10.15.2003
12:44 p.m.
Food and family
*phew!*
Now that the insanity is mostly over, I can finally update.
Two of my co-workers left this morning for the home office in FLORIDA, so my happy ass will be doing three people's jobs through Friday. Anyone want to place a bet on how long it take me to snap and shove a pen into someone's eye? I give me until about noon tomorrow. Anyone else?
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DivaMel's entry from last night/today makes me want to talk about what food was like growing up in my house. It's quite a bit different than her experience, I can assure you.
Our house mostly featured my dad preparing the meals before my mom got home from work, since he worked at home and was near the stove anyway. We often had pork chops or steak or chicken with vegetables and other wholesome, healthy stuff. Occasionally my mom would come home from work and cook something, often resulting in what we called Mommy Surprise. Some of the things she invented tasted pretty good, like the Campbells soup mixed with rice and chicken breasts and baked in the oven. Some of the things would be tasted, thrown in the garbage, and pizza would then be ordered. The fun thing about Mommy Surprise was that you never really knew how it would turn out.
When I got to be around 12 or so, I was often paid $5 a week to make at least 3 or 4 dinners. I got to be a pretty darn good cook. I'd make things like salsa chicken with cornbread muffins, or chicken with Mrs. Dash seasoning and Stovetop stuffing.
Once my sister and I took Home Economics in 8th grade, we would come home from school and bake. Cinnamon rolls from scratch, turnovers, cookies, bread, you name it. My mom used to LOVE coming home to the smell of baked goods that would fill the kitchen. (The stack of dirty dishes in the sink, however, would tend to make her cry and sometimes yell.)
As we got older, the home-cooked dinners happened less and less. We would either go out somewhere, or have a tuna fish sandwich, or something that required about that much preparation. (My 2-1/2 year vegetarianism in high school didn't really help matters much.) My sister and I looked forward to holidays like Easter, Thanksgiving and Christmas simply because we knew we'd get a huge delicious home-cooked meal. I used to LOVE waking up on Thanksgiving morning and being able to smell the turkey cooking in the oven.
After my ex's and my break-up when I was 21, I moved back in with my parents for about 6 months. During that period, it was sort of a Mexican stand-off to see who would finally break down and get groceries. We often had potato chips and water in the house, but not much else. I ate nearly all of my meals at fast food places. I used to entertain myself by looking in the cabinets where there used to be food, seeing the box of graham crackers or whatever random food was in there, and then going out somewhere to get some real food.
Now that we're out of the house, we sometimes go back to my parents' house for dinner. My mom actually cooks MORE for us now that we aren't living there. Isn't it supposed to be the other way around? *grin*
And I get fed well at my house. My husband makes a damn good wife in the cooking sense, let me tell you. He even lets me get away with my brief periods of fasting and mono diets, which I appreciate. As long as he gets fed, he doesn't really care.
At least with my parents lack of cooking now, it's always easy to buy them gifts for different holidays. Gift certificates to Main Street Pub or Olive Garden are always well received, and I know that they will always get used.
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