How I learned to eat

Dinner time. My mother had “slaved” in the kitchen and was hot and not pleased. Vegetables were steamed soft, meat overcooked in the pan or oven. She did not have the touch. However, we ate it. My father’s cooking wasn’t much better. I was about 30 years old before I learned that cooked liver could be deliciously tender and juicy.

Mom’s best dish was a tuna casserole that included a can or so of tuna, and mushroom soup out of a Campbell’s can, poured over alternating layers of Fritos; she gave me the recipe and I made it for myself when I was a working bachelor. Fritos were one of my favorite food groups. I could buy some new comics or science fiction magazines, get a cold Pepsi and a bag of Fritos and sit on the porch in an afternoon and have a grand time.

The college fraternity cooks were okay. I was usually hungry. Plus there were all the hamburgers and French fries and fried chickens and chicken-fried steaks in between. And late night in the dorm, the hamburger and milkshake guy would come through. He sold hamburgers made of some kind of ground meat, greasy in the bun, and frozen milkshakes.

The military cooks had the license to keep us fueled. It was fuel, you couldn’t care too much how it tasted. Could a car complain about Cities’ Service gasoline instead of Phillips? Was Gulf too rich, did (Conoco betray its dirty origins?

So--later in life--when I was assigned to a fancy series of books about food... I required extensive and rapid education.