Today is sunny and warm, winter warm at 42°, but, despite the nice day, I’m still hibernating. I haven’t been out of the house except to get the paper and the mail in the front yard. I am fighting a cold. I’m winning. Today is a better day.

When I was a kid, I had the usual kid diseases, but other than those, I was seldom sick. I hated to miss school but an every now and then sick day was welcomed. I got to lie on the couch, watch television and be waited on by my mother. She always served soup for lunch, usually tomato with a grilled cheese sandwich, the most iconic pairing since Adam and Eve. Her grilled cheese sandwiches were the stuff of legend. They were perfectly browned and oozing cheese, Velvetta. The soup was thick. My mother made it with milk instead of water. That lunch made being sick worthwhile.

My dance card is empty. I have nothing uke until next Tuesday, my practice night. I’m enjoying this time off as the weeks before Christmas were so busy, so filled with concerts.

Winter got boring when it got too cold to go out to play and far too cold for a bike ride. My afternoons were spent watching TV or reading. Sometimes I’d sit at the kitchen table and watch my mother making supper. I remember her mashing the potatoes right in the pan with the metal masher. It clanged when it hit the sides of the pan. She’d add milk and keep mashing. Finally she’d add butter and let it melt into the potatoes. I love mashed potatoes. I love my mother’s mashed potatoes.

We had a lot of ground beef when I was a kid. I never minded as it was served so many different ways. I loved my mother’s meatloaf. She’d sometimes spread the top with ketchup and cover the ketchup with bacon strips. I’d try to steal some of the crispy bacon out of the oven but my mother was on alert. She’d also serve her meatloaf spread with a frosting of mashed potatoes which she browned in the oven. My mother served food from elsewhere adding an international flair to her ground beef. We ate Chinese, Italian, Mexican and, a hybrid, American chop suey, an oxymoron of sorts. I always have ground beef in my freezer.

In Bolga, I could buy meat, beef, at the meat stall in the market. It took very little time before I was inured to the meat market. I swear the butchers wore the same aprons my entire two years of shopping there. I came to recognize many of the stains. We got so close I should have given them names. Anyway, the butcher always cut me a piece of beef tenderloin, weighed it then wrapped it in banana leaves for me. For dinner the beef was either sliced then cooked in a tomato sauce or ground and also cooked in a tomato sauce, the same tomato sauce by taste. Choices were limited in Bolga.

This entry was posted on January 8, 2026 at 3:44 pm and is filed under Musings. You can subscribe via RSS 2.0 feed to this post's comments. You can comment below, or link to this permanent URL from your own site.