Thanks for the Memories

Ah, what was my first actual food memory? Hard to say, really. Never given it a whole lot of thought until now.

There is a black and white snapshot somewhere at my dad's house with me in a high chair, gnawing on the bone from a t-bone steak. Apparently, this was taken in the kitchen at my parents' apartment in Cicero, Illinois when I was about a year old. Mom and Dad were a young couple with not a lot of money, and Saturday night was steak for dinner, a tradition I remember well from later in my childhood. At any rate, during my teething phase, they used to give me the steak bone to chew on. I attribute my life-long love of steak and beef to this. Although I have no deep objection to meatless meals, I do have carnivorous little taste buds, which leads me to a favorite food memory from my childhood.

Many of my food memories involve my paternal grandfather. We spent a lot of time with my dad's family when I was growing up. Usually ate diner there once a week, and my brother and I always spent at least a week with them every summer when we were out of school. We took vacations up to Alexandria Bay, New York with them, too, where we spent a week at cabins owned by Harry and Frieda Coons. We fished the St. Lawrence Seaway, sometimes venturing way out towards the shipping lanes in that little rowboat with the 5 hp motor on it. But I digress from my discussion of beef. Grandpa had a big grill with a rotisserie on it, and at least once every summer, he'd start a fire with real charcoal, using a chimney starter (no steenkin' lighter fluid allowed!), and would rub a large sirloin tip or rump roast with Lawry's seasoned salt and cook it over the coals. I loved the crusty end pieces, with all the caramelized meat juices and that seasoned salt. I liked the rare to medium rare pieces from the center, too, even as a child. We'd toast marshmallows over the coals after dinner on sticks that we'd picked from the woods behind their house.

I remember our vacations with Grandma and Grandpa. The rule if you went fishing was that you baited your own hooks and kept quiet. No whining about a trip that started shortly after six a.m. and ended around 11, so you could clean the fish and have some lunch. I learned to fish without a bobber, as our lines with their lead weights were dropped some 20-30 feet down into the St. Lawrence River. I learned to tell by the way the tip of the pole jiggled when there was a fish on the line. We mostly caught bluegill and perch, but I can't remember a year when Grandpa, Grandma or my Dad didn't reel in a northern pike that was destined to become fish chowder. I remember my grandmother patiently sitting in the kitchen picking out every little pin bone in those fish! Apart from the fact that the recipe started with rendering the fat out of diced salt pork (which became delicious little cracklings that were sprinkled over your bowl of chowder), there was nothing else classically chowder-like about the soup. After the fat was rendered and the salt pork removed, onions, celery and carrots were softened with a little salt, pepper and dried thyme. Then a copious amount of water was put in the pot and things were allowed to simmer. After a bit, diced potatoes and crushed whole tomatoes were put in and allowed to simmer for awhile. We were usually setting the table, one of those old enamel-topped things where the leaves folded out to make enough room for us all, when the fish went in. I still make this from time to time, although I've tarted it up a bit by using chicken broth.

Overnights at Grandma and Grandpa's always involved a bedtime snack. The one I remember most was root beer and those big reddish-purple grapes with the big pips in them, but small dishes of pineapple sherbet were frequent offerings. The root beer was served in those stainless steel glasses that came in a host of bright colors. The big thing was picking your favorite color. I remember being especially fond of the dark turquoise one and the dark fuchsia one.

I remember my mom getting the recipe for chicken paprikash from Mrs. Gross, who babysat me and my brother when I was in kindergarten. Mrs. Gross was an older lady of Hungarian descent. I'd had paprikash at Mrs. Gross' house for lunch and it was one of my favorite things. I have the recipe from my mom's recipe box and it's something I make when I'm feeling indulgent as there's a scary amount of sour cream involved. It's a recipe that hails from a different era, though, and once in a while, on a cold winter day, it's the kind of comfort food that nurtures your battered soul and warms your heart.

