemed slow, it broke into a yucky mess. Since then I've found that if you take about 4 times as much time to add the oil as it ought to in a fair universe, the mayo will come out perfectly emulsified. After the oil is incorporated, I add the lemon juice, stirring with a spatula, as the mayo is now too thick to mix any more in the blender. I would add the crushed garlic cloves at the beginning, too, so the blender can liquify them in better. But consider that classic caesar dressing is made on the salad with coddled eggs. If you're not going to do that, you might consider (as I have done in a pinch) mixing some mayo in with oil and vinegar to use as a base, so it is not too mayonaisey.

Do you see regional differences in French comfort food, as well?

How about the area where I live, where the French-Canadian ethnic people have always made a sausage they call boudin? If you arbitrarily assigned the name "boudin" to a specific product made in Acadia, Louisiana, now they'd have a sausage with no name. They weren't trying to knock off some NO product, they just have a sausage with the name of boudin. Does the fact that you find one example of a product more to your taste than other examples mean that you could decide that one was more authentic than any other and assign the name to that particular product above all the others?

There never were any up here in Maine, unless I missed something that was well hidden. I haven't been out of the state much, so I wouldn't know if any of the ones I used to see on my travels had closed. But two chains out of -how many?- where you can get some kind of meat and veg. There should be more. Surely most markets would support ONE. But I guess most people don't care about balancing their diet, as long as the food is filling, cheap, and more or less tasty.

Chicken Out sounds exactly like what I'm looking for. Since all the locations are in Maryland, I won't hold my breath. Almost worth relocating for, but not quite.

Yogurt is getting closer to ice cream in sugar and calorie content all the time. Admit it, America. You want dessert for breakfast. Have a sundae.

We used to have a rotisserie place in the area, that had lots of vegetable and salad choices. We don't anymore, they sold out to Arby's. Salads get boring really fast, and commercial dressings suck. I'll still be waiting for a place that serves a quick meal, and packing my own lunch until it arrives.

Thank you! I also do not get PBJ. Frankly, there are certain things I simply refuse to eat now that I am out of grade school: PBJ, boloney sandwiches, and mac 'n' cheese from the box. Now, on the other hand... a nice peanut butter and bacon sandwich can be extremely tasty (especially if you fry it in the leftover bacon fat) -- although it's probably been 15 years since I had one. Grilled peanut butter and cheddar cheese, mmm. (Better use the unsweetened peanut butter, tho.) Seriously, for the first 3 years of her schooling, my daughter insisted on bringing a peanut butter sandwich to school with her. It was peanut butter and jam, or peanut butter and chocolate. Now that she's in college, and home for the summer, she actually brought up how much she appreciated having the lunch she wanted, while all around her kids were bringing in stuff their parents thought they ought to want to eat, or making do with junk.

Most places let you double up the meat for a relatively low charge. Seriously -- a double Whopper has a respectable amount of meat (though still dry and overcooked). Subway will let you double the meat for about $1.25 extra -- though even doubling, Subway remains, in my opinion, the stingiest of fast-food places. (I remember when they would break the slices of green pepper so you got only a thin strip of pepper running down the center of the sandwich.) That's true, but if you look at what's left on your plate after you throw away that giant roll you paid for, even with the double meat it's not a meal. And I want a vegetable, too. Whatever happened to vegetables, outside of the sandwich garnish?

That and speed-pourers in your liquor bottles makes you feel like a real bartender. Tap that baby on the edge of the counter, remove the glass with a flourish. To prevent excess dilution, shake quickly and pour promptly.

When I wanted a shaker, I went around to all the upscale kitchen shops, but found what I was looking for, the regular shaker they use in bars, at the restaurant supply shop. Topped with a beer glass, very professional, and you save enough money to throw in a waiter's corkscrew, too. Or a pair of champagne pliers.

Some of the worst food I have ever eaten in my life came from the kitchens of great hotels. Works for me. Less I have to make if I don't have to share with you.

I used to own a ferret. I agree.

I never eat at fast food places, and I always plan to bring food with me from home. Why? Because fast food is always a tiny portion of meat, a tiny portion of vegetable at best, and a huge quantity of starch. The "healthier" and more "creative" the place, the more starch they include. So the wrap place around the corner from where I used to work, the one with all the exotic fusion flavors, would serve a "grilled tuna" thai-style burrito, with rice, beans, huge burrito tortilla, a little shredded cabbage and carrot, and less than an ounce of fish. Plus, they served it with tortilla chips. It was three times as much food as I could eat, and almost all starch. I'd love to be able to pick up a chicken leg quarter, small salad, and a vegetable. It doesn't have to be cooked to order. If anybody opens a place like that, I'll spend my money there.

Good God, Katherine, you actually admit to keeping a bottle of pickle relish in your household! Try some diced cornichons in your Russion Dressing . Are they sweet and gooey like pickle relish? They need to be to carry my Russian dressing. My recipe came from a "great hotel" kitchen that I worked in as a teen...

Actually, I was thinking of making some Russian dressing, with the mayo I made yesterday, sweet pickle relish, sour cream, chili sauce... The ONLY thing sweet pickle relish goes into in this household.

Gee, my daughter never voluntarily ate off a kid's menu in her life. She amazed all the Koreans by eating sushi off the platter at 4. We rarely had snacks around the house, and for dinner she ate what was put in front of her. Which was good stuff. I have friends who will go back into the kitchen and fix something different for the kids if they decide they don't feel like what's for dinner. That was never an option in my house.

Thanks for the reference, Jaz, I will have read that book again. Many child nutrition reference books, including the popular What To Expect series, recommend way too much fiber for small children. Whole grains are more nutritions, provided you get enough of them, as they are less digestible. For impoverished people, getting most of your calories from processed grains may mean malnutrition in the long run, as they are short on B vitamins. So a diet composed mostly of white rice can cause beriberi. It would be necessary to increase the quantity available if you were to substitute whole grains. This is what that agency should have done. They were providing insufficient rations to a captive audience, an improvement over starvation, but not much of one.

Blueberries? I had a teacher who used to say this, and would never use blue food coloring in a cake for that reason. Blueberries are actually red on the inside, if you mash them with sugar, he would say.

The Bloody Martini.

A long time ago I read about a school where they put together committees to decide what was going to be served in the cafeteria at lunchtime. The parents and food administrators would come up with ideas, the lunchroom would produce samples. But only after everyone agreed on the product was it ready to progress to the next step: the kids' committee. If it didn't pass there, it didn't get served. The only vegetable that was ever served was broccoli with cheese sauce, and they ate it every day. There was virtually no waste in that cafeteria.

Aaaannd... Mickey D is hurting lately. See... It works! I understood that Micky D's problems are more of a service issue. In other words, it doesn't matter how cheap it is, if fast food isn't fast, people will make a turn into the next driveway and have a whopper.

Last year I went to a science fair of research exhibits by students at the university I attend. One of the students in the health sciences attempted to correlate dietary fat intake to bodyfat content in student volunteers. They found a slight but insignificant negative correlation between fat intake and bodyfat content. In other words, contrary to what we would expect, from what we read in the media, there was no relationship found between the percentage of fat intake and the percentage of bodyfat in these volunteers.