Essential Ingredients of Life: Food and Love

When I was growing up in Lakeview, food was a simple affair, but it was always there and I had no sense of any shortages. There was not a lot of variety, but we had our favorites and my mother made them often.

One of the most favorite of all was chicken and noodles. Mom would mix up a batch of flour and eggs and roll it out into a big round pie crust shape. Then she would cut the noodle strips by hand with a knife. When cooked, they always looked quite lumpy and irregular, unlike the pasta noodles you can buy in the store. Then Mom made a thick broth of chicken stock and chunks of chicken. This was thick like gravy, not like soup. I assume she must have thickened this sauce with corn starch, but I didn’t pay much attention to the details when Mom was doing the cooking. Although this was quite a cheap meal for the family, we always felt like we were eating like kings when we ate this delicious home-made delicacy.

Another favorite was deep-fried scones. My mother made some kind of bread dough and proceeded to shape them like donuts. The family would all sit around the table with an electric skillet in the center. It had about an inch of vegetable oil in it and we were always warned to be very careful not to get burned by the hot oil. Mom would add about four or five of the donut shaped lumps of dough to the hot oil and we would watch with fascination as they floated around in a sea of bubbles. The dough turned golden brown on the bottom and then Mom would turn them over to cook on the other side. Then she would place the hot scone on a plate in front of each person. We would add butter and honey and consume them with gusto as soon as they were cool enough to pick up. This cycle was repeated as many times as our stomachs could handle. It was like eating dessert for dinner and we never got tired of this meal.

A memory that has been burned into my brain by the repetition of the ritual happened on Sunday evenings after we came home from evening church. My mother always made a big pile of cinnamon toast. This was done in the oven instead of a toaster. Mom would butter about a dozen slices of bread and sprinkle on the cinnamon and sugar mixture. Then she would put them on a large cookie sheet and put it under the broiler in the oven until the butter began to bubble and the bread turned brown and crispy. She would also make a big pot of hot cocoa to go with the cinnamon toast. Then we would eat this yummy treat while we watched “The Twentieth Century” with Walter Cronkite as the announcer. I remember seeing a lot of footage of things blowing up. The stories seemed to be mostly about battles that happened during World War II. We must have watched other shows as well because I remember watching the Ed Sullivan Show too. One of my favorite acts was about a puppet named Topo Gigio.

At the end of the act, Ed would always kiss Topo on the cheek and make him giggle with embarrassment. It was a magical time for a family of little kids.

We also ate a lot of venison in those days because we could rarely afford to buy beef. My father would always go deer hunting every year and it seems that he almost always brought home a deer. My mother wasn’t very fond of the taste of the deer meat, but the kids didn’t know the difference, so we thought it was quite good.

My final memory of good eating was breakfast. Mom always made a big pot of cream of wheat. The box was not very politically correct.

I remember adding lots of brown sugar and butter, then a little milk. I always tried not to stir it too much so I could concentrate on the puddles of butter and sugar first.

The point of this story is that our favorite foods were somewhat poor in nutrition by today’s standards. They were mostly cheap starches and fats. However, there was no shortage of love in our little family. I guess money and riches are not vital ingredients of happiness because I remember those days as good times with great traditions.