Food memories...

        It's funny how certain meals enable emotional time travel in me. I know it's Sunday morning in the 1970s when I smell half burnt rye toast, hard boiled eggs, kielbasa and freshly made horseradish in the air. My ears perk up and the sounds of All star wrestling fills them, the war chant of Chief Jay Stongbow and stomping of Gorilla Monsoon. This was of course long before wrestling became fake.

     Some say wrestling was always fake, but just try to tell that to a seven year old true believer.

          We knew it was real. We knew a lot more than we do now, back then...

             I revel in the memories of the scents of bacon grease, cabbage soup on the back of our stove( I don't think it ever changed, just more was added as the contents diminished) and sausage stuffing on Thanksgiving. My mother made the best stuffed cabbages. I have changed the recipe a little to remove some of the labor that the real thing takes, but it still tastes very good.

   My moms cooking ability is strange. Some meals were absolutely amazing and others were God- awful. A few fit somewhere inbetween, but most were on the outside.

         I never knew meat could be cooked medium rare or even un-brick like. It took washing dishes at a good restaurant as a teenager to realize that steak could actually be tender.

               My mom was cooking for six other brothers and sisters with cubbard scraps when she was eight or nine years old. Her parents were gone for weeks at a time and she was left alone to raise and feed her siblings and to find the food. She could kill and dress a chicken by the age of six.

            So I really can't complain about her cooking...

          One of my favorite meals still is crushed Saltine crackers in milk. My Wonderful Wife nearly gags at the smell of it,  but this was one of the holdovers my mother passed on to me. I snack on this when the kids go to bed, sometimes and I get "that" look.

                 I just finished reheating a big pan of Lasagna that I baked a few weeks ago. We had it for dinner with a nice big romaine salad with garlic stuffed olives. I worked for an old Sicilian in his kitchen when i washed dishes and it must have rubbed off on me. I love Italian food, real Italian food and learned from him how to cook it fairly well.

        If you've read my posts for any amount of time you realize that I'm not the kind of guy who is well spoken. I write my thoughts much better than I could ever speak them. Generally, I cook much better than I write.

             I sometimes cook for Church members after they have children, have been in the hospital or if someone close has passed away. I never have the right words, but every now and then I can cook them the right meal. I am at my happiest cooking for people. I ran a pretty good restaurant kitchen once upon a time, but never got the same satisfaction as I get now.  Sometimes I cook for my extended family, smoked pork butt, briskett and homemade baked beans placed under the pork and beef racks to collect their drippings...

           There are people who I don't know very well that make my Wonderful Wife and son happy. I watch my son when he talks about his longest and best friend and hear the joy in my Wonderful Wife's voice as she talks about work outs and coffees with someone who became very special to her. 

    I cook for some people just because there are members of my family that loves them and maybe because it makes their day a little brighter. I cook sometimes for people because they have loved members of my family and made a big difference in their lives.

       It must have been the lasagna that got me thinking....