September 25, 2011
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Day 13 Random food memories
Mom, Dad, Anna, and John–you guys gotta help me add to these memories! I know I am missing some good ones…
I don’t like chocolate. On my mother’s side of the family, liking chocolate is a part of being female. They have questioned if I am adopted. I blame my father. As the story goes, my mom went off to do some shopping, and when she got home, my dad was feeding me chocolate cake and braunschweiger. I was six months old. I haven’t liked either since.
My parents helped out with the youth group at church when I was little. I loved it because I always got to sit on the cool older kids’ lap during church. One weekend, we had some of the teens over to our house. Daddy had gotten Limburger cheese the day before. If you have never had Limburger cheese, that is because the stuff is not normal. I have never eaten it either, but only because I cannot get close enough to it without being revolted. It smells horrible.
I don’t know how it started, I just remember sitting in the bathroom—the only room in the house that had a lock—with six or seven teen agers, because dad was chasing us with Limburger cheese. It ended up being a chase around the whole neighborhood. From the graphic memories that I have, I think the Limburger cheese won.
My dad grew up on a farm. He decided that Anna and I should have farm experience, even if we lived in the suburbs. So he brought home some baby chickens. These baby chickens grew quickly. Anna and I took care of them, feeding them, corralling them in the back yard, catching them when they got lose (once, a baffled looking guy sat in his car after I chased the chickens back into the yard saying “wow! I really saw the chicken cross the road!”).
Even though we were warned not to name them, they still got names. And six weeks later, dad set up “the block.” The block was a thick piece of wood that had two nails in it, with just enough space between them to slide the neck of a chicken…
Mom was chosen to help hold the chicken while dad positioned the neck and then sliced. Anna and I ran inside and cried. Mom wasn’t much of a country girl either, and screamed and apologized to the first chicken after it went running around headless (yes, it really happens). As the story goes, somehow when my dad went to reach into the chicken to clean out the organs and such, the air suction created a noise and my mom was SURE it was talking.
But dad did make the best BBQ chicken ever. Another part of him growing up a farm boy meant he had a green thumb. We always had an amazing garden. I am told that I used to slip out of my diaper and run striking out the back door to the raspberry patch. Makes sense to me. Raspberries are still my favorite fruit today.
I remember summer nights of fresh green beans and tomatoes. You don’t need much more. One particular year we had a bumper crop of tomatoes. Anyone who has had tomatoes knows it is about impossible to keep up with them. After awhile, some of them just get wasted. Well, not our tomato patch. The next door neighbor boy and I had the most fantastic rotten tomato fight. Epic. I think that should be a part of everyone’s childhood.
My mom always made my dad’s lunch growing up. In fact, she still does the whole brown paper bag thing. I can remember “helping” her when I was little, standing on a chair to help spread the mustard on the sandwich. But the special part was always the napkin. I would get to help write a “secret” message on it (normally it was “I love you”). Even now when I return home, I hear mom moving around the kitchen, making dad’s lunch. It is just a part of how things work.
We didn’t have a lot of money when I was little. It was the best thing ever. The neighbor kids didn’t always get it though. They thought I was a little strange. When I was turning eight and was asked what I wanted for my birthday, I said “I want REAL milk.” At that time, instant milk was cheaper, and so that is what we got. And I hated it. The frozen orange juice, the kind with the pulp, was cheaper as well, so that was what we got. And I hated it.
Every morning my mother would put a glass of instant milk and pulpy orange juice on the table, and tell me I needed to drink it before lunch was over. My mom also had a lot of health problems during this time, so could not keep a very close eye on me. And I knew it. I tried a couple of different options before finding my escape of choice.
I tried pouring the milk and juice down the drain, but I was too short. I had to move a chair to the sink, climb up with the cups…and it made too much noise. I also tried pouring it down the toilet, but it looked pretty suspicious carrying a glass of milk into the bathroom. But then I found it. The heating and cooling duct. Right there in the kitchen—a hole where things magically disappeared.
Fast forward 10 years. We were sitting around the table telling old stories and laughing. Someone brought up instant milk. I brought up how I hated it and found ways around actually drinking it. Silence at the table. Apparently, two and two had never been put together: the mysterious sticky duct leak, and Rachel not complaining about drinking her milk and juice anymore. Mystery solved.
Cod liver oil was even worse than Limburger cheese because we weren’t allowed to run away from this one—we had to drink it. Taking pills is fine, but imagine a spoonful of the real stuff. Perhaps it is time and my imagination, but I remember it being green and slimy as well. Slimier than normal oil. But yes—come cold season, my whole family lined up and got our cod liver oil.
My father is one of those people who likes everything. Really. And he thinks it is educational for you to try everything as well. Good thing he forgot where he stopped and bought that brain sandwich in Michigan. Liver, tongue, and sauerkraut were my worse memories, trying to chew without breathing and thinking “Why can’t I just be in a normal family?”
We were taught that you eat everything that is put on your plate. Period. Our neighbors did not have the same rules at home, but they sure did when they came to our house. Cathy was known for being able to slice a lima bean into eight pieces, and then carefully gulp each one down like a vitamin pill. But Becky’s story was better.
Becky, four years old, came over for a weekend while her little sister was being born. She never complained about the food, but she also just didn’t eat. When we finally went out for ice cream one night, dad got us each big cones, knowing we’d need help with the “drips.” He reached for mine and helped out, and by the time he reached for Becky’s, there was nothing left.
One of our favorite meals to cook together as a family was egg rolls. Dad would get out the wok and knew how to fry them up just right. Mom would cut up the vegetables, and Anna and I would roll them up in the wrappers. Sometimes, if we were lucky, mom would make tapioca for dessert.
Sunday nights were made for popcorn. When we were little, mom read Laura Ingles Wilder books out loud to us. In the story about her growing up in the big woods, it talks about how she liked to eat her popcorn with milk. So my Sunday nights consisted of a big glass of milk stuffed to the brim with popcorn, with cheese on the side.
