Then I finally had to pick one at random because I couldn't find a single question I liked. Of course after I'd picked the question I continued flipping through the book and then I kept thinking was, Oh great question! Good one... Interesting... Oh who needs Courtney, these are great... So I found several others which I should probably save for later. Except I have no self-control... so we'll see how long I can wait. But here's the randomly selected question for today:
- When you were very young, what did you want to be when you grew up? When you were a teenager, what did you think you might want to do for a living someday?
For those of you who are uptight about this being a "COOKBOOK," you may answer the alternate, food-related question:
- What was dinnertime like in your home when you were growing up? What was a typical meal? What was a typical evening for your family?
And yes, those of us who find it difficult to stop typing may answer both. Oh and if anyone wants to jump in with new poll questions, please feel free!
6 comments:
• When you were very young, what did you want to be when you grew up? When you were a teenager, what did you think you might want to do for a living someday?
Well, that’s an easy question; I just wanted to be as proficient as my older sister, Denise. Perty much still a goal. So I explored working at the FBI, but decided on Chevron instead, so I wouldn’t be compared to my big sis.
When my girls were born, I decided that my second career would be as an ICU or a surgical nurse. Still interested, but starting to be way more interested in Being Retired, as going to nursing school is…uh, difficult and REQUIRES STUDY AND WORK.
• What was dinnertime like in your home when you were growing up? What was a typical meal? What was a typical evening for your family?
Well, I remember this expression a lot “THERE IS NOTHING WORSE THAN SPILLED MILK.” I believe this lead me to spill A LOT OF it, like the drunk on the highway that unintentionally veers toward the highway patrol car parked on the side of the freeway, mesmerized by the flashing lights.
I was a very THIN--aka “undernourished” child, as my parental provider (father) said “hey, look at that big spider on the ceiling—which was when said father stole my pork chop while said Mother must have just hung her head in shame, in case part of me contained her DNA. Said mother tried to explain that father was just stealing my pork chops, but said child was just glad it wasn’t LIVER that night and vowed to better guard ‘said chops’ in future. Life was TOUGH in the 60’s. Don’t believe those sorrowful stories about “Depression Times” and “walking barefoot uphill to school in the snow”—they made a lot of those stories up.
Did Grandma and Grandpa really say "There is nothing worse than spilt milk"? In our house I remember hearing a lot of "There's no use crying over spilt milk"--which, oddly enough, also led me to spill lots and lots of milk. "There's no use crying about it--spilt milk is just a fact of life" is the lesson I gleaned. :) Ok, I'm being a little facetious...but honestly I did/do spill a bit of milk here and there. if there is a full gallon of milk in the fridge--i just cant handle it. If i touch it, it will spill. So, mom, if youre ever wondering why I drink so much of your non-fat milk while a perfectly good gallon of unopened 2% that I LIKE sits in the fridge unopened, its that I'm trying to avoid spillage. Have a little compassion.
What was dinnertime like in your home when you were growing up? What was a typical meal? What was a typical evening for your family?
Well, it WAS the 60’s. I didn’t know vegetables came anywhere but from a can. (yeah, yeah—my kids don’t know they can come anywhere than a bag in the freezer, big deal). Canned corn. Canned green beans. Dare I say it—canned PEAS. But lots of great stuff: meatloaf, salmon patties, fish sticks. Pork chops, but there was a lot of stress to “make sure you got all the meat off the bones.” I think Mom and Dad were “depression survivors,” kind of like Holocaust survivors. They had to inspect our pork chops before we could have another one. They didn’t do this with chicken (this was in the olden days, before deboned chickens were genetically engineered.) Pot roast. Barbecued Chuck Steak. Chicken and Rice. Iceberg lettuce. (The other kinds of lettuce we have now weren’t invented until the 90’s. Back then, you just had your iceberg, and it came in a ball. It wasn’t neatly bagged and washed for you, rather prehistoric for sure.)
What else do you want to know? I think dinner was promptly at 5PM, or something like that. We had, like a regular dinner time. If Mom was feeling benevolent and you were Starving to Death, she’d give you a stalk of celery “to tide you over.” And there was no cream cheese or peanut butter stuffed in it, either. Just celery, and you were Glad to Have It. Or she let you have some Saltines, but not so many as to “ruin your appetite.”
TV dinners were recently invented, and we got the rare occasional frozen Banquet Chicken Dinner or Swanson Chicken Pot Pies. But usually, we had to eat Home Cooking. Because we were Deprived. My kids would kill for the nightly dinners I completely took for granted.
Ohhhhhhhhhhhh. And here was the Best Part: They had some dumb rule about cleaning your plate. So on liver night, they Set the Timer, and made you sit there til like 1AM, and said that if you didn’t eat it, you’d have it for breakfast. Mom would usually cave and let us sneak out of the kitchen after 3 hrs or so, let us sneak past Dad. (This is Just My Recollection of Liver and Peas Night, but I’m pretty sure it’s accurate.)
