FOOD FOR THOUGHT

My French / Italian childhood 'food memories' were brought to mind this past weekend as I stayed home and was constantly hungry for something different…we had dinner at a friend’s house Sunday night…the hostess’s son brought over fresh tuna…we ate the tuna sashimi style and some cooked…freaking fabulous…

Childhood foods I remember and loved…

it wasn't necessarily exotic food...

On Fridays…a Catholic obligation…we got used to:
Fish
Tuna casserole and sandwiches…
Salmon patties…
Grilled cheese sandwiches
Fish and chips…I remember eating T-bone steaks on Fridays when it no longer was a mortal sin…

Jell-O bowls filled with fruit…simply tasty…
Homemade pizza baked in square pans…plenty of hot peppers…
Pasta with meatballs, sausage or chicken spiced up…

(My Dad was one of those Italian guys who had to have tomato sauce and pasta almost every day…my Mom occasionally cooked what she called French Food like roasts, steaks, vegetables and Sheppard's pie)

Peanut butter and banana sandwiches
Baked chicken… my Mom would cut up whole chickens into un-identifiable pieces except for the legs…I remember a ‘one-chicken ‘dinner that must have had at least fifteen pieces…it tasted like chicken…
Home made apple sauce
Liver and onions piled on a plate…I still love liver and onions once in a while…
BBQ’d hamburgers with hot peppers…a family tradition every Saturday night…

My Mom is French...She made delicious Italian Christmas cookies and pastries…recipes she got from my Italian aunts…for other Italian food recipes, especially tomato sauces, the aunts would leave out an ingredient or two because they all fought for the best tasting tomato sauce…

Mom wasn’t into deserts…most cookies she made were awful and it was because she never tasted anything she made…Dad was always the ‘taster’ who tested foods like the pasta firmness and the need for salt…but never cookies...
From the local bakery Dad used to bring home éclairs and cream puffs all the time and we knew why…was like Happy Days for us...she put her cookies in our lunches but after trying to trade at school a few times there were no takers… On our way to school snow banks were an ideal dumping place…

Foods I wish I could forget about:

‘Chabot’: an Italian poor peoples’ dinner…made by simmering tomato sauce all day with some cheese and hot spices, then about a half hour before it was time to eat whole uncooked eggs were dropped in the large pan until they were ‘almost’ cooked…it was deemed ready to eat when the egg yolks looked like eyeballs peeking out thru the sauce…it was eaten like a thick soup with tons of Italian bread…I always loved the aroma but didn’t eat it too heartily… was a good time to eat leftover spaghetti

(Italian cooking always began with a tomato sauces prepared in the morning to simmer and cook all day…halfway thru the day lightly fried meat was dropped in the pan and then eaten for dinner…I think it’s been proven that simmering food all day does not a difference make…I call it a fake Italian tradition to keep women happily in the kitchen all day, which Canadian women loved doing to please their husbands)

Most Saturdays my Dad and I went to the Italian market and bought fruit, vegetables...and he usually bought some creepy, hideous and dreadful looking things…I’m almost sure the market gave these away but none of us touched this stuff…he had a fondness for food his family ate in Italy like goat heads, pig and ox tails… his family was very poor; they were goat herders and I guess during hard times they killed off a pet or two and had it for dinner…of course they ate all the pet parts and saved the hide for rainy days…

When a goat head was the main entree my sister and I would have a bet to see if the critter’s eyeballs were still attached…scary sight with or without...

Was another night for life saving left over pizza…