Kicthen Tables...

 

 

The Irish, by nature, cannot cook unless they're taught how. The reason for this is due to what you can grow in Ireland which is mostly root crops. Though at one time wheat was grown but that was exported and finally abandoned when it was discovered that beef gave a bigger bang for profit on export. With cattle you need grazing lands and wheat fields don't cut it. The peasants can subsist on potatoes as they needed far less acreage to produce enough food for a year. If the Irish peasant didn't like it, tough cookies, he didn't own the land and had no say. If he kept complaining the Constabulary showed up to rip up the thatch roof on his house. Know and keep your place, you Irish pig!

So there you have it, dull root crops to eat. Throw it all in a pot to boil too. Add spices and herbs? Well, that took away land from growing root crops and all you had was native caraway, sage, thyme and rosemary. No problem, the English suffered too from a lack of natural flavoring and their food was just as dull. The only farmers of herbs and spices, the few that were available happened at the Irish monasteries and the monks there were looking to distill medicines out of them.

Know who had killer herbs, spices and access to trade routes? The Italians. Basil, bay leaves, oregano, black pepper, cloves, coriander, cumin, lavender, GARLIC, cilantro, fennel, mint, saffron, blood oranges, lemons... If they couldn't grow it they could barter for the really odd stuff coming out of the Arab states and even as far as China for ginger.

Imagine what you can cook with that vs. the Irish. Geography makes the cuisine!

**

My Mom unfortunately never could cook. Her idea of spicing up a meal was to toss McCormick's Dried Onion flakes onto burgers. I could smell them burning in the grease from my room upstairs. One time when I was 8, playing with an F-4 Phantom jet model I had, I could smell the McCormicks and I got a low grade headache. It sounds awful to say but my Mom's meatloaf was either boring or...disgusting. My brother and I would fetch the ketchup bottle out of the fridge and douse the meat with it. When asked by our Dad one night, at the kitchen table, with Mom present, why we did that my brother and I answered, almost in unison...

“To kill the taste.”

I shit you not. Talk about a total lack of manners and sensitivity to Mom! Odd thing though, not a word of rebuttal came from Dad or Mom when we said that. So...they agreed?

On Sundays it was the BIG meal when families did such things back then. Every god damn Sunday it would be “eye of round” roast. My brother and I could smell it being over cooked from our rooms and we both we dreaded it. We both could not help but to complain about it at the kitchen table as kids do. To my parents, this was a feast because it apparently was “expensive” and being kids from the Depression, this was a rare treat. If fact we were told oh-too-many times by our Dad how lucky we even had meat this good. “Shut up your complaining and eat it...I just had sandwiches for Sunday during the Depression as a kid!”

So out of the oven came this small blackened meteorite. It was served with boiled potatoes and boiled carrots. If not carrots, then those awful canned Le Sueur grayish peas. My Dad wanted the ends of the beef because they were the most cremated. I hoped that I'd get a piece closer to the center because it may be, by luck, more tender. The grayed slice would be plopped on my plate and I'd start cutting it like a surgeon, to debride out all the veins of gristle that ran through it. I'd make a little pile of them to the side of the plate. Why? Because at the time many of my teeth had apical abscesses and it chewing anything tough made them hurt. That was why I prayed for the center cut, there might be a chance it was soft enough and I excised the gristle anyway. As for the root tip infections in my teeth, that's another story for another time. (Hint: School nurse involvement!)

So, my brother and I would gag it down as quickly as possible. We eventually had learned to stop complaining and bolt the food down and we'd be away from the table as soon as we could. Later, if we were lucky, there might be a good movie on channel 56. Sunday TV was tough as it was all news shows and f'ing golf. If I ever see Jack Nicklaus...I may spit on him for hogging the TV channels so much with his damn golf career. They lionized him then like they did with Peyton Manning or Tiger Woods now. Look, if all three died crashing into a gasoline tanker truck, tasting their own blood and burned like that eye of round roast I once knew, golf and football will not cease to exist because they're gone. Sorry guys, you are NOT Gods.

Anyways...

On rare occasions, my Mom would buy a Chef Boyardee's Italian (yes, specified as “Italian”) Spaghetti & Meatball kit. It came with pre-seasoned tomato sauce, spice packets for making the meatballs, instructions and a small can of Parmesan cheese. She once re-read the instruction booklet in some disbelief as it said to simmer the sauce and meatballs for 30 minutes.

“That sounds wrong...seems too long.” she opined to us once. Hell, what did she know. This from a women who never once bought dried granulated garlic for the cupboard.

Even through the wait, my brother and I were salivating as this sauce bubbled away. The kitchen actually smelled wonderful for once. He and I dove into it once it was on our plates. Re read that, we scarfed down the Chef Boyardee for God's Sake. It's crap compared to a slap-together red sauce you might make yourself in a hurry.

**

It wasn't all misery. We used to go out to restaurants too. That was a nice reprise from the grub at home. One of Dad's favorites was Valle's by the airport in Warwick. I had like it because I discovered cubed steak there, nicely pre-chewed food for my sore teeth. He for the slabs of meat he could get on his plate. Add to that baked potatoes drowning in butter and decent, properly done veggies for once, I was a happy camper.

Except for one time...and a few hours later...not.

There was a special for blueberry pie one day at Valles's and my parents both ordered it. I instead wanted vanilla ice cream and my Dad put up a stink about how “I can get ice cream anywhere” and “This is the best blue berry pie around.” My Mom interceded by telling Dad, “Oh just let him have the ice cream” and he relented. When the desserts arrived, Dad, to rub it in, kept commenting to my Mom about how “wonderful” the pie was. He laid it on thick enough to where I just sat their, trying to enjoy my own ice cream hoping he'd just shut up.

Later on that night, when I was lying awake in bed, I could hear my Dad puking his guts out into the toilet with my Mom telling him:

“Richard! It was the pie! It tasted funny...spoiled to me when we ate it!”

“No it wasn'.....Arrrrgggh...Oooog (Splash!). Hack! Hack! Hack!......Ooooooog...a-huck, a-huck, a-huck....Arrrrrppp!” (Splash!)

Upstairs, I lay there in bed listening to this, with a mile wide smile on my face. 

 

 These peas...are the foulest things ever.