Then, men landed on the moon and Jello 1-2-3 was invented, both equally as cool, as Jello 1-2-3 had 3 separate layers.
At Marianne’s house, they had Diet Rite Coke or RC Cola or something, which she got to drink Regularly, because her mother loved her. But our mother said it Rotted your teeth and made us drink milk instead. AND Marianne got to eat dinner in her bedroom. (This may have been because Marge always burned dinner and you couldn’t breathe in the kitchen, much less see through the smoke, but I thought it was cool. It may have been because Uncle Duane got home from work late, so they didn’t have the Family Dinner).
WHAT WAS DINNER LIKE AT GRANDMA HELEN McGRAW'S? From Darin
I mostly remember her Fried Chicken Thighs with Mushroom Gravy. Generally I remember them in a rapture sense. The only thing comparable was Grandma (Mo Mo) Charles, Chuck’s mother’s Mom’s fried chicken. I think in order to solve this thing; we should have a “Retrieve Grandmothers from Heaven for One Day on Mother’s Day” and have fried chicken. Talk about fun people to put together that never got to meet each other! And they were chicken-frying MASTERS.
Mom, please help me with Grandma McGraw’s recipe. Was it the skillet she used? I remember big, round, 2” in a deep-type Revere ware Chicken Fryer??? Did she roll it with flour, then brown it, add water, steam it, then add Campbell’s Cream of Mushroom Soup? Somehow I have to learn to duplicate it. There must have been mashed potatoes involved, but I mostly remember the chicken and gravy…{which indicates how good it was, because I’m not known for forgetting a mound of mashed potatoes.)
I remember these forever, but many times when she was moved up to Lake of the Pines. I NEED to be able to make this chicken. It’s like Lefsa on the Scandinavian side—it must continue.
How did she used to prepare it?
What was dinner like when I was growing up??? Well my mother was a really good cook. She made the best fried chicken. When I was a little girl, we lived on a farm. I think that Mom must have been in charge of the chickens. She always fed them, brought in the eggs and when she was going to make fried chicken, she went out with the axe and killed a chicken or two. Duane, Del and I loved to watch these "headless" chickens dance around the yard for several minutes before keeling over dead. This was great entertainment for us, since it was long before T.V. came into our lives. Mom would then pick them up, take them to the house and "dress" them. I never understood why she said she was "dressing the chickens", when,in fact, it seemed to us that she was "undressing" them. She removed the feathers and the feet...you really don't want to know any more details. Anyway... we will skip to the actual preparation of Mom's fried chicken. After the chicken was cut up, washed and dried, she would dip each piece in cold milk, then drop it into a paper bag with flour, salt and pepper. She would heat the oil (or shortening, in the olden days) and she would remove each piece of floured chicken and carefully put it in the hot oil and fry the chichen to a nice golden brown. At that point, she would pour hot water in the bottom of the skillet, put the lid on and steam the chicken for several minutes. When it was done, she removed it to a platter and proceeded to make the best chicken gravy in the world. She would stir flour into the skillet, brown it for a few minutes, stirring it constantly, then stir in milk...just the right amount and cooked it until it was just right. We always had a large bowl of fluffy mashed potatoes...I was the potato peeler in this operation. There was no such thing as "instant mashed potatoes" in those days and Mom never used Cream of Mushroom soup in her chicken gravy. We always had a vegetable and or salad and almost always there was dessert. My favorites were Bread Pudding, or Rhubarb pie or Chocolate Pudding.
We often had Chicken fried steak, or pork chops, even rabbit and my favorite liver and onions. . . yes Darin, I still love liver and onions! That is what dinner was like at my house while I was growing up.
I must respond to Darin's comments about about what dinner time in the Nelson house was like. First of all, we did not just survive on canned vegetables...we did have celery(which you did mention) carrots, cabbage, cauliflower, brocolli, parsnips, potatoes and probably more. Maybe you didn't like most of those.
And no it wasn't me who said that we used to walk to school "barefoot" in the snow,BUT we did walk to school in the snow, but often with cardboard on the inside of our shoes, to cover the holes in the soles! Don't think any of you kids had to do that.
Okay, put the tissues away, there are other serious issues to discuss.
I really don't remember inspecting your pork chop bones, but it could have happened...as you said yourself, Dad and I were raised in the "depression era".
I do remember the "clean up your plate" rule but 1 AM, that's a total exageration!!! That was past MY bedtime.
Your Dad and I were forced to clean up our plates when we were growing up because if we didn't, we were reminded about all the poor children in China who were starving. When you are only 4 or 5 years old, that must have meant to us, that if we cleaned our plate, we could actually save a poor child in China from starving to death...that makes sense doesn't it???
Yes Courtney, I really hated spilled milk, but looking back, I must admit, there are a few things that might be worse than spilled milk!
And Darin, tomorrow we are going to the Middletown Senior Center for
liver and onions!!!!
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