Cereal Killer

During these hot summer days when maiden aunts are subsisting mostly on smoothies and sandwiches, our thoughts naturally turn to food tales of yore.

The Scene: My mother's kitchen, circa 1983. Cereal is kept in a floor-level cabinet so children can serve themselves for breakfast and snacks.

The Players: Me. My sister Rachel, age 6. Our brother Aaron is 13 -- seven years older than Rachel and seven years younger than me.

Rachel: Maria, would you please get me some cereal?

Maria: You can get it yourself. I'll get the milk out of the fridge for you.

Rachel: Can you get me cereal too?

Maria: You can get your own cereal. Open the cabinet and pick the kind you want.

Rachel: I want Cheerios. Get them out for me, pleeeeeeeeease?

Maria: [opening cabinet and pulling out a cereal box] Okay, here you go.

Rachel: Open it.

Maria: Open it yourself.

Rachel: [never taking her eyes off the box] You open it.

Maria: Rachel, you're a big girl! Why won't you do this yourself?

Rachel: I'm scared.

Maria: What can you possibly be scared of?

Rachel: I'm afraid of monsters. In the cereal box.

Maria: What in the world? ... AARON!!!!

Chocolate Fountain

During these hot summer days when maiden aunts are subsisting mostly on smoothies and sandwiches, our thoughts naturally turn to food tales of yore.

Picture it: my mother's kitchen, 1985. My youngest sister Rachel (age 8 at the time) asked me to help her make a milkshake. Since I was fully grown and much taller, she stood in front of me while we loaded the blender with ice cream, milk, and Nestle's Quik. As I reached out to pick up the blender's lid off the counter, Rachel pushed a button and started the blender.

Have you ever noticed how, in moments like this, time seems to slow way down? I saw her push the button. I heard myself say "NOOOOOOOOO." I saw the blender's contents fly high into the air, and then splash down upon us. I was still reaching for the lid while flailing toward the off switch.

I surveyed the wreckage. There were chunks of ice cream and splashes of milk everywhere. I was spattered from the chest up and completely clean from there down since Rachel had made a very effective human shield. She was drenched from head to toe, her hair dripping chocolate milk onto the floor. I ran across the kitchen and unspooled a roll of paper towels to mop us off, and then sent her to take a shower and change. I cleaned the kitchen, although I suspect my mother is finding bits of chocolate in odd places to this day.

When I got back from my turn in the shower, believe it or not, the kid still wanted a milkshake.

A Sad Tale

I haven't been a fan of caramel ever since I came down with a stomach bug shortly after licking some caramel frosting out of the bowl when my mother was making a cake. My mother, being a former nursing student and a woman of science, tried to explain to me that the illness had been caused by a virus and not the frosting. I think she was afraid I'd turn out like my father, who hasn't eaten chicken since he got an undercooked piece when he was in the army back in the 1950s.

I was five years old. My mother's scientific explanation, while correct, did not make me feel any better. Maybe the dizziness and pounding headache were to blame. Maybe I was just the tiniest bit of a drama queen.

Since that day I've never really enjoyed caramel's cloying sweetness. I'll eat something with a small amount of caramel (like a Snickers bar) but in general, caramel and I have never really gotten along. Until the other night.

Tune in tomorrow for the happy ending.

Because Everybody Nobody Likes Fruitcake

If you've been sad because you didn't think ahead and make fruitcakes for holiday giving to people you secretly dislike, be sad no more. Betty comes to the rescue with a recipe that is fast and easy.






A careful reading of the recipe will reveal that the most important component of the fruitcake is missing -- to wit: the booze. I've met people who have made fruitcake and people who have received fruitcake, but I don't think I've ever met anyone who actually likes fruitcake. As far as I know, the only reason to eat fruitcake is because the finished product is 100 proof. So you can sit at the holiday table quietly getting hammered while Aunt Gertrude talks about how it's a shame you've never lived up to your potential.


Betty also offers fruitcake in miniature. This recipe is also alcohol-free, but the finished product has the advantage of being small so it can be slipped into your pocket for surreptitious discarding later. Good old Betty. She thinks of everything.

Heavenly Memories

As the days turn colder, my thoughts turn to the best after-school snack ever. My mom's homemade bread and english muffins.

