I still love making hamburgers on the grill. I guess whenever I eat them childhood memories come up for me.”
Last night was hot and muggy. Poor Gracie was panting so I turned the AC on in my bedroom. It was a delight feeling the chill, and we both slept deeply. Today is sunny but cool and tonight will be back to the 40’s. It rained sometime earlier this morning. I know only because the street was still wet when I woke up.
My mother cooked hamburger more than any other kind of meat. It was the cheapest and the most versatile. My favorite was always her meatloaf. From meal to meal it never really tasted the same. I know it had eggs and breadcrumbs but I have no idea what else she threw in for flavor. In those days herbs came from a bottle. My mother always had onion and garlic powder on hand as well as oregano and parsley. Sometimes her meatloaf had ketchup spread across the top with bacon strips covering the ketchup. We always wanted a piece with the crusty bacon. Sometimes she frosted the meatloaf with mashed potatoes and then would brown the tips in the oven. Every now and then we’d get a round meatloaf hand-formed and placed in a pie pan to cook.
We always thought ourselves quite the gourmands when my mother cooked her Chinese food. We had a chop suey sort of dish with hamburger, bean sprouts and water chestnuts. My mother always put crunchy chow mein noodles on the top. Then there was American chop suey, a name which still perplexes me today. It has nothing to do with chop suey; instead, it’s elbow macaroni, hamburger, tomato sauce and onions and peppers. My mother would sprinkle parmesan cheese from the green container on top.
Hamburgers were a summer staple grilled to perfection by my dad. I always wanted a cheeseburger, and my father would open the cellophane covering each piece of yellow cheese and crown the meat with the cheese. He’d put the top on the grill so the cheese would melt. My mother usually made potato salad. It didn’t matter how often we had hamburgers and hot dogs in the summer. I would have eaten them every night without complaint.
I think my mother was a bit of a magician in the kitchen. We never thought of how often we ate hamburger. All of those dishes tasted different to us and a couple were even exotic.
Explore posts in the same categories: MusingsTags: 40's tonight, American chop suey, bacon, cheeseburger, chillier day, chow mein, eggs and crumbs, grill, Hamburger, hot dogs, ketchup, meatloaf, muggy night, rain
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keepthecoffeecoming.blog 
May 12, 2015 at 1:49 pm
Hi Kat,
I just learned that the dish you and I call American Chop Suey is known in other parts of the country as American Goulash. Just this past week I ran across an article in WaPo and a blog which both dealt in whole or in part with American Goulash. Comments seemed to indicate that American Chop Suey may be a New England thing but I’m not sure.
My mother was an awful cook for most things except potato salad, meatloaf, stuffing and apple crisp. Her versions are still the best I’ve had though they are the simplest recipes. Her idea of exotic was adding 4 Seasons Italian Dressing to her potato salad.
My dad was the outdoor grill virtuoso. He couldn’t boil water inside on a stove but put him in the back yard with open flames under a grill grate and he was suddenly techno-barbecuing Escoffier. 🙂 Nowadays people do everything on the grill but in the 50’s nobody we knew was cooking a whole roast beef with all the fixings entirely on the grill. He even baked a cake just to see if he could. Smokey chocolate. Very interesting.
Cook outs at our house were fun and I miss them.
This morning at 6:30 AM it was 48ºF with a steady rain. I know this because I was out in it walking the dogs. Now it’s mostly cloudy and 73ºF and muggy. The house is still very cool, though, so I’m leaving the most of the windows and doors closed.
Enjoy the day.
May 12, 2015 at 2:19 pm
Hi Caryn,
I knew American Chop Suey was a New England term, but I didn’t realize it was goulash everywhere else. I looked up a recipe and saw many had paprika which is the difference I suppose.
We had hot dogs and hamburgers when we were kids. When we were adults my father expanded his grilling menus to include Italian sausages, Chinese sausages, steak tips, marinated chicken, pork and ribs. He always cooked the meat exactly right.
He sometimes set his shoes on fire with too much fluid for the charcoal. He’d yell fire and one of us would help put him out.
It is cloudy here as well and beginning to get muggy. I liked the cooler morning better.
Have a great evening!
May 12, 2015 at 5:39 pm
A lot of those recipes also used canned tomatoes or canned stewed tomatoes instead of tomato sauce. My mother used undrained canned tomatoes because that’s what her mother used. Her mother’s people were from Canada. Possibly that’s how they do it there.
The resulting dish was a mess of blown out pasta, bits of green peppers and onion, hamburg and watery tomato-y liquid. None of us liked it but she cooked it that way anyway even though she liked the way I made it. To her, mine was not American Chop Suey. It was spaghetti. 🙂
May 12, 2015 at 5:44 pm
I don’t remember my mother’s ever being watery. I think she used both tomato sauce and tomato paste. I remember it being thick and tasty.
