I Remember Mania ...

October 23, 2013:  It somehow makes perfect sense that I’d have had a grandmother named “Mania,” which was pronounced “Mahn-ya,” but certainly doesn’t look like it. Mania Andrusevich was my mother’s Polish mother, and she’s been on my mind lately in relation to food, parenting and the coming winter …

Just tonight, as I embarked on filling my gaping god hole with a marvelous concoction I’ve created and lately often indulged in that combines mashed potatoes, peas and chicken in a sort of shepherd’s pie filling, I thought of her and her selfless love giving in the guise of food.

This woman loved to make me food, in that old-world immigrant way that somehow seems a lost ghost our kids could never know or imagine. She lived in Manhattan on the Lower East Side and used to come up to Connecticut quite a lot for weekends. And she’d cook and cook. Saturday mornings I remember especially well, when she’d make an enormous pot of these simple potatoes that cooked for hours and tasted like nothing better than you could imagine.  And she’d make mashed potatoes and stuffed cabbage and meatballs and potatoes. (God, everything had potatoes in it.) And chicken soup and pancakes and pot roast and chicken with little potatoes all around it …

But it wasn’t just the awesome quality of this simple fare. It was the way in which she offered it. I lived with her in my late teens in the city, and I would come back to the apartment at one in the morning in a state of wasted gracelessness, trying to sneak in softly so she wouldn’t hear. But she always heard and would come out tut-tutting, would share her scolding comments, and then ask if I’d eaten. Then she’d literally prepare a salad, a fresh fried steak, French fries, and a bowl of frozen peas with those fabulous little pearl onions, and I’d sit like a dope in the living room and with squinting eyes watch Channel 9 Up All Night—this is back when there were less than 10 channels—and stuff my gob with this grand wealth of culinary love (or culinary enabling, depending on how cynical you’re feeling as you read this) …

When she died a couple years later, she left me with a quantum of guilt, for I recognized the extent of her selfless caretaking and love, and I knew I had never repaid it, or even perhaps never could have repaid it. That sucks when you’re like me and sometimes juggle the precarious self-esteem of Charlie Brown.

And so it goes, as my friend Linda Ellerbee always said. (At least I think she was my friend, though I never got a thank you for all that toffee I sent her.) Anyway, it goes … so …

But again today, as I scrambled to get the chicken parmegian made for my daughter’s dinner, and yesterday, when I made my son’s refried bean after-school snack, or this evening, when I was cooking the chicken for their lunches, or this morning, when I made their breakfasts, it got me to thinking about my grandmother …

And yes, one of the thoughts centered on how great it would be having her here so I could sleep in. But that was a passing thought, because—even though it qualifies as work, and I sometimes don’t have all the motivation I can muster—I really love doing it. It’s an honor, really, and a privilege to have them want me to make Glop (the recipe for which I provided in a recent Blah-ugh! posting), or to make a spaghetti sauce, or to bake something, or “that sandwich” I make … or the potatoes!

You get the idea …

And so we pay it forward, year after year, a collection of clueless clowns bumping our heads again the well wall of humanity's clouded stupidity, trying to find something that makes sense ... and it's the food. It was always the food ...

Tong Etiquette and Ass Bacteria

January 5, 2013:  Huzzah, huzzah! Yes, I'm fooling all of you by posting another post, right here at the Blah-ugh! ... And I'm doing so because it's important, you see, for despite the good turns America is taking in this millenium, it's certainly not practical for me to be sitting on my laurels -- or anyone else's -- at this point.

For starters, I know people were wondering how my stew turned out, and I can assure you that it was palatable, if not necessarily tasty. Today I tried another attempt in the guise of chicken, and I was very pleased with the result, though it gave me hives.

Actually, I wanted to post a post because of two food-related discoveries I made today, and this chicken was one of them. You see I realized that the secret to preparing chicken -- which I’ve always abhorred and suffered by – is to be really, really hungry when you’re cutting it up. You see, it’s so incredibly disgusting and gives me formidable heebeejeebies (and I’m sure I’m not spelling that right) that I’ve largely kept it off my menu entirely, except for the chicken that comes breaded and frozen and merely requires heating. Anyway, I found myself just throwing chicken caution to the wind today – leaving a remarkable variety of entrails and veiny things intact, and just throwing it all in the pan for consumption, because I was so bloody hungry that I had no compunction about eating any of it. (And let me tell you, over 150 Blah-ugh! entries and all this time I’ve been dying to use the word “compunction” in a post!)

The other food-related item is one I’ve had on my mind for a very long time, but never remember to get down – namely the issue of tong etiquette. It’s a ridiculous and remarkable phenomenon how people use their grubby hands on tongs and then lay them atop food. Have you watched salad bar behavior with the kind of hyper-vigilant fear that’s so much a part of my pathology? If you have, then you must have noticed how people somehow find it okay to lay the tongs directly atop the food. It’s so strange that no one things twice about it, and stranger still that people then pick up the tongs and serve themselves after the bacteria-infested paw prints of some knucklehead have been unsoundly transferred into the group food plate.

I spent some time observing it today at a social event. For a while I’d been eyeing a succulent cheese ball resting innocently in the middle of a large platter of handsome cold cuts. I was close to going over and showing it who was boss when, as if on movie cue, a fat woman came forward, grabbed the tongs and helped herself to a generous serving of salami and stuff, then thoughtlessly, unconsciously, laid the big black plastic tongs right there on top of everything, like it was custom … And it is, sad to say! … Then the next man did the exact same thing. And for one hopeful moment he couldn’t balance the tongs on the pile, but then he solved the little problem by just throwing them right on the middle of the plate, where they touched everything.

