Our daughter is home and is relishing being spoiled and waited on. She works hard as an intensive in-home family therapist in Tacoma and is really burned out right now. She doesn’t like sea food, which is unfortunate given how close she lives to the sea, and has been craving beef. She and I are planning favorite meals for her while she is home. Roast beef, garlic mashed potatoes, turkey chipotle chowder, and pasta with this special tomato sauce I make are her requests. It is good to have her here.
What were your favorite meals at home? What didn’t you like? What special meals does your family request?
Trail Baboon 
Rise and Shine Baboons,
Yesterday we had Classic fondue with dippers of bread cubes, broccoli, and apples, accompanied by a salad, and lemon meringue pie. It was delicious and everyone snarfed it down and nearly licked their plates. I served it out of my 60’s era fondue pot. For one of our guests it was her first time with fondue at age 20. She loved it. I was telling them how I first tried fondue as a teen in 4-H. Whoever prepared it used wine as the base (as is the recipe) and it became a huge scandal that she served this to us. At the time I thought it was the most wonderful food I had ever eaten. That was small town, rural Iowa at the time.
When I was a kid probably a favorite meal was fried chicken, mashed potatoes, veggies and pie. I still love this, but I rarely fry food anymore. I also try to eat much less meat and much more plant-based food than the practices were in the 60s when I was a child. When I think of the changes that the food-production system have brought about in the last 50 years, it is pretty amazing. The advent of frozen food was what my Grandma used to talk about as a miracle. As a young woman she canned everything, including her meat.
Today I work, and tomorrow start our trip to AZ over the next few days, which will limit my participation here. Yesterday after our company left we put away the Christmas gear, and I completed most of my packing. Our porch looks like a tornado hit it with bins scattered everywhere. Somehow we will load it all in the car.
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Safe travels!
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Our default comfort meal was “Dad’s Spaghetti.” Bad name. I didn’t invent the recipe and the pasta was never spaghetti. The sauce was store-bought (from Paul Newman), the meat was Italian sausage from Johnsonville and the pasta was usually conchiglie. My contribution was mainly to tweak a standard dish with extra ingredients (garlic, red wine, Vidalia onions and green peppers) and care in assembly. It was one of about three recipes people craved after suffering a bad day.
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I do something similar here, where it is just “chicken pasta.” Store-bought sauce with sauteed chicken, mushrooms, and zucchini over penne or sometimes bowtie pasta.
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Dishes like these are a wonderful boon to a hard-working mom. For very little effort you can put out a pleasing meal, and if you take a little trouble you can vary the recipe easily.
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Growing up, one of our family favorites (at least when I was the only one left at home- I wonder if there was other family favorites earlier years?) was “Fox-burgers”. Spam burgers really. And I don’t know where the name came from, it’s just what we always called them.
I have had fondue maybe two or three times and the first time I may have been in my 40’s. It wasn’t that long ago. I’d heard of it of course and yes, it seemed very exotic; If I knew people had a fondue set I would have to wonder about their lifestyle! Haha-
There is a restaurant here in town, ‘Chesters’ that has an appetizer of cheese fondue with bread and steak cubes and it is wonderful! I’ve had that twice. Which means the first time I had cheese fondue was at some party. Hard to believe all those cast parties and no one did fondue?
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Was that because soldiers ate spam in their fox holes?
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Oh, that’s a good thought!
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My favorite dish was Norma’s chicken, created by my aunt. It was pieces of bone-in chicken rolled in a special flour mixture, browned in a skillet, and then baked in the oven. She took the lid off the bake dish toward the end so the chicken crisped up. When she made it with her own Leghorns with home grown sweetcorn, it was ambrosia.
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We have the grocery list ready. Daughter has planned the meals. Garlic mashed potatoes figure prominently in several meals.
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Well, you can never go wrong with garlic mashed potatoes.
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Done the way Julia Child did them.
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Since they are so easy to make, I’m wondering why daughter doesn’t make them for herself. I can see depriving yourself of a complicated family recipe, but garlic mashed potatoes? Not so much. suppose my lack of motherly genes are showing?
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She would make them for herself but she doesn’t have a potato ricer in Tacoma. She asked for one for Christmas. I should probably get her one this weekend.
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While I am generally Chef de Maison here, there is one thing that is a go-to comfort food that we all like – grilled cheese. These are made by Husband. I cannot make them near as well has he does. Cottage bread or potato bread is preferred – and lots of butter. Lots. It’s probably the butter that makes them so very tasty. Husband has figured out the perfect heat for them, so they are just a bit crispy. Nom nom nom.
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Growing up I never liked grilled cheese—mom made it out of Velveeta and Wonder Bread. Yuck. When I experienced Grilled Cheese with good cheese, I.e Monterrey jack or other and well made bread, it was and entirely different, positive thing. Yum.
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I remember getting grilled cheese sandwiches at Annie’s Parlour decades ago. They made a grilled cheese with several layers of thin-sliced bread, and three cheeses. Might have been cheddar, havarti, and gouda, or some similar combination. My eyes were opened.
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About the only favorite meal I could comment on would be the tunafish salad. My dad didn’t like tuna so whenever he was traveling for work (in the summer) my mom will make tunafish salad and serve it on top of a quartered tomato and sometimes a piece of iceberg lettuce. It’s not that I loved this greatly but it was fun because it was just for us girls.
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I did like having dinner at my Nana’s house on Saturday nights. That was hamburger and french fries night.
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Todays ‘word of the day’ is “Pescatarian” –
1) a person who eats fish but not other forms of meat.
2) Cuisine that can contain fish but no the forms of meat
Never heard of that before. I am definitely not a pescatarian as I don’t like fish.
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That brought this song to mind…
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I have a recipe for a pesto pasta salad with chicken that I made for my nieces for a number of years. My nieces tend to have opposite tastes – one likes spicy foods, for example, but despises fish, and the other loves all kinds of seafood but can’t tolerate spicy foods. Both of them, would eat the pesto pasta salad, though, so I kept feeding it to them.
Usually I’d serve some steamed asparagus as a side dish, and some focaccia with sea salt on the crust, and a flourless chocolate torte for dessert.
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Yum!
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