May 12, 2015 at 2:15 pm
My mother was, as You know by now, not a wizard in the kitchen. Well she could have been an evil one but we never died from her food so I guess she wasn’t 🙂 🙂 🙂 We had lots of pasta when I grew up, hotdogs and ready made meatballs (which we all were grateful for because the ones she made could either be used as bullets or used to sand on icy roads 🙂 🙂 🙂
We also had lots of mashed turnips, something I to this day refuse to eat. Too bad really because she really could make that but we just had it too often 🙂 I have to admit that she has never failed to boil perfect soft-boiled eggs 🙂 She is better now days though and has even tried more exotic recipes (well exotic for her). Ready sliced cheese is something that didn’t excist when I grew up, it’s just reacently they’ve started to sell that in the stores. I never understood why they sold that abroad since it was so easy to slice oneself 🙂 The Norwegians invented a perfect cheese slicer that is a must in every home here. I’ve heard it almost doesn’t excist outside Scandinavia but I’m not sure that’s true.
Hamburgers was something we bought in the hotdog stand, until McDonalds arrived, or if we visited one of my aunts who grilled them perfectly. She was also the one that bought the first Kiwi fruit in our family. We did think the fruit had its pluses but the furry skin sort of destroyed it all 🙂 🙂 🙂 Next tine we ate one we removed that first 🙂
Rainy here all day but fairly warm.
Have a great day!
Christer.
May 12, 2015 at 2:25 pm
Christer,
I always laugh at the descriptions you give of your mother’s cooking. Saturday night was always hot dogs, beans and brown bread. It was the same in many New England homes.
We didn’t have much pasta. I don’t know why. It would have been a cheaper meal. I love turnip but hated it when I was a kid. My mother never served it to us. We had soft-boiled eggs on many a winter morning before walking to school.
I only buy sliced cheese at the deli where they slice it for me right then. Mostly it is cheddar or provolone for my sandwiches.
Carroll’s was the first burger drive-in place in town. The burgers were 15 cents. I don’t even think that town where I grew up has a McDonald’s even now. They do have a Burger King. Here my little town has a Burger King, no McDonalds either.
I don’t like peaches because of their fur!
Have a great evening!!
May 12, 2015 at 2:35 pm
Never ever would my grandmother have allowed this new American stuff called hamburgers in her kitchen but we’ve had basically the same just called Frikadellen, popular traditional meatballs usually with potato salad and mustard. To be exact an old-fashioned Frikadelle is minced meat mixed with onions, bread crumbs or old bread and egg but whatever you mix in, if it looks like a Frikadelle it is a Frikadelle.
Btw, we sometimes eat Americans. It’s a soft sweet flat shortbread with sugar icing.
May 12, 2015 at 5:07 pm
Birgit,
Good thing you never ate hamburgers. Good thing your Frikadellen wasn’t made just like our hamburgers and meatloaf.
Your Americans sound sweet!!
May 12, 2015 at 10:42 pm
My mother and grandmother always referred to ground beef as chop meat. I don’t think my grandmother ever ate grilled meat of any kind and cooked chop meat in meat loaf and as stuffing for pasta pies called kreplach. They are the Eastern European Jewish version of ravioli, pot stickers or porogies. I think every culture makes a version of meat stuffed dumplings either boiled, fried or served in soup. My mother made meat loaf and hamburgers on a regular basis. I think grilling over charcoal was a right reserved for fathers in the 1950s. There was a Sunday ritual of starting the fire and tending the coals and cooking the meat. My father graduated from the grill to the smoker and became the king of barbecue in our neighborhood. He would smoke baby back ribs or a brisket slowly for hours in the back yard. The smell of smoking mesquite or hickory chips filled the air.
Another nice day with a chance of more rain tonight and tomorrow. Some of the area lakes and the Trinity river are now above flood stage. It’s either feast or famine. This Spring when it rains it pours.
May 12, 2015 at 10:54 pm
Bob,
I never heard my grandmothers referencing hamburger so I have no idea what they might have called it. My grandmothers never ate grilled meat either. My mother never made any meat stuffed dumplings. She bought ravioli but never made it herself.
My dad was definitely the grill man. I think it harkens back to cave men hauling home the meat. He used charcoal briquets which always smelled a bit like chemicals to me. I always use wood charcoal instead. It has the best aroma.
Nice day here too but it will be getting colder for the next few nights, down to the 40’s. My sister in Colorado got snow on Sunday and could see her breath this morning.
May 15, 2015 at 10:44 am
I was just talking about this the other day. When my older children & I grew up hamburger was so much cheaper, it is now $4.00lb on sale. Chicken breasts and pork loin can be found for $1.99lb on sale.
I look forward to burgers on the grill and meatloaf more than anything lol.
May 15, 2015 at 11:05 am
splendid,
My mother probably bought cheap meat as well so it was even more economical. I love cheeseburgers, but I also love chicken and pork on the grill. I marinate the pork loin and then cook it. Yum!!