Feeding People

4:30 am on April 10th, 2017 and my thoughts are on the food I will be furnishing for a gathering  tonight, the breakfast meal I need to produce in a few minutes and the tiramisu that my daughter wants me to make for her workplace. Since preparing my first sit down dinner in 1975, I have thought about feeding people. A couple years later, I would have my first job working in a restaurant and begin learning about prep work, seasonings and the fickle palate of the American public.

The first meal I remember making was breakfast. I was learning to read quite well, so following a recipe was easy enough. Mom taught me that that a capital "T" meant a tablespoon and the lowercase was for a teaspoon. It was not until I actually made my first waffles that I was introduced to measuring spoons. Instead of the spoons we used to set the table for meals, there were these thin metal ones that rested inside each other and were connected on a ring. Those measuring spoons are in the drawer in which I keep my baking paraphernalia to this day.

When I was a young person, my dad worked and mom took care of the house and my younger siblings while I was dazzling my first grade teacher with my brilliance. I walked about a mile, through our San Souci neighborhood, in Jacksonville, Florida to Greenfield Elementary School swinging my lunchbox and singing the songs I had memorized from listening to the albums or 45s that my mom played while she washed dishes or mopped the kitchen floor. Of course a child's mind makes the words fit what she "knows". So, "Guantanamera", a song from Cuba, became "One Ton of 'Matoes" in my little girl mind. The crossing guard changed my tune to "Summer Time" and the words made sense and some other kids sang along here and there. The living was easy for children unaware of the lives being lost in Vietnam, having no real understanding of the meanings behind most of the popular songs of the late '60s.

That same walk home in the afternoon sun made me hungry. My mom would have home made whole wheat bread just coming out of the oven as I walked through the front door. After changing in to play clothes, my snack was a thick cut piece of that warm bread, lathered with butter (made in a quart sized Ball jar from the cream atop our raw milk) and honey, followed by a big glass of cold milk. I did not realize how good I had it; I wanted a sandwich (like the other kids) made from Wonder bread and Skippy peanut butter and wanted to have a glass of Ovaltine with it. My mom was not going to spend her food money on that stuff, so I had to ask for it when I was out with my Grandmother Norma. She would buy my requested brands and give the cute guy that put them in the trunk of her car a quarter.

My grandmother did her share of cooking to feed the people. The people, were hungry men that worked at the shipyard and came to her tavern at lunch time to eat her chili or ham sandwiches and have a draft beer. When we went to visit her at work, I was always allowed to have a huge dill pickle and I got to have a bottle of coke with a pack of salted peanuts in it and sometimes a piece of chocolate candy that had a cherry in the middle and some sweet syrup  surrounding it. I heard different music on the big jukebox in the corner than what was played at home. I remember twisting my body to music by a guy named Chubby and throwing my arms up and down to do the jerk or holding my nose and bobbing around to act like I was swimming. Life was great fun.

Now, nearly fifty years later, I am the grandmother making home made banana bread for one set of grandchildren and biscuits and white gravy for the other set. The young ones dance, uninhibited, to music that has a great beat, but they have no understanding of the lyrics. I have fed thousands of people in my life, but none of the praise matters nearly as much as hearing my grandkids say "it is good! DD can I have more?"  Yes, love, you may have as much as you like until it is gone.

Until later ~ Rita