Monday, February 25, 2013

Foods I loved, Before I Knew Better

My in laws loved to entertain. My mother in law Elaine, was a great cook, and hostess.  It was a huge family, many friends, and many excuses to entertain.  I was thinking about all the foods I loved and how those foods are not eaten anymore.  Oh, I understand why.  Too much cholesterol, sugars, carbs, fats, carcinogens.  I know... still I miss the foods of yesteryear.  I thought I would mention a few.

Cotton Candy, pink sweet clouds of sugar that melt on your tongue, heavenly.  Remember days of  kids parties and the circus?

Roumaki, this was chicken liver, marinated wrapped in bacon and broiled crisp.

Chopped clams, on a half shell.  No fillers used, lots of clams, topped with bacon and baked.  Served in lovely white sea shells.

Cheese Fondue, made by my cousin L. Many kinds of cheese and beer.  We dipped hard crusted bread until coated.  Thank you for the memorable Christmas cookies, all that butter put to good use.

My father loved herring in cream sauce and herring in wine sauce,  kippers, lox wings, and thick cut potatoes fried golden brown.  Sour cream was used on potatoes, soup, fruit.  Mashed potatoes made with cream and butter.  Sweet potato pies topped with marshmallows, any time of the year.

Chocolate bobka cake made with thick chunks of chocolate and walnuts topped with powdered sugar.  Whipped cream cakes 8 inches high with strawberry filling, any day of the year, not just on your birthday.  What foods are long gone from your table, but not your memory?  Write and tell me, we will miss them together.  Carrot anyone?


3 comments:

  1. As a kid I craved fatty, sweet, and salty. I must have had some kind of chemical imbalance from how fast I was growing. I literally grew over night, being a different height from one day to the other, reaching most of my adult height by age 12, and then adding just a tad after that. I was not that long/tall at birth, though, so I did have a growth spurt between age 7 and 12, when I went from shorter than many of my friends to taller.

    So Bosco syrup was added to my milk...3 TABLEspoons! Now I would gag. I ate pats of butter, cubes of sugar, and the loose salt in bags of pretzels. I've told you about the delights of the grebben, balls of fried chicken fat when rendering the fat to create chicken fat spread to be used instead of butter for non-dairy meals. This was the closest thing to fried pork skins that were popular down South. But my list of favorite evil foods was quite long: challah-made French toast at the diner was unusually rich, fattening, and deep fried. Liver and onions would now be part of the anti-cholesterol diet, although considered less shocking than my other items above. A real treat (full of calories) for school lunches was cream cheese on date bread (hold the nuts, please). When given the choice between Hostess Cupcakes, Snowballs, or Twinkies, the choice was easy for me: cupcakes, please, starting with the cake, then the cream, and finally the icing, saving the "best for last." Sorry, but coconut was never my thing (Snowballs, meaning that the cake had to be eaten first, then the cream, and the marshmallow, leaving the coconut behind, if possible) and cake without icing could not compete with cake with icing. But Mallomars, with their chocolate-covered marshmallow, thin layer of jam, and cookie base trumped Hostess Cupcakes for sweet. Then, on the more ethnic side, there was noodle pudding and even cheese danish with fruits. Cookies and cakes were my chief sins.

    But as I grew older, I became a connoisseur of ice creams (before restrictive diets), my favorite being a Carvel soft vanilla ice cream hot fudge sundae and later Hagen Das Rum Raisin Ice Cream. It's a wonder that I don't waddle, considering one summer I had a hot fudge sundae every night! Those were the days when I could eat almost anything and not fear pain, pounds, or health issues....Ah well, all good things must come to an end.

    Thanks for sharing B.

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  2. I was reading an article written by the " animal maven" Mark who owns Parrots of the World, who said when he was a child they fed their dogs table scraps, and never worried about anything the dogs ate or how much. The dogs lived healthy lives and their life span was the same as the monitored, vitamin enriched designer diets we feed out dogs now. It makes me wonder if this is will be the same for people... eventually. My father never concerned himself with all the details so important to my mother. Truthfully, his " poor" diet did not kill him, his smoking did. Makes you wonder, if we are predisposed for a certain life span, regardless of what we eat? Food for thought?

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  3. The foods that we used to eat we probably wouldn't eat now on a regular basis. I know we hardly ever went out to eat. Sometimes we brought in "appetizing" which was smoked fish, creamed herring, lox, etc. Most nights our suppers consisted of roasted or broiled meat. One night would be steak, the next might be lamb chops, hamburgers, veal chops, etc. Friday night was always chicken and there was always a dairy night. Soup was a regular course and maybe fricassee as an appetizer. Dessert was usually canned fruit or applesauce. We always had fresh fruit around.
    Maybe things weren't so bad .
    When I think about it, a lot of thought and work went into those meals.
    Sharon

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