"If you're afraid of butter, use cream."
Julia Child
When my sisters and I were young saplings in the '60s, why would it have been our mother on a governmental watchlist and not the neighbors down the street holding monthly John Birch Society meetings?
Apparently, there's something wrong with having milkshakes, blueberry pie, and eggplant Parmesan for breakfast. Or so claimed her teacher when my sister, Janet, presented it on a menu in her Home Ec. class.
My mother, ever one for a fight, countered that it was nutritious and fulfilled the necessary food groups being promoted at the time. Milk, ice cream, and Parmesan cheese - Dairy. Blueberries and eggplant – Fruits and vegetables. Pie crust - Bread, grains, and cereal. Mom could also rationalize that chocolate cake with a Caesar salad or quesadillas and chicken wings fell somewhere within the USDA’s food guide.
Despite my mother's creative breakfasts and correct food grouping interpretations, my sister still got an 'F' for her menu.
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One of my favorite breakfasts were the large Shredded Wheat biscuits fried in lots of butter and brown sugar. Another favorite was a white-man's version of buñuelos – deep-fried flour tortillas cooked until they're golden and crispy, sprinkled with cinnamon and sugar. Delicious, but not at all nutritious!
Like every other household of that era, we did have the usual boxes of food-like substances – Cheerios, Wheaties, and Sugar Frosted Flakes. Mom also served us the more traditional eggs, pancakes, and an occasional waffle.
After breakfast, she would fill our little brown lunch bags with peanut butter sandwiches made on either sourdough or rye bread but without jelly. "Jelly sticks to your teeth and rots them," was mom's explanation. Since neither Alex Jones or Tucker Carlson were around back then, who knows where or how she heard that bit of specious hoax?
Long before artisanal, farm-to-table, or Whole Foods became en vogue, I must have recognized how gross Ding Dongs, Twinkies, and the like were, as I don’t remember ever eating them as a kid. And yet I ate Ambrosia and Jell-O when it was served. Go figure.
'Pressed garbage' was what we called Oscar Meyer's Olive Loaf sandwich slices. If you can picture what those slices look like, you'll understand why. Campbell's Cream of Mushroom soup was lovingly referred to as 'Nose Picker' soup – the bits of mushrooms seemed very similar to . . . well, you get the idea. Frozen TV dinners never found a spot in our freezer nor on our table.
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I seldom got to buy lunch in the school cafeteria, but I always hoped they'd be serving buttered toast when I did. Whatever the yellow butter-like substance the cafeteria workers slathered onto the toast was probably more carcinogenic and less actual butter than the current butter-flavored liquid they squirt on movie theater popcorn, although it sure tasted good to this fledgling palate.
For dinner, we generally had something made from ground beef. Arnold's, the grocery store we shopped at, had a butcher counter in the back and every once in a while ground beef would go on sale. Marked down to $.19/lb from its usual $.25/lb, mom would buy 20 individual one-pound packages of meat, bring them home and toss it all into our big chest freezer, defrosting individual packages as needed. She could feed four kids and herself with a single pound of ground beef.
Meatloaf, spaghetti, beef stroganoff, Salisbury steak, something she called 'Girl Scout' (diced onions, canned tomatoes, and sautéed ground beef until it crumbled) were some of the myriad ways mom prepared ground beef for our family.
Even though we weren’t Catholic, we did have fish most every Friday.
Pork chops or a pork roast were served on a rare occasion, and due to mom's hyperawareness of trichinosis, a food-borne parasite found in pork, she made sure the meat was thoroughly cooked to kill any pathogens. For example, if pork chops were for a Sunday night dinner, mom would start cooking them just after breakfast. Similarly, a pork roast would be in the oven Saturday morning if she planned it for Sunday’s dinner. No, not low and slow, but 350F for hours days.
To counter the desert-like dryness of the pork, applesauce would be a side dish, not solely because it's a perfect accompaniment to pork, but a necessity. Similar to Aristotle's phrase "nature abhors a vacuum," 12 to 36-hour cooked pork plated next to applesauce will physically attract one another, but not to the point of salvaging the arid entrée.
While my mother wasn’t a very good cook, she did know how to celebrate special occasions.
For as long as I can remember, every Christmas morning, once the carnage of the unwrapping of gifts was cleared away, the entire family would help prepare breakfast. My sisters would set the table; I’d squeeze fresh orange juice; my grandmother would monitor her homemade orange and cinnamon rolls (why have just one kind when you can have two?); and mom would be battling the flames emanating from the broiler as 7 filet mignons where charred to near oblivion. Somewhere along the way, glasses of champagne would be poured.
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I don’t know if it was my mother’s idea or at my insistence, but at a young and tender age I was in charge of making popcorn. Standing on a stool so I could reach the glowing red stove element, I’d pour the oil into our dinged and blackened popcorn popper with its glass lid, and then stand watch as the oil heated up and the kernels exploded. Once the kernels were all popped, I'd dump the piping-hot popcorn into a large yellow Pyrex bowl, sprinkle it with salt and mix it with (real) melted butter. As our family sat gathered in front of a black & white TV watching Perry Mason, Leave it to Beaver, or Dobie Gillis, the bowl would be passed along, everyone grabbing a handful of popcorn.
My other adolescent culinary talent was making cheesecake. Over the years, I’ve heard stories about someone’s long-treasured family recipe for cheesecake and how good and unique it was. Turns out, we ALL used the same recipe that was printed on the back of a graham cracker box, somewhere back in the ‘40s or ‘50s. Though it’s not a secret and hallowed family recipe passed on from one’s Nana, it sure was good!
Oh, and I think butter was considered either a condiment or an appetizer, as it was served at every meal and on everything.
Bon Appétit!