(no subject)

[pantryslut]

misia asked over the weekend why those of us who cook, cook, and anarqueso asked what the foodways of my people were. I am combining answers.



I started cooking before I moved out of my parents’ house. I know I had an interest in cooking at least by age 12, because I was requesting cookbooks from my parents and grandparents, and my tuna salad was becoming famous and requested.

The cookbooks I got were kids’ cookbooks, which don’t really teach real cooking (or at least mine didn’t). Instead, they concentrate on “fun foods,” root beer floats and hamburgers and pigs in blankets and stuff like that. But it was a start. I also learned how to make chocolate chip and spritz cookies.

Neither side of my family are great cooks. My paternal grandmother is famous for her appalling food skills – stories of ancient frozen corned beef in the freezer, twenty-year-old baby food jars in the pantry, and soda pop past its expiration date in the basement. My maternal grandparents boil zucchini – ‘nuff said, although my grandfather also makes his own chorizo.

Oh yes, chorizo. My grandfather is from Mexico. His version of this particular sausage does not involve pig’s cheeks or anything like that. He eats Mexican rancher food, which is a lot like Tex-Mex, i.e. heavy on the beef and spices, but he’s from Sinaloa, not Texas. So I did have a little Mexican food in my childhood, mostly beef enchiladas. My mother does not believe in flour tortillas, and scoffed at the notion of fish tacos. Sinaloa is not one of the regions of Mexico famous for its cuisine. The Mexican dishes my grandparents made were by far the best food they cooked, but it’s still generally nothing to write home about.

Other than the occasional Mexican dishes my mother made, I grew up eating white trash food (or, as we called it, “graduate student food,” for my parents were indeed grad students during most of my childhood). Macaroni and tuna (made with Kraft, of course), tuna casserole, liver and onions, meatloaf. Grilled cheese sandwiches and tomato soup. Creamed chipped beef on toast; creamed hard-boiled eggs on toast at Easter time. Hamburgers and hot dogs all summer long. Creamed corn from a can, and also baby potatoes from a can, and sometimes green beans and peas from a can. Roast chicken was a fancy occasion for us. We also ate a lot of fast food – Mr. Taco, McDonald’s, and delivery pizza (a place called Monterey’s for as long as it was in business; Domino’s after that).

And “munchies.” I don’t know when this tradition started, I think it grew out of our traditional New Year’s spreads. At new Year’s, we’d buy fancy munchies – smelly fish products, cold cuts, crackers, and we’d make punch. Also deviled eggs and “deviled melbas,” which are a deviled ham mix and grated cheese on a cracker, baked in an oven until hot. “Munchies” usually skipped the fish and punch and deviled things, and leaned instead on cold cuts and crackers and carrots and cucumbers dipped in cucumber ranch salad dressing.

Once in a while my father would try to get fancy. My father likes good food, though he can’t cook it. He made a terrible Thanksgiving stuffing one year, and my mother never let him try again. Thanksgiving, and especially turkey, are sacred to my mother. She will use any excuse to make a turkey dinner. She stocks up on frozen turkeys when they’re on sale. From October to March, it’s all about the turkey. And gravy, mashed potatoes, stuffing, canned cranberry sauce, and store-bought dinner rolls. Sometimes a green vegetable, but I don’t remember this well.

My family used margarine. And now they use fake margarine. They use Velveeta and Miracle Whip, too.

My family also believed – rightly – that it was important to learn to cook because cooking for yourself was cheaper and healthier than eating out all the time. Yes, even if you eat the heavily processed foods that I grew up with.

So when I left home for college, I knew how to boil water and fry a hamburger and makes spaghetti sauce with ground beef and a jar of Prego. I could keep myself fed, in other words, but I was no great shakes as a cook.

I learned to stir-fry sometime in college. I had a boyfriend that I shared with my girlfriend – malicangst will remember him – let’s call him Haverford. He cooked a chicken and cashew mix that I liked at the time, but would now find too soggy and goopy. Maybe he taught me to stir-fry. I know that I inherited his wok, at the very least.

But the moment that I started down the foodie road to where I am today came in my early 20’s, just after college, when I got back a high cholesterol test. The doctor and I talked about what I was eating, and she encouraged me to try for more vegetables. I had already mostly figured out that I didn’t like meat much anyway, so I decided to teach myself to cook vegetarian. I didn’t become a vegetarian, mind you, I just made a study of veggie-based foodways.

I bought and borrowed a lot of cookbooks and practiced on my friends. About this time, too, I started hanging out with innerdoggie and tyrranio, the latter of whom is a kick-ass vegetarian cook and also as, uh, intellectually obsessed about food as I am. I am compressing this time period immensely, but slowly I became concerned with natural foods, unprocessed foods, and so on. I tried to buy organic when possible (harder in Chicago than in California). I learned to chop. Boy, did I learn to chop.

The nice thing about this process was learning to cook from scratch. I had some skills, but no idea really how to put together a dish from its basic elements. I learned pretty quick, starting from more familiar dishes and branching outward.

I’ve mentioned before that a chance remark by innerdoggie about my Mediterranean palate sent me off in that direction, one I am still pursuing with vigor.

Also, sometime after moving to California, I rediscovered meat. For one thing, I realized that eating protein made me feel less tired, and there’s only so much peanut butter a person can consume. For another, meat well-prepared started to taste better. Third, poor imnotandrei is a long-suffering carnivore, and I love him, so I started to compromise. I still don’t really like it as the centerpiece of a meal, but I do have an overt fondness for meat used as a flavoring – little bits of bacon or prosciutto or salt pork or whatever. I also have always liked poultry -- eek, I am gendered in my flesh choices! I like lamb, too, so maybe that re-establishes my androgyny. I like the cheap and flavorful cuts of beef, too – mmm, braised short ribs. Am I safe from food/gender stereotypes?

No, let’s face it, I eat like a girl. I like salads, for gods’ sakes.

But by the way, my cholesterol tests stayed the same throughout all these pretty profound diet changes. They still tend to run a little high. Oh well. I've still come along way, baby.



Addendum: How could I forget my mother's other specialty? Lasagna, made with cottage cheese instead of ricotta for that extra dose of inauthenticity. It's really, really good.