A Step in the Way Back Machine
I'll catch back up to our Southern Quick Trip next time...a few old school happenings popped into my head this week, and I wanted to write about them before I forgot...No, no dementia yet (that I know about) but I am a menopausal woman and have seen those memes about our brains, so I want to be ahead of the "curve" for once in my life!
Remember when so many Moms came home from work and cooked dinner for us all, or were already home and cooked dinner for us all? Sometimes Dads were there, and sometimes they weren't, but most of us didn't have to cook our own dinners, at least a few times a week.
My Mom was a pretty bad cook. She was - no shame, it just wasn't her thing. I totally understand that now, and didn't know how little she cared, or how bad a cook she was till many years later. She had her standard decent meals, and she could fix a great gravy or sauce or whatever you may call that delicious standard of the week in any household where there was any Italian heritage. My Gramma, her mother-in-law, taught her to make sauce...my Dad's mother, who was Irish and English...her mother-in-law taught her to make sauce...Dad's Gramma on the Palazzo side. She wanted to be sure her Frank would at least get some decent sauce. Meatballs and braciole were also part of Gramma's repertoire but that didn't make it down to Mom (so sorry about that!).
She tried to make pork chops, and used various sauces on them, trying to make them edible after she dried them out. Flank steak was another meal item that just never came out as good as when Dad cooked it on the grill. Sometimes a roast beef was good, and sometimes a pork roast was yummy, if you slathered it with applesauce. Again, those were the days when you got your meat at the butchers, and bought cuts to last the whole week. Now, if you do that, well, there's no money left for anything else to go with the meat.
Her other standard weekly meal was roasted chicken, with stuffing inside. Crispy skin, with just a little paprika for seasoning, that chicken was a bit better than decent. Well, the thing about a roasted chicken that you make yourself is that there is always a heinie, fanny, butt, whatever you want to call it. Dad would cut that chicken up. We always wanted part of the breast, and he wanted the dark meat (joke in there somewhere). Then the platter would go in the middle of the table, and the rest of the food would go around (mashed potatoes and some kind of canned veggie - probably green beans or corn). At some point during the meal, Mom would pull the fannie off the chicken and pop it onto someone's plate. That would start the fun. It was a challenge to put it on another person's plate without her seeing it was there. We would try to make that person look out the window, look at the dog, distract her in some way. Of course, the meal manners would break completely down by the time the fannie made the rounds. It usually ended up back on Mom's plate and she would do the unthinkable. Mom would put that whole thing in her mouth and pretend to swallow it.
We were horrified, every time. That shit never got old, let me tell you. We had roasted chicken EVERY week, usually on the weekend, and that fannie game happened every week.
How simple it seemed. Just pass around a part of the anatomy of your meal that was considered "gross" and have fun with it. Eventually it became a gift to our toy fox terrier, Peanuts. We probably drove him absolutely crazy with that thing. He was a bit afraid of Dad (the only one who was) and used to sit in the doorway waiting till we finished our dinner.
As I am now cooking more often than I have in 25 years, I have been recalling dinners of times past, when I was a kid, and when my kids were "kids". We all have our crazy traditions; some pass on, others do not. The fannie tradition didn't go past our home...it stayed there. As I think about it now, I am sort of glad "who has the fannie" is now a story I can pass on to my kids so they can laugh about another Grammie driven game.
Remember when so many Moms came home from work and cooked dinner for us all, or were already home and cooked dinner for us all? Sometimes Dads were there, and sometimes they weren't, but most of us didn't have to cook our own dinners, at least a few times a week.
My Mom was a pretty bad cook. She was - no shame, it just wasn't her thing. I totally understand that now, and didn't know how little she cared, or how bad a cook she was till many years later. She had her standard decent meals, and she could fix a great gravy or sauce or whatever you may call that delicious standard of the week in any household where there was any Italian heritage. My Gramma, her mother-in-law, taught her to make sauce...my Dad's mother, who was Irish and English...her mother-in-law taught her to make sauce...Dad's Gramma on the Palazzo side. She wanted to be sure her Frank would at least get some decent sauce. Meatballs and braciole were also part of Gramma's repertoire but that didn't make it down to Mom (so sorry about that!).
She tried to make pork chops, and used various sauces on them, trying to make them edible after she dried them out. Flank steak was another meal item that just never came out as good as when Dad cooked it on the grill. Sometimes a roast beef was good, and sometimes a pork roast was yummy, if you slathered it with applesauce. Again, those were the days when you got your meat at the butchers, and bought cuts to last the whole week. Now, if you do that, well, there's no money left for anything else to go with the meat.
Her other standard weekly meal was roasted chicken, with stuffing inside. Crispy skin, with just a little paprika for seasoning, that chicken was a bit better than decent. Well, the thing about a roasted chicken that you make yourself is that there is always a heinie, fanny, butt, whatever you want to call it. Dad would cut that chicken up. We always wanted part of the breast, and he wanted the dark meat (joke in there somewhere). Then the platter would go in the middle of the table, and the rest of the food would go around (mashed potatoes and some kind of canned veggie - probably green beans or corn). At some point during the meal, Mom would pull the fannie off the chicken and pop it onto someone's plate. That would start the fun. It was a challenge to put it on another person's plate without her seeing it was there. We would try to make that person look out the window, look at the dog, distract her in some way. Of course, the meal manners would break completely down by the time the fannie made the rounds. It usually ended up back on Mom's plate and she would do the unthinkable. Mom would put that whole thing in her mouth and pretend to swallow it.
We were horrified, every time. That shit never got old, let me tell you. We had roasted chicken EVERY week, usually on the weekend, and that fannie game happened every week.
How simple it seemed. Just pass around a part of the anatomy of your meal that was considered "gross" and have fun with it. Eventually it became a gift to our toy fox terrier, Peanuts. We probably drove him absolutely crazy with that thing. He was a bit afraid of Dad (the only one who was) and used to sit in the doorway waiting till we finished our dinner.
As I am now cooking more often than I have in 25 years, I have been recalling dinners of times past, when I was a kid, and when my kids were "kids". We all have our crazy traditions; some pass on, others do not. The fannie tradition didn't go past our home...it stayed there. As I think about it now, I am sort of glad "who has the fannie" is now a story I can pass on to my kids so they can laugh about another Grammie driven game.
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