Photo Courtesy of MikeZ on Flickr
The Man of The Place loved good things to eat…Trying to make him think I was a wonder of a wife I gratified this appetite, until at last, when planning the dinner for a feast day, I discovered to my horror that there was nothing extra I could cook to mark the day as being distinct and better than any other day. Pies, the best I could make, were common, every-day affairs. Cakes, ditto. Puddings, preserves and jellies were ordinary things. Fried, roasted, broiled and boiled poultry of all kinds were no treat, we had so much of it as well as other kinds of meat raised on the farm. By canning and pickling and preserving all kinds of vegetables and fruits we had each and every kind the year around. In fact, we were surfeited with good things to eat all of the time… Laura Ingalls Wilder, “Join the Don’t Worry Club”, The Ruralist
As part of the ritual we’ve established, on our last morning visiting The Folks, we take them out to breakfast at the family restaurant down the street from them. It is the place my mother-in-law has coffee with her friends almost every morning and my father-in-law frequently has lunch there with his buddies. It is a nice, friendly place where people all seem to know each other.
When the food arrived, My Honey became a grumpy-pants. He was dissatisfied with his hash browns. They arrived on his plate in a preformed perfect little square. He asked me why they looked like that and I had to tell him that they were probably pre-packaged that way and that the restaurant only needed to take them out of the bag and grill them.
Well, you would have thought I had told him that I was a Soviet spy during the Cold War. He started grumbling about his fake hash browns and asked us how hard it would be to just run real potatoes through the food processor, and wondered what kind of chemicals had been added to the pre-formed hash browns, etc., etc., etc.
It’s not the first time he has said it but he turned to me and said that I’ve ruined him for restaurant food…when he can get my good cooking anytime, he continued, why would he want restaurant food instead?
What’s that saying? A way to a man’s heart is through his stomach?
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I remember when restaurants claimed to be “as good as Mom’s cooking!” When do you think the switch to “restaurant quality” advertising happened?
I’ve noticed that some of my newer cookbooks have recipes that promise to be “just like” the biscuits or bbq sauce at such-and-such chain restaurant. Why would I want to cook what I could buy? But I enjoyed hearing about your husband’s reaction as I’m hoping that some day my teenage son will come to appreciate his mama’s cooking. Now he thinks he’s very oppressed that he doesn’t get to eat out all the time.
After we were married (1975), my husband and I agreed that we would eat out seldom and not skimp at the grocery store. In other words, the whole family would get the best food we could afford. We enjoy good, tasty, nutricious food prepared mostly in our own kitchen. We are never impressed when we eat out. My last meal out was at a country club and my opinion was that the entree was prepared elsewhere, frozen, and then microwaved in the club’s kitchen. I thought it hardly worth the price.
Last night I started reading my volume of Laura Ingalls Wilder’s columns as published in The Ruralist.
Beth, don’t teenagers, in general, think they are oppressed? *grin*
As I we were putting away the produce I picked up from the farmer’s market, My Honey was commenting on how he couldn’t WAIT to live on his own because he was going to eat anything he wanted–Ho-hos and Snowballs and Twinkies and so on. Then, when he had his chance to eat whatever he wanted, he found out that the forbidden food really wasn’t as enticing as he thought it would be.
Kathy, when we lived in NJ and ate out almost every night during my grad school days, we started joking that all of the food was made in some big factory in New Brunswick and then shipped to all of the restaurants throughout the region. Really, no matter which diner we went to, the food always tasted the same…like it had been frozen and then microwaved in the diner’s kitchen. We know that that wasn’t true but it wasn’t very far off from the truth, either.
I have enjoyed watching all of my children step up to good nutrition in adulthood, learning to eat balanced diets. You just don’t feel right if all you’re eating is the “empty calorie” stuff.
Good Morning, Dr. J!
I’ve got the song Home Cookin’ from Fancy Pants playing in my head right now!