Yet again another silly post. I like the term "comfort food"....though it's getting a bit overused, so let's just say these are foodstuffs i could always eat, in any state of despair, or disrepair.
bulgogi, from bulgogi house, ( korean, been going there since high school),
mom's tuna, or turkey casserole,
the family meatloaf recipe, though Linda Rae improved it by making it in a low cake pan, more sauce per serving, more the better, meatcake i suppose,
The excellent beef raviolies i had at Debbi's house, in Shaughnessy, Calgary, when i visited there when Ryan was a toddler, and Kristy was a baby,
chocolate milk, ( in the later years, dad would often bring me 2 litre jugs of Nesquik syrup from the real Canadian wholesale club, on 99th street. Bless his heart),
sliced ripe homegrown tomato, fresh cut, by mom, in the car, on a long drive to SLC, sprinkled with salt and pepper, (almost always how i consume tomatoes now, though when i put up a batch of tomato sauce, i like as many fresh ingredients as i have on hand, nothing better than fresh),
toasted rye bread, with butter and strawberry jam, or in a tomato-dijon sandwich, or as garlic toast....got it from family friends the Rosemanns, had it every day for breakfast when i visited them in bountiful, only kind of bread i eat now,
all foods i would once eat at home...hash..mashed 'tato..cheesed pearl onions,
turkey gravy,
smooshed up soft boiled egg with ketchup, in a melmac coffee cup,
at one time, that horridly rich carrot cake from family past...can't eat cake anymore,
mom's sweet and sour meatballs, when she made chinese food dinner,
milk poached smoked cod, every saturday morning, after the saturday safeway shopping, yum,
cheez whiz, on bread, with bacon bits, and green onion, oven baked,
dill pickles, even the ones that came out of food storage with labels from the '70's,
mashed 'tato, and mince. mixed together. occasionally with ketchup.
Granny can tell you what mince is.
So what foods evoke precious memories for you?
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Hah, can't make me hungry, at least not right at the moment, shall we say. Just got home from a rare dinner out at the Keg in Lethbridge. Mmmmm.good. Medium to well small prime rib, stuffed potato, steamed peppers onion, mushrooms, au jus alongside, oh and a little container of horseradish, forget that, what fits on a pinhead is enough for me. Oh, and three appetizers shared by 5 of us, bacon wrapped scallops with seafood sauce, mushrooms stuffed with a cheesy mixture served in escargot dishes (to die for), toast rounds with some kind of cheese and pesto. Yum, I'm not even going to mention the desserts, you'll eat your heart out with longing. Oh and hot crusty rolls to start (w/ butter). OH, such a nice change from institutional cooking which can be pretty humdrum at times. I loved it....
ReplyDeleteSounds tasty, like many of the things we have on the menu at work. I like the appetizer type things, but i'm not a primerib person. And you couldn't pay me to eat a dessert. When i do have beef, at work, i have a bison tenderloin steak, way better than beef, and way expensive.All the fat is so finely marbled into the meat, you can't even see it. So even at well done, you can cut it with a fork. One of the few advantages of working alone.
ReplyDeletei love mince, i actually thought it was called mints for the longest time. I love chocolate milk too but can't stand the syrup stuff. what's bulgogi
ReplyDeleteKristy-lol, that's funny, mints. yeah, we ate that lots, pretty cheap to make i guess. bulgogi is basically just a beef stir fry, korean style.
ReplyDeleteKristy-i took granny and your mom to that korean restaurant once when i was in high school...they both said the food was "too spicy hot"...but the bulgogi dish itself isn't spicy.
ReplyDeleteOhhhh...what I wouldn't give for one of my grandpa's ripe, delicious, grown-by-the-fieldfull tomatoes. SO delicious. I'd eat them like you, slicked with salt and pepper, or on toasted bread with mayonnaise, salt, pepper, and a HUGE glass of ice cold milk to wash it down. I sure miss that man and his tomatoes.
ReplyDeleteoh yes...I love this post. My childhood memories are the same as yours, Jeff, with a few more, like cooked macaroni with canned tomatoes and lots of pepper. Remember creamed corn on bread? I loved that too. Did you younger kids have that?
ReplyDeleteFood is such a powerful memory trigger, isn't it.
totally, david would eat macaroni and canned tomatoes all the time when we were young. probably still does. i certainly do, though i prefer pazgetti.
ReplyDeletei remember the pepper thing too, and the creamed corn, i love pepper on corn. i remember corn with mashed potatoes too. or peas from the garden.all my fave vegetables come from my past.
