Posted tagged ‘roast beef’

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“I will continue my path, but I will keep a memory always.”

July 16, 2017

Today is a sunny, bright, warm but getting hotter day. The blue sky is perfectly clear. The breeze is ever so slight. Every now and then I hear voices from down the street, but mostly it’s quiet, quiet enough that the birds can easily be heard singing. It’s like a Sunday from my childhood memories.

Roast beef, peas and mashed potatoes with gravy have long been my favorite meal. It was a Sunday dinner treat to have the beef. Mostly we had chicken. We always had mashed potatoes. My father didn’t believe dinner was dinner without the mashed potatoes. Back then we had canned vegetables. I remember the French green beans and my father’s asparagus. My mother served Le Sueur small, sweet baby peas, the ones in the silver can. I loved those. When I was really little, I mixed them with the mashed potatoes. The concoction wasn’t pretty but it was tasty and that was the easiest way to eat the peas. They were never fork food, too round and too small.

A long time ago there was a club in Bourne with male strippers. One night my friends and I were brave enough to go. We went, each of us, with many dollar bills. The place was filled. It was smoky. In the middle of the room was the stage. The fully dressed men, the policeman, the firefighter, the soldier, came out together and faced the different sides of the room. When the music started, so did they. The clothes flew off until the men were down to their G-strings. We didn’t approach them at first, being a bit embarrassed. Other women were quick to leave their dollars bills in the tops of the g-strings. I don’t remember who but one of us got brave, and the rest of us followed. We laughed a lot. It was a fun evening. We never went again and the place at some point closed down. I think it was because everyone went just once.

I used to love going to the Melody Tent in Hyannis when it was a theater in the round. I remember The Unsinkable Molly Brown with Debbie Reynolds. I was so excited to see a real movie actress in person. Much later, I saw the house of the real Margaret Brown on whom the character is based. It is in Denver, Colorado. I even found that exciting.

My life is filled with all these memories. Every now and then one pops up, one I hadn’t given thought to in years. Today’s memories are some of those.

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“Food is the most primitive form of comfort.”

April 23, 2017

Weather is so relative that today’s 57˚ feels warm and springlike, a sit on the deck in the sun sort of day. I might even need sunglasses.

My sister in Colorado and I had our usual Sunday phone call. Today we found two hours worth of conversation ranging from potty training to Trump.

When I was a kid, I never spent much time on the phone. I remember the party line and Mrs. McGaffigan who shared the line. Sometimes I’d pick up the receiver and hear her voice and listen to her conversation: I’d eavesdrop. She caught me several times. I never said a word when she did. I just put the receiver down. My phone number started with ST 6. I used to love the sound of the rotary dial when it clicked back after I entered a number. The phone was black. I think all the phones back then were black.

I miss phone booths. Anytime I passed by one, I’d check the coin return. Once in a while, I’d be lucky enough to find a dime, big money back then. It never seemed strange to me that Clark Kent had room enough to change to Superman in a phone booth. I did wonder what he did with his clothes and why nobody noticed when he was changing. Maybe he was just too quick.

Back then, I didn’t know a single kid who was a skeptic. We accepted most things at face value. The movie monsters were scary. We never saw the strings propelling spacecraft. We accepted the odd looking aliens. We didn’t make fun of movies. We naturally suspended disbelief. I laugh now at those same movies, but I love them still.

Roast beef, gravy, mashed potatoes, and peas are my favorite meal. My mother cooked it for our last family dinner before I left for Peace Corps. She used to put slices of onion on top of the roast, and they were delicious. It is the best of all my comfort meals. I remember my mother peeling potatoes at the sink and my father carving the meat. I still count mashed potatoes and peas among my favorites. I don’t have roast beef all that much anymore. Roast chicken has replaced it and stuffing has been added as a side.

I don’t cook much for myself anymore. I’m into quick and easy, but I’ve found shortcuts for that chicken dinner. I buy rotisserie chicken, real, already mashed potatoes and frozen peas. I call that the modern interpretation of down home comfort food.

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“Happiness is a hot bath on a Sunday afternoon.”

