I am thinking about food and my relationship to it. I am sure that my mother's dysfunctional eating has rubbed off on me. As a child, I had a love hate relationship to food. My Mother would make me , force me , to eat things that I hated. I would be threatened with punishment for not eating. Cream chipped beef on toast or fried fish from a solid frozen and thawed block are early examples of foods that I tried to take a stand against. There was also corn beef in any manifestation and the dreaded green bean green bean casserole. To this day, I cannot eat green beans.
She was a terrible cook but had some classic and some weird American recipes that she would go back to. She cooked these same dishes for years and years yet always had to refer to the the ingredient stained recipe card for the instructions. She would make a dish called " Jet- Age Chicken" ...what a funny name when you think about it. It consisted of chicken parts and some soupy mixture that was cooked in a deep pot. She must have gotten the recipe from some woman's magazine because she did not get it from my Grandmother. My Grandmother , that I can remember, was not a good cook. In fact, I only remember her cooking prunes. There were always prunes stewing on her range top.
My mother made the standard hamburger casserole and tuna casserole with Campbell's cream of mushroom soup and with crushed potato chips on top . But she also made my favorite, " Clam Pie", a combination of potatoes, celery and canned clams, baked inside of a pre bought pie crust. I loved all three of these dishes and so did my Father. He put a big slab of margarine on top of almost everything he ate. It was especially good on the steaming hot clam pie.
Why were we eating margarine back then? It's not like we were cutting back on calories. It just seemed the right thing to do. So much of it was being made at the time, it seemed the modern thing to do. I think our brand was "Imperial" it melted very slowly. My father would put margarine on everything.
Had he not, might he have lived longer, I wonder. He was famous for putting margarine on saltine crackers.
My father was a eclectic cook. He liked to come up with odd concoctions. He was also the meat griller. My Mother would never cook meat on the grill , outside. That was a man's job. Later in life he started cooking inside, perhaps out of boredom, perhaps because he couldn't stand my Mother's cooking anymore. He always made chili. I loved his chili. He made it with so much love. He didn't need any recipe. He kept a part of the chili, froze it and called it "the mother" and used it for the next batch...and repeated this for years.
I loved to eat liver wurst and red onion sandwiches on white bread with mayonnaise with him. I inherited my love of clams from him. he taught me how to eat Ipswich clams by taking the skin off the foot, which he called the "stovepipe". There were the clam steams that he arranged. They would feature the steam clams, potatoes and sausage wrapped in cheesecloth and then put in a big steamer pot. We loved raw clams, by the dozen and oysters. We were big fans of the very rich Campbell's Oyster Stew. He would take me for fishfrys and fried clams at all you could eat buffets.
He went to every diner he could find for a cup of soup and a cup of coffee. He was a diner maven and the diner people knew him and loved him. His most frequent was The 76 Diner in Latham. They all knew him and mourned his passing. In fact, he had a stroke in the Hoffman Diner in Latham. As far as diners go, 76 is a souped up over the top Greek diner with many glass cases filled with every possible pie imaginable. My father is probably in a similar diner, right now, in heaven, chatting someone up, having a cup of pea soup with buttered crackers.
My favorite thing he made was pancakes ( Bisquick) topped with Campbell's cream of chicken soup and of course, margarine. I have never had anyone that I shared this dish with, think that this sounded good, but it is delicious. I have tried to convince people to try this over the years, but no one ever takes to it .
From what I can remember, this originated from my Fathers Father, Grandpa La Barge. He had some type of contest to see who could come up,with the best pancake topper...and cream of chicken soup won.
When I am sad or feeling lonely , I often make pancakes with cream of chicken soup. Perhaps it makes feel feel a little closer to my Father. Perhaps it feels like a reward in a way. It's like eating love...taking it in. Making those pancakes was a way for my Father to express his love. He even made little ones for the dogs called "panny-cakes" and they had cream of chicken soup too. But no margarine for them.
My Mother had an unhappy relationship with food. I recall her always eating food out of a bowl. I can see her at the kitchen table, sitting in her chair , in her place ( does everyone else's family have their silently assigned seats at the kitchen table?) with a bowl. In the morning it would always be shredded wheat cereal.
She would be crunching away and then she would finish by drinking the sugared milk. At lunch, she would be found in the same place, with a bowl, but this time eating , always, iceberg lettuce and cottage cheese. She would have a normal dinner, but after, for years and years, she would have a big bowl of store brand ice cream. She liked the cheap ice cream that was a mix of all ice creams, like rocky road. She eventually gave up the ice cream. I wonder if she substituted it with something else in a bowl.
My mother was always over weight when I was around. When she was younger, I think she was in good shape, but perhaps giving birth to me was the point where she couldn't fight the extra weight anymore. I only remember her being always somewhat over weight, maybe 15 pounds. . I know she felt conscious of it. She would feel better if she felt I was over weight too. She would purposefully buy clothes for me that were too big...and she knew they were too big. She got some kind of satisfaction out of the back handed gesture.
I was taught that if you do something good, your reward would be food...usually a lobster. Having a lobster was a big thing to me. It still is really, although now, I am incapable of cooking them myself. Of course, she wouldn't cook the lobster, we would go out , usually to a local place called The Lobster Pound. We would go there for graduations and birthdays. It was the biggest thing in the world to me. It was the ultimate reward. Lobster equals edible love...
There was also chocolate at Easter ...one drug store chocolate solid bunny about 12" high. To this day, I feel gypped if I don't have a solid chocolate bunny on Easter and it must be solid or I don't feel loved...and I don't have to have a loved one to feel the love . I can buy it myself and feel just as good.
It represents love in some long lost childhood way.
For a few years my parents took me to a very fancy ski resort in Canada with a group,of friends and their kids. We rented a big house that was part of the resort .Everyday we would have breakfast and dinner in the fabulously large dining room that looked out onto the slopes. I had never seen so much food and it was fancy French food. You would have to choose from an extensive menu and every evening it was different. If food equaled love to me, this was like an orgy at the playboy mansion...
There were every kind of parfait you could imagine . They looked like many colorful barbershop poles in tall glasses with exotic french names. There were Baked Alaska's on fire being carried on a waiters shoulder through the dining room...there was cherries jubilee ....napoleons, why am I only remembering the desserts? There was chocolate mousse, all you could eat.
I had never seen anything like it . I was able to eat anything I wanted and I was having fun! All of this was so far from my usual reality.
So now I think about what food means to me in my life and its easy to see how eating is a way to attempt to feel that love again from the past. Eating equals love, eating the same thing over and over, like my mother in her chair with her bowl equals consistency and safety. Eating brings me closer to those feelings that could never be expressed in words or actions. It tamps down sadness and loneliness . But, in the end the heart remains empty, like the cold metal sound of the spoon hitting the bottom of the empty bowl. Love should be found elsewhere.
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