Mom rented a garden plot from a farmer just outside of town, and would take me and the bros out, in the vw beetle, to pick peas, weed the rows and such. At that age, i learned not to eat half of the peas i've just shelled, back from the garden. If you know what i mean. (Our single washroom was not far away from the backyard.)
Camille, you said it, nothing better than a ripe homegrown tomato. I love tomato sandwhich's. I remember you reminiscing about your Grandpa on your blog... he sounds like a good man. In my books, (not that i have any), people who grow their own food are good people.
ReplyDeleteoh yes the creamed corn on bread, i used to love it but can't get myself to eat it now. Haven't given it to my babies yet but maybe one day I will.
ReplyDeleteSpeaking of long-ago food, how come nobody has mentioned corn fritters? I used to make jillions of those little balls and they always disappeared like magic. Or mushrooms on toast, and sometimes asparagus tips on toast. And remember the creamed sockeye salmon on toast, although some of my children banned fish from their menus, Dad and I used to enjoy it very much after we were down to two diners. But you're right, his favorite was always corn on bread, it didn't even have to be toasted. And when we went on small trips, I always made up canned sockeye (never pink salmon) sandwiches with a good lick of vinegar, salt and pepper, and we would eat them in the car and enjoyed them muchly, even when the bread got a bit soggy. Yum! Wish I had a couple of those sandwiches now. All they use in this lodge is pink salmon, which I refuse to sully my intestinal tract with. And how I used to love it when Kristy got big enough to come visit and how she loved good old fashioned beef stew. I always pressure cooked the meat first, which made it nice and tender, before I added the veggies, and always just potatoes, onions and carrots....Kristy loved peas in the stew too, so I'd add them, but just for her. Once I tried to slip turnip (rutabagas, Camille) into the stew, didn't work, our kids were more taste-discerning than I figured.
ReplyDeleteYes Kristy, i don't think i'd be having the creamed corn now, but it's a nice memory. And Granny brings up so many more that had slipped my mind. Salmon sandwiches, corn fritters, (i think i dipped those in ketchup too, sometimes), and her DEEELICIOUS beef stew from the pressure cooker. I never knew you liked it with peas...that's a great idea, i love peas. You sure have the smarts of a natural born cook.
ReplyDeleteMom, i do remember the mushrooms on toast too, yum yum, and leftover turkey and gravy on toast, and fresh cooked peas from the garden, and, OH, SASKATOON BERRY PIES..mmmm,mm, and picking saskatoons with gramma Morrison off the side of the roads round about Vermilion. If not for you, i would never be the not so bad cook i am today. Always well fed we were.
ReplyDeleteAnd egg salad sandwiches...macaroni salad with apple and cheddar, coleslaw with pineapple, roast beef, with butter and mustard, sandwiches....clearly this could go on forever.We sure love our Mom's/Granny's cookin'.
ReplyDeleteThank you for the wonderful comment about great food memories on me blog. So much i can't remember. YOU'RE still as sharp as a tack though. OH, another one i loved on trips, your weiner schnitzel...called them 'veal birds' i think. yummy.
ReplyDeleteHehe, most of my blog comments are from me. I like that. It's fun.
The veal birds triggered a memory with me....they originated with Golda Kincade, who made up a bunch of them when we travelled to Salt Lake as a Primary board for Conference, way back when. Much safer in the car, without refrigeration, than fried chicken would ever be! And they were so delicious, with my pickles and Marie Burnham's home-made rolls. And Thelda Diebert's iced brownies. I saw a recipe for veal birds in a rare cookbook a while back, first time I ever saw one, they were a specialty of Golda's, I still have her recipe in my 3x5 card file. After all these years, yes....can't bring myself to throw it away!
ReplyDeleteAnd you'd best not! We want those recipes someday.
ReplyDeleteHow was golda kincade related to the ones just west of the mall, just south of sir william place, (where debbi naylor lived once).....the family with 5 girls, theresa was the one my age, that you subcontracted the making of cabbage rolls to, when we were caterers?
Golda was their grandma, wife of Harry Kincade. She was a Bennett, daughter of Vic and Lois Bennett from some southern Alberta town, maybe Cardston or one of the satellite villages, or Raymond, or Magrath even. Their son Ron married a girl who had been mostly raised by the Cahoons, DeRaunz and Wanda, after she lost her parents at an early age. Her single name was Joan Balan, and of course, when she married Ron, she became Joan Kincade. Ron and Joan had the five daughters you mention; indeed I think Theresa was the eldest, I think the others were Rhonda, Lois, can't remember the names of the other two, the youngest whose name started with an A...it'll come to me eventually! anyway, she was a diabetic who consistently broke the rules, and suffered from her lack of wisdom. Joan and Ron eventually split up, following which both married again, Ron lives with his 2nd wife in Minburn or Manville, west of Vermilion. Joan married an American guy and they live in Henderson, Nevada, pretty close to Lost Wages.