February 12, 2017

The clouds are storm clouds, maybe carrying a couple of inches of snow, but I wouldn’t mind. The new flakes will cover the dirty snow left on the sides of the roads and the sawdust and small branches covering the snow on my lawn.

Gracie went down the back steps this morning. I was going to lead her down, but she left without me and made it down safely. On the inside steps, though, Gracie’s back leg slides so I stand beside her as she goes from step to step.

The house is getting dark, but I like the feel of today. It is a comfortable day, a day to stay warm and cozy. The cat and dog are sleeping. The dog is snoring, not unusual.

When I was a kid, days like today sometimes made us quiet. We could sit and watch TV and say very little, just watch the shows. We never fought about what to watch. There weren’t many choices. We had a schedule we kept to every night. Mostly I remember the years of the westerns. I swear we watched at least two every night. I remember watching The Adventures of Rin, Tin, Tin, of Wild Bill Hickock, Kit Carson, and Jim Bowie. Rin, Tin, Tin was my favorite Adventure. I watched Annie Oakley and Bat Masterson and so many more. I think that’s why I’m not a fan of westerns. I’ve had my fill already.

I used to like to lie in bed under the covers with my headboard lamp shining on my book. It was always quiet. The noise was downstairs. Sometimes I’d take a nap but not on purpose. I just fell asleep.

We usually had a 1 or 2 o’clock Sunday dinner because it was also the day of eggs and bacon for breakfast so we weren’t hungry until later. My favorite was roast beef, but we had roast chicken more which I never really minded. Always mashed potatoes, LeSoeur peas and one other vegetable.

My mother used to use the school night argument to get us to go to bed early. We’d argue and got a bit more time. My little sisters went first then a half hour or so later my brother and I went to bed. I don’t remember much after that. I easily fell asleep.

Sunday can be the best day of the week sometimes.

 

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“Facts must be faced. Vegetables simply don’t taste as good as most other things do.”

February 28, 2016

We have lots of sun this morning and a light blue sky, but the day is breezy and cool. I can hear the sweet sounds of the wind chimes blowing.

I’m in a Sunday frame of mind, the kind of Sunday we had when I was a kid, a quiet day, a hang around the house day waiting for dinner. Sunday was always special. It was the only day we had dinner, a fancier fare than we had all week. Dinner was always in the afternoon, usually around two. Supper was at night. My dad used to work late and wasn’t always home in time for supper. We were always together for Sunday dinner. The meal centered around a roast of some sort and mashed potatoes. The vegetables differed from week to week. Bread was never served though I remember it was always on the table at the Cleaver’s, the Walton’s and most other programs about families. Their bread wasn’t fancy, just sliced bread stacked on a plate. I never saw any of them use salt or pepper on their foods. We didn’t either. The table held our plates and silverware and the food. There was barely room for the six of us. Most times my mother would move the food to the counter after we had served ourselves. If we wanted more, she’d always get up to serve us. I don’t remember my mother ever sitting down for an entire meal. We seldom had dessert, not even at Sunday dinner. If there was any in the house, we’d have a bowl of ice cream or we’d grab a few cookies, Oreos were the favorite.

I didn’t know until I was older that potatoes could be more than mashed or French fried. I was surprised to find out carrots and potatoes weren’t the only vegetables which could be served fresh, not out of a can. I did know about corn on the cob, but that was a summer vegetable for a cook-out.

I don’t remember having Sunday dinners in the summer. We had picnics at the beach and cookouts in the backyard. We ate a lot of hamburgers and hot dogs. Corn on the cob and baked beans, out of a can of course, were usually the vegetables. In those days we never had salad. Potato salad came much later, when we were older. Green salad was never a hit.

Despite the canned veggies and the lack of salads and greenery, we were healthy kids. We suffered from the usually maladies of childhood in those days like measles or the mumps, but that was about it. I might have wished to have a few stay at home from school sick days, but I wasn’t ever that lucky.

 

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“My favorite meal would have to be good old-fashioned eggs, over easy, with bacon. Many others, but you can’t beat that on a Sunday morning, especially with a cup of tea.”

April 26, 2015

It’s cold again today. The high will be 51˚. The nights are still in the mid to high 30’s. The sun was here for a bit then the clouds came in and the sun was covered, but the day is still light.