Like me, you’re probably thinking there’s a good chance either one of these people may have their hands up their asses, or perhaps somewhere worse, and now we were all going to share in their experience, though obviously without some of the same joys. Not me. This was one of those times when my acute paranoia and hyper-vigilant fear paid off … No ass salami for me!

Over the years I’ve adopted some intelligent practices when it comes to getting a share of group food. I’d share them with you, but in all likelihood it would somehow impede my progress were we to end up at a social event together. Suffice it to say, I’m not falling for any of this …

So that was my day, at least in part. I’m still wondering if and when I’ll ever find time to finish the myriad projects I’m involved in, or when I’ll at least have the nerve to start giving them less psychic energy … Most importantly, at this rate there’s a good chance that I’ll complete 150 new Blah-ugh! entries by the end of the year … But don’t count on it!

Memories of Coleytown Cafeteria Food

May 29, 2012:  Before I talk about the Killer Bees, as I've been promising to do (and the Brady Bunch), let me spend a few heartfelt minutes recounting the marvelous memories of the food they used to serve in the cafeteria of my old elementary school.

In yet another example of what seems to be a never-ending litany of things that were once, in the past, so much better, and now (because of greed and stupidity, and peripherals thereof) have come to suck shit, I can tell you we had awesome cafeteria food at Coleytown Elementary School in Westport, Connecticut, in the mid-1970s.

For starters, we ate on real plates -- unbreakable pink plastic plates that were washed every day by Herb the Janitor. How insane it is now that, with all our environmental overtures about recycling and all that bullshit, we only use the most disposable things we can in cafeterias and each day the custodians cart off a ton of plastic and styrofoam to the dumpster for god-knows-what stupid reason. (I don't even care what the reason is, even if you say the plastic plates put kids' health at risk, because I still maintain it's stupid and I stand by that, and I would much rather gamble on some kids getting a few cases of chemical poisoning than change my mind about it.)

Perhaps the most memorable lunch was Thursday's meatball grinder. "One or two meatballs," the cafeteria lady always asked each student before filling their grinder roll with the best sweet, saucy stuff you could imagine for the 60-cent price of a little red ticket. (I could never imagine why anyone would answer "One," but I guess some fools did.)

Spaghetti and meat sauce was also great, with a tasty salad and a mountain of pasta as good as you'd get in any family restaurant. (All the food seemed to be hearty and homemade, unlike the pre-prepped crap they pawn off today through the food service companies that inadvertently abuse our schools.)

Another awesome day was Wednesdays, when we often had turkey and mashed potatoes. The mashed were served with an ice cream scoop, and still today, it's hard to imagine anything tasting better. The turkey, which was lovely chunks of meat mixed into a sweet, gooey gravy, was delectable, and the spongy, olive-drab canned green beans were out of this world too (even though I usually didn't eat them).

Hamburgers and hot dogs were great days too, although in fifth grade I developed a reputation because I would literally smother these items with the condiments -- literally enough ketchup, mustard and relish to garnish six, heaped on my dog or hamburger. The cafeteria ladies would get mad at me, but I adamantly stood by my rights, like the little shit I was. (On a parallel note, I'm reminded of my best friend Debbie G. -- I think it was her -- and I making the creative discovery/proclamation some time around first grade that, as boys had hot dogs, what girls had must certainly be called hamburgers.)

Want more amazing? When we got to fifth grade we discovered that, since we were the last class eating, we could ask for seconds, and even thirds. The generous cafeteria ladies would heap enormous additional portions on our plates -- tons of turkey, spaghetti, extra french fries, and multiple ice cream scoops of mashed or, even better, delicious white rice prepared so perfectly sticky and tasty, I never ever since have tasted such a magnificent comforting delicacy.

And yet there was even more to experience than just amazing food. There was drama, entertainment, and mystery. I'll never forget the fearful risk one ran of being served by the woman who had no thumb. Usually she handled the desserts at the end of the line, but if it happened to come about that she was serving, it ended up warranting many minutes of discussion afterward. ("I saw it!" we'd exclaim, recounting the horror of how the skin had grown over the remaining knuckle.)

Most memorable, however, was the most surly lunch lady of them all, who, without fail -- day after day, for five straight years of my elementary experience -- would walk out into the large noisy lunchroom, literally holding up a big spoon like a character from Oliver Twist, and every single day, in a vaguely English voice that also sounded just like Fred Flintstone's mother-in-law, she would declare, "One lunch ticket missin'!"

She'd stand there waving the spoon like a pennant for a breath-holding moment while we all fell silent ... and waited, scared to speak ... until some stupid kid finally stood up and ran over to return the little ticket he'd forgotten to drop in the large, stout tin can with the paper pasted around outside. (It was probably the same kid each day, too.)

Day after day -- every day -- she said this, spoon in hand, every day ... And I've never forgotten the one and only time ever, in fifth grade, when she came out and shocked us all by announcing, "Two lunch tickets missin'!" (It's a moment burned in my memory as deeply as someone perhaps remembers where they were when Kennedy was shot.)

It was a delicious time, literally, and the memory is made all that much better by knowing that my new novel Space Case, which really isn't as new as it used to be, is now available in hard copy at Amazon. Get yours today and take a big bite!