ReplyDeleteShe comes back to Edmonton a coupla times a year to visit her dauts and grandkids. Anyway, when I hired her and her girls to make a few hundred cabbage rolls, she had real need to make a little extra shekels and all of them became very expert at shaping the nice little finger-size rolls like the Ukrainian ladies make. I insisted on that size, and my method of making them, and they were one of our most popular foods that we served at catered meals.
They were only about 1/4 the size of the huge messy looking items you can nowadays purchase in some stores and restaurants. Debbie remembers well how many times we assembled ourselves with a coupla of big cabbages at her house, boil the leaves until soft, make the "goop" and spend a day making up foil pan after foil pan of them for the freezer. Steve would hoard those pans of cabbage rolls like you wouldn't believe, for special meals down the road. I don't think there's any left anymore! Sorry about that, Stevie!
Thanks for the extra info Mom. That's who i thought she was. I remember the Kincades pretty well. Theresa was my friend in Junior High. I would get her out of classes when i "had to check,or unload the kiln" in the art room, when i ran the schools ceramics program, the art teacher, Mrs. Pylypow not knowing anything about ceramics, and me having learnt all about it, from you. I had a key to the art room, and open permission to leave any class at any time. Usually math, which was very boring, and simple. Mr. Batiuk, the math teacher, couldn't grouse, 'cause i had 100% in math. He couldn't write an exam that could stump me. And he was boring. And did lousy math. That was the year the school referred me to a family whose kid was having math troubles, who i tutored for 5 bucks an hour, big money then, but i couldn't teach the kid my special way of doing math, which was mostly in my head, (like how i cook), so i quit that gig.
ReplyDeleteOh, one of the other girls was Natalie Kincade. She was a bit on the chunky side.
ReplyDeleteI am surprised my mom hasnt commented on the creamed corn on bread, shes always saying she loves that. I remember having that quite often as a child but I would not do that to my kids lol. not a big fan of it.
ReplyDeleteDayna, your mom has commented just once so far, but we'll rope her in eventually. And yeah, don't feed your kids that...it worked for us then, cause we didn't have much money..but i haven't had creamed corn, on ANYTHING, for decades. I can afford fresh veggies now. Just bought roma tomatoes, and brussel sprouts at Safeway...we would often have steamed brussel sprouts for special dinners when we were young. I love em. Tomatoes, brussel sprouts, peas, and green beans are my favourite veggies. All very popular in Granny's cooking repertoire.
ReplyDeleteAs far as corn goes, TABER corn on the cob, that's GOOD corn. yum.
ReplyDeleteHoly cow! Does this post go on forever? Isn't food the most popular subject ever? You know, better than any other reading material, I like to read cookbooks best! I once had a collection of over 100 cookbooks, but when I closed up my house to get it ready to sell, gave them all away.....no storage room. How come NOBODY has even mentioned my Chinese cooking? Huh? I once took a course (10 lessons) in Chinese cooking, The Chinese girl who taught it had learned from her mom, who owned a restaurant. I had a really good collection of Chinese recipes (well, still have 'em, actually, they're in my recipe file still). I catered Chinese food a coupla times for fund raising things at the church, but I limited the meals to 50 plates. It's too hard to make a good job of it for more diners than that, as so much of it is last-minute cooking. My sweet and sours and hun yung shew gai are winners.....the latter recipe cost us big bucks, we had to keep going back to the Purple Lantern in Edmonton and analyzing the specialty dish (the shew gai is battered chicken with almonds and a BAM SAUCE!). Finally got it right; it's served on a bed of finely sliced lettuce, with the chicken arranged overtop, then a smattering of toasted almonds, then the sauce. My gracious, I'm making myself hungry....wonder what's for supper here?
ReplyDeleteI know that question wasn't for me...cause i listed your sweet and sour meatballs, when you made chinese food dinners, in my original list of food memories. You did excellent chinese food. I remember you taking those classes.
ReplyDeleteAnd i'm not just saying this to shine you on, but i still can't make a fried rice as decent tasting as you can. I remember small diced leftover roast beef in the fried rice. Maybe i'll get some chinese food delivery. Treat myself.