When I was a kid, I either went to the early mass with my dad, the usher, or I walked to mass later in the morning. If it was a lucky Sunday, my aunt would be at the later mass, see me and invite me to the Stoneham Spa for a lime ricky. The spa was uptown. It was old and looked like the malt shops on TV. It had wooden booths with all sorts of names carved on the tables, faded signs on the walls highlighting some of the menu items and stools at the counter. It had been a hangout even during my mother’s high school days. I don’t remember when it closed down, but I know it was before I was in high school or we would have been there.

If I didn’t see my aunt, I’d trudge home after mass to spend the most boring day of the week in the house. We didn’t go anywhere to play or roam on Sunday because we had to be there for the big Sunday dinner. It was usually the only time in the week we had roast beef so it wasn’t all that bad being stuck in the house waiting for dinner. I’d read the comics, the only part of the paper I cared about, or watch the Sunday movie. Sometimes we’d go visit my grandparents after dinner, but mostly we just stayed around the house. On Sunday nights we went to bed earlier than usual. My mother gave us the excuse, which we never believed, that because we had been up late on Friday and Saturday nights we needed to go early to get our rest for school on Monday. We used to argue and plead but to no avail. I think my displeasure was evidenced by my feet pounding each step as I went upstairs, but I was usually wearing slippers so the noise wasn’t bad enough for my father to yell.

Sundays haven’t really changed much. They are still mostly boring. Now I read all of the papers, but I still start with comics. Old, ingrained habits seldom die. I don’t cook a big meal for myself but I like Sunday breakfast. That comes from when I’d visit my parents, and my dad always made me my Sunday breakfast. He’d cook eggs, anyway I wanted them, bacon and toast. Mostly I liked them sunny-side up. That’s what I make for myself, but he never broke the yolks. I sometimes do.

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“One of the very nicest things about life is the way we must regularly stop whatever it is we are doing and devote our attention to eating.”

August 16, 2014

The sun is in and out of the clouds. The day goes from strikingly sunny and beautiful to cloudy and dark. The weather in the paper said partly sunny. I guess I didn’t think about the other part.

On Saturday, the day before I left for the Peace Corps, my mother asked me what I’d like for our last family dinner together for a long while. I answered right away: roast beef, mashed potatoes, peas and gravy, all my favorites, and that’s what we had. It is still one of my favorite meals. Mashed potatoes are the height of comfort food for me. My mother’s mashed potatoes were always fluffy and lump less. She used a hand masher, one of those metal ones with a flat grill bottom. I sometimes watched her. She wielded that masher as if it were a weapon in the hands of a master swordsman. She’d add butter and milk and keep mashing. I even remember the bowl she always used to serve the potatoes. It was a wide, not tall, bowl. She’d add the potatoes and put a few pats on butter on top. It was a thing of beauty.

My favorite ice cream changes. When I was a kid, we didn’t have all the choices and exotic flavors we have now. Back then my favorite was a dish of plain old chocolate made exquisite by adding Hersey’s syrup. When I was in high school, it was mint chocolate chip in a sugar cone with jimmies all over the ice cream. I used to buy it at Brigham’s. Mocha chip was my favorite for a while, and I still sometimes buy it, but lately I have been into coconut topped with dark chocolate sea salt caramel sauce. It tastes as superb as it sounds.

I like vegetables, quite a change from when I was growing up. Back then I ate potatoes, peas, corn and French green beans, all of which came from cans. I also ate carrots but they were disguised and hidden in the mashed potatoes. In Ghana I couldn’t get many vegetables. I ate garden eggs which are small egg plants, okra, tomatoes, yam, onions and one year I had green peppers grown from seeds I got from home. I really missed vegetables which I wouldn’t ever have imagined when I was a kid. My favorites are still peas, but corn on the cob and summer tomatoes are on my list of favorites. Just no beans ever!

Traveling gave me the chance to try new foods, and I tried all sorts. I didn’t even know the names of some of them. The food didn’t have to look good as I had grown out of the stage of judging foods by its appearances. I think maybe it was Ghana which taught me that.

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