Cooking
We’ve been doing a lot more cooking during this pandemic, similar to when we were first married and couldn’t afford to eat out. My wife is digging out old favorite recipes that bring back lots of fond memories. Except back then, I was skinny as a rail and there was no need to really watch the calories like now. That means a lot more fish and salads and a lot less red meat and french fries.
My duties during our cooking escapades haven’t changed much, being the gofer (no, not golfer!), cutting up veggies, doing the occasional taste test and for sure cleaning up afterwards.
If the meal entails any kind of grilling, I gladly head outside while she does the inside prep. During the winter we use a George Foreman grill, which is twice as fast as the outdoor grill since it cooks both sides simultaneously. But it has to be cleaned, and it sure is not the same as flipping some burgers and sucking down some suds on the deck outside our kitchen.
Growing up with three sisters who helped Mom prepare meals, plus with Dad & I tending to the cows, hogs and chickens meant my cooking skills were non-existent. Moving to Dayton after high school was a challenge cooking-wise, so I had to improvise regarding meals. At the time, I was attending Sinclair Community College during the day while working at Frigidaire Division of General Motors on the night shift. Sinclair was located in the Dayton YMCA which has a great cafeteria that gave nice discounts to students. And at Frigidaire, I worked in their cafeteria during the dinner break, which paid a small stipend and provided free meals! That meant breakfast was my responsibility, with my favorite self-cooked meal being scrambled eggs with canned mushrooms. I lived at a boarding house on Riverside Drive owned by Mrs. Orsi, whom I’ve written about in this previous blog. Once a week, Mrs. Orsi would make a meal for her boarders, which was a real treat. And on weekends, it was back to Mom’s wonderful home cooking.
Eventually, I mastered the art of making grilled cheese sandwiches and canned tomato soup, but that meal and the scrambled eggs & mushrooms were just about the limit of my cooking skills. Although I do recall eating plenty of Swanson TV dinners, which were invented about that time since the TV’s itself was relatively new. But microwave ovens did not exist, so it meant heating them forever in the oven.
So when we got married, my wife had to unfortunately carry the load when it came to meal planning and preparation; thankfully a strong suit among many others. But she has a single shortcoming when it comes to cooking because she does not like to bake. That meant few if any desserts, especially my favorite pies!
So I fell in love with the pies of Marie Callender, a California woman who started baking at home for a local deli and turned that into a chain of 146 restaurants and a frozen-entree business. Recently, several years after Marie had died at age 88, the company went bankrupt and I was devastated. But after the restructuring, the pies are now again being sold. Happy days!
My love for pie came from my Mother who loved to bake as described in this blogpost about her rhubarb pie making talents. Back then, I loved a big piece of Mom’s pie right out of the oven with a scoop of ice cream on top. Now it’s a squirt from a can of Reddi-Wip over a microwaved sliver of Marie’s pie!
Probably the best meal I now make is sausage and sauerkraut, using homemade sausage from Buschur’s Market purchased each time we make a trip down to Russia to visit my wife’s mother. The unique aroma of my cooking would permeate the kitchen and seem to hang around till the next day long after the meal was over. They don’t call us “cabbage heads" for nothing!
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