Foods of Our Father

Today is the anniversary of my dad's birth. He would be 84 if he hadn't died twenty-three years ago. In honor of his birthday I thought I'd write about his favorite food.

This blog could be summed up thusly: if my mother cooked it, it was his favorite. I honestly don't recall him complaining ever about anything she made. Once he made mention of not wanting much "rabbit food" referring to salad. But he'd always eat it.

He loved oyster stew for supper. (We ate farm meals: breakfast, dinner, supper.) After preparing full-on balanced sit-down meals for 8-10 at breakfast and dinner, my mother did supper in shifts. Little kids ate while the milking was being done and then they went to bed. The milking crew came in and foraged for ourselves or ate our helping of what she'd made earlier, and then, either she made daddy his supper or he'd make his own depending on when he finally got in.

Oyster stew was made by heating milk and butter with salt and pepper in a pan. Then he'd open the can of Standard oysters (don't EVEN think about buying Geisha brand...) and pour in the liquid, then gently slide the oysters in to warm up. By now, I have left the room--the smell was enough. But the sight of those icky things was the last straw. Weird how much I love them now...He could easily eat the whole pan by himself, crumbling up crackers into the bowl and slurping up the last drops.

Another standard supper was Bread and Milk. This is made by filling a tall glass with milk. Next, take a slice of my mother's homemade bread and break it into pieces into the milk, stuffing the glass full. Then you top the whole thing with a large spoonful of honey which is stirred in a little. It is then eaten with a spoon and a side order of sliced cheese. Another totally yucky concept to me as a child: soggy bread. I've never tried it, but Daddy ate this at least every day, I swear. A variation on this is Milk Toast. Make the mama-bread into toast. Heat milk on the stove in a pan. Place buttered toast in a soup bowl. Pour over it the heated milk. Eat. I didn't eat this food either. But I did love another Toast Specialty: Creamed Tuna Over Toast. We ate this for supper quite often, I've fed it to my children, and Cool-Guy and I will still occasionally have this for our dinner (city supper).

Cheese: ambrosia for the dairy farmer set. We did not have a day or a meal that didn't include cheese of some type. I was carefully indoctrinated. When we very first began to keep house together, Cool Guy and I both acknowledged that if we didn't have cheese, then it felt like we didn't have food. My dad is also of this school of thought. A favorite supper of his was Bread and Milk and melted cheese. This is prepared by lining a metal pie plate with thickish slices of cheese, and then sticking this pan under the broiler till the cheese bubbled. Then you ate it by sticking a fork into the gooey mass and twirling up a portion of it and sticking it into your mouth. Ymmmmm. Melted cheese sandwiches were another supper staple: spread Miracle Whip onto mama-bread, lay slices of cheese on it, slide under the broiler until bubbling. Sprinkle salt and pepper on top (and sometimes he'd even sprinkle vinegar too) and eat. With a glass of milk of course.

Afternoon snacks: he'd open the lid of the Karo syrup bottle and swig down a couple of chugs. He'd eat five hot cookies and a glass of milk. (yes, someone was always making cookies.) A dish of peaches with bread and butter. Bread and butter and raspberry jam (naturally made by my mother from berries she'd picked.) Root beer floats made with homemade root beer. Snack time was that starving time right before milking when we'd all need a little kick to get through the day.

Here's some really weird foods:
Headcheese--I remember being just the right height to stare a pig head in the snout as it sat in a pan on the kitchen table prior to my mother turning it into headcheese: boil the pig head till the meat falls off. Reduce the broth till it becomes a jello-like substance when chilled. Chop up the bits of meat, season with sage and salt and pepper and stuff, then combine the broth, and seasoned meat into a loaf pan, refrigerate until it is totally chilled and solid. Slice off pieces and serve on bread and butter. I recall it fondly. But when I got some from a deli once as an adult it was unbelievably nasty tasting...not my mother's recipe. My dad loved it! I don't know how often she made it, it seems like a lot of work.
Poached Egg Sacs: About every three/four years we'd have to kill all the laying hens because they'd quit laying. During one of these chicken killing extravaganzas (which lasted about three days what with the cleaning, cooking, bottling of the meat) my dad saved some of the egg sacs (basically the chicken fallopian tubes) that still contained the developing yolks from the one or two hens that hadn't quite come to the end of their cycle of productivity. He remembered our grandmother poaching these and eating them for supper when he was a boy---it would just a be a white-less egg with some organ meat around it. So, my mom brought them in and washed them and poached them for dinner that day. I'll never forget--#1 the icky smell of them, and #2 their even ickier appearance--all gray and shriveled laying on his plate. But he ate them and claimed they were tasty and my mom agreed. We had a whole other dinner, these egg sacs were just a little side item, but my appetite was totally ruined.
Jerky: Daddy was born in the wrong century. He'd have been completely content living as his grandfather had lived--up in the hills, trapping, hunting, fishing. Every year Daddy went hunting and usually got us a deer and an elk. It was fortunate that he enjoyed hunting, it enabled my mom to have meat to prepare for meals for the entire year. He used the deer mostly for jerky. Deer hamburger is okay, and deer liver is quite yummy, and one meal of little deer steaks is plenty for most. So the rest of the animal went for jerky. Again...I didn't like jerky. I still don't like jerky. Bleh.

I'll bet there are lots of other things my dad ate that stand out to my brothers and sisters. I hope they'll be inspired to write and tell me! In the meantime...happy birthday to Lynn Ray Welch--go out and have a chocolate covered orange stick in his memory.