I know I made fun of her liver and onions, but my mom is a terrific cook. For many years during my adolescence, she made all our bread. She had a regular baking day just like people did in olden times, and on that day I would come home from school to see loaf after loaf of her delicious oatmeal bread lined up on the counter. Sometimes she made English muffins, too. The smell in the house was heavenly. If there is anything better than coming home from school and cracking open a fresh-from-the-oven English muffin and slathering it with lots of butter (I was much skinnier then) I challenge you to tell me what it is. And then I will tell you you're wrong.

Mom is a busy senior citizen now, what with kayaking and church activities and sewing, and she doesn't make bread anymore. She has a bread machine that she pulls out every once in a while and tries to convince everyone the product is just as good as what she kneaded with her own two hands. But it's too late. She spoiled us during our formative years and we are not fooled.

Dinner and a Movie: Royal Wedding

A really good thing about the Army Dude is that most of the time, when I present a perfectly ridiculous idea to him, he says "Let's do it." (The rest of the time I ignore him and do it anyway.)

I stole got the idea for Dinner and a Movie from Brittany at Va-Voom Vintage, who does Friday Night Fashion and a Movie. I love reading cookbooks from different eras, so I thought it would be fun to watch a movie and eat a dinner that would have been typical of either the time the movie was made, or the time in which it is set. In the case of Royal Wedding, the movie is set in what was the present day: 1951, depicting the story of a brother-and-sister dance team who go to England to entertain during the festivities surrounding the wedding of then-Princess Elizabeth (now Queen Elizabeth).

The Scalloped Potatoes With Ham casserole was made with Campbell's Cream of Celery soup, since home cooks in the 50s were crazy about their casseroles. It was actually a little salty for my taste, but surprisingly good. The Army Dude had two helpings. He even enjoyed the movie despite its lack of shooting and military tactics. Which is another good thing about the Army Dude: you can get him to do pretty much anything if you bribe him with dinner.

Still Tasty After All These Years

Sometimes returning to the things I liked as a child is a bad idea. I'm thinking of the Great Candy Stomachache of 1996, when I learned that a thirty-three-year-old cannot match her ten-year-old niece Lik-A-Stix for Lik-A-Stix without consequences.

So I wondered, as I popped a batch of Pillsbury Cinnamon Rolls in the oven, if they would be as good as I remembered from weekends of my childhood, or a disappointment. They were GOOD. Better than I remembered, actually, thanks to the Cinnabon cinnamon filling that hadn't been invented back in the 1970s.

Unlike Cook Or Be Cooked for Wii, Pillsbury Cinnamon Rolls may actually require a 12-step recovery program. I'll keep doing research and let you know. These are the little sacrifices I make for my readers.

I Always Wondered

When you're six years old, the world is full of mysteries. How can Santa get into the house if we don't have a chimney? How do they get the snap, crackle, and pop into Rice Krispies? Where do all these brothers and sisters keep coming from? And why does Grandma always say "NO!" when I ask for a second glass of prune juice?

Liver & Onions

My mom is a terrific cook. Now that I’ve got that disclaimer off my chest, can we talk about the most dreaded meal of my childhood – liver and onions? Mom and I differ in our recollections of how often this was served, so the truth must lie somewhere between every Thursday (which is what I remember) and almost never (which is what she claims).

It was a child’s worst food nightmare: strong-tasting, bitter liver with equally strong tasting onions in a sauce that had picked up the flavor of both. One of the great things about being an adult is that I can confidently say I will never eat liver and onions again. If they serve it to me some day in the Old Folks Home, I will refuse to eat it. Then I’ll haul myself up by my walker and yell “I’m revolting!” Which, by that point, will most likely be true on a lot of levels.

A Blast From The Past

According to Something From The Oven: Reinventing Dinner in 1950s America, those strange recipes you see in vintage magazines for things like half a doughnut with jam and cottage cheese were brainchildren of the packaged food industry's test kitchens. Most American homemakers weren't buying, but apparently my family was the exception. My grandmother's pot roast recipe included packaged onion soup mix and ketchup; her kale soup required beef bouillon cubes. I'm pretty sure those aren't the same recipes her mother brought from the Azores in the early part of the 20th century. Gram adapted them to modern times. She was hip that way.

Also hip, I guess, was her Jell-O salad. It was a star player at every holiday meal of my childhood. My required "no thank you helping" sat on my plate in a scary pink-and-purple lump. I found it cloyingly sweet - and I was a kid who could eat Twinkies until my eyes bubbled. I was suspicious of the slippery fruits lurking in its murky depths.

Years later, Sophia Petrillo on The Golden Girls summed up my childhood feelings: "I hate Jell-O Salad. If God had meant peaches to be suspended in midair, he'd have filled them with helium."