Some of my favorite memories involve the Christmas cookies. Lord, I have all the recipes, and I am amazed at how my mother did it every year, especially when my brother and I were small. The first cookies I ever made, probably when I was about 8 years old, were the pineapple drop cookies. There were also Mayme Osburn's orange drop cookies, Elizabeth Steiner's cherry cream cheese tarts, pecan bars, date-nut bars (Dad's absolute favorite, and I still make them for him every year), heath bars, thumprints, Patty Kapusinski's lemon sugar cookie Christmas tree cutouts, Carolyn Strandberg's butter rum cheese bars, lemon bars, apricot bars and a filled Christmas tea ring or some stollen. This was in the days before things like cookie exchanges, and Mom always made lots and lots of cookies to make trays to give as gifts and take into the office. Still have most of the Christmas cookie tins, either here at my house or up at Dad's. As I got older, I helped with more of the recipes, and sometime in my late twenties and early thirties, my mom and I would have the best time baking together. Our relationship hadn't always been easy, so I remember those times quite fondly. Including the time we misread the thumbprint recipe and wound up with enough thumbprint cookie dough for the 8th Army! I still make the date nut bars and the sugar cookie cutouts and some of the easier or more decorative bar cookies every year, and they always bring good memories.

My mom was a good cook, which was a surprise to her family as my maternal grandmother wasn't known for her cooking (a fact which she freely admitted in her later years!), and was always trying new stuff. Some of it was good old stick to your ribs Midwestern casseroles gleaned from the ladies at church, but Mom used to get these recipe cards from Reader's Digest to make things like Quiche Lorraine and fondue. Since these are the recipes I remember, it must be my Swiss forebears shining through. They weren't really common dishes, though, in the Midwest during the sixties, so I'm sure I was eating things that sounded terribly exotic to my grade school classmates. I even remember Mom trying steak tartare, although my father insisted that it needed a good grilling and a bun!

Eating out was something we did most Friday nights. Usually, we wound up at Tonyo's, which later morphed into the Parasson's restaurant chain in the Akron area. But in my day, it was one narrow little restaurant with about 10 booths and a few tables. Nothing fancy, by any stretch of the imagination. Spaghetti and meatballs and pizza were the order of the day, along with salads that consisted of iceberg lettuce, a wan looking wedge of tomato, a few slices of pepperoni, a sprinkling of shredded mozzarella and a lone pepperoncini tossed with the house Italian dressing. I'm pretty sure the four of us were fed for about ten bucks. I forget the name of the place, but we'd also go have Chinese food at a place in downtown Akron, not far from where my dad worked at Cascade Plaza. For me in those days, it was wonton soup, shrimp chips and sweet and sour pork with fried rice. My taste buds have sure moved on, but I can't see sweet and sour pork on a menu without remembering it was one of my first forays into exotic cuisine, along with moo goo gai pan and shrimp with lobster sauce. The Brown Derby in Montrose was for birthday dinners. I can also remember what seemed like pilgrimages to Smithville Inn all the way out towards Wooster for family style chicken dinner in the Amish style. We also frequented all of the chicken dinner places in Barberton, but our favorite was Milich's, because it was right down the street from home. There used to be five chicken joints in Barberton, but now there are only four, and they still do a land office business on Sundays after church.

I remember we used to have a big Memorial Day picnic at our house with my mom's family every year. The Indy 500 would be on the radio in the background, and everyone brought a covered dish. I think it was mostly hot dogs and hamburgers, but one of my favorite things, even as a young child, was the bean salad my Aunt Rosie brought. My mom's youngest sister in a family of seven, Aunt Rosie had married my Uncle Tom right out of high school. Uncle Tom is Armenian, and the bean salad was one Aunt Rosie learned to make from his family. It was nothing more than cooked navy beans, some chopped tomatoes, a little diced onion and lots of chopped fresh parsley, dressed with lemon juice. It was an odd thing for a child to like as I recall, but I looked forward to it every year. I made it and took it to a reunion of mom's family (this was after she'd died) out at Lake Dorothy Park a few years back, and I think my uncle was touched. Aside from the fact that the man is scrupulous about a no-fat diet, having had two heart surgeries, and the dish being tailor-made for someone with his dietary restrictions, I think it meant something to him that I'd remember that one dish out of all the ones that had been served at those picnics all those years ago.

I remember eating both sardines and pickled pig's feet as a child, although I can't imagine it now. Oh, I'll have the occasional sardine, but I pick them over something fierce, quite unlike the way I ate them when I was little. I also clearly remember my paternal grandmother feeding me raw chicken hearts. It was like a little treat! Of course, that was also in the days before every living chicken carried salmonella and when you knew from where the meat and poultry came because you had a butcher with a little shop that knew you and your kith and kin. I also remember eating black bread and Limburger cheese at my grandparents. You can't find that black bread. It was a black Russian rye bread. And I do mean it was black. I've seen some pretty dark rye breads, and this was darker still. I'd still eat the Limburger, though. With the darkest rye I could find.

Well, enough memories for one post. I'm sure there will be others. Goodnight.