Mush
By Chris Coray, The Unmuddled Mathematician
The world is a different place in almost all ways than when
I was a kid. I am old enough to remember
the daily visits to our house by the ice truck, from which the ice man brought
a very large block of ice, using tongs, and put it in our ice box (now called a
refrigerator). It was soon replaced by
the primitive form of modern equipment we all now pretty much take for
granted. But almost all the food was
prepared in the kitchen by my mother.
Most all of it was really good and had pretty much fresh, as opposed to
frozen, ingredients.
There were, however, a few foods that gave me trouble. First, there was the daily bowl of mush for
breakfast. It’s a bad name for a bad
dish. This was not boxed cereal with
pictures of popular sports figures on the outside. No, this was a substance that served two
purposes. First, it was the essential
ingredient in concrete, albeit with less sand, but if you let it set up (about
an hour) it was fine for house foundations.
The other use was in my breakfast bowl.
It sort of looked like the tip of the iceberg seen by the Titanic, with
the berg surrounded by a little milk.
The dialog went something like this.
Me, “Mom, I hate this stuff. It
tastes exactly like it looks.” My
mother, “Eat it, it’s good for you, it will stick to your ribs.” Me, “My ribs are already cemented together
and I can’t breathe.” Mother, “Eat your
mush.” On a final and somewhat positive
note I had to develop enormously strong mouth, throat, and esophageal muscles
to get a spoonful of this concoction into my stomach. I don’t think the Heimlich maneuver would
have had a chance on a stuck chunk.
It was that or starve.
I would have paid for
Cheerios. There was no menu from which
to choose. A couple of other items from
our never changing menu included an occasional dish of liver and
onions. It made me sick to look at it,
smell it, and was even worse when I tried to eat it. I would complain, “I will gag if I try to eat
this”. My dad, who loved liver and
onions, answered, “If you gag I will give you a reason to gag”. Parenthetically I note that it can be proved
that liver and duck are the same substance.
My family (before Bobbie) pretty much ate a fixed set of
dishes. For example, every Sunday and I
mean every Sunday, we had roast beef, potatoes, and peas. While I love fresh peas it is well known that
cooking a pea turns it into a botulism filled organism with bad taste. Part of our marriage vows included the “No
cooked peas clause”. And the meat was always well done, to please
my dad. Well, well, well done. When he cut a piece with the world’s sharpest
knife or a small chainsaw, it hit the plate like a silver dollar, rattling for
15 seconds as it settled down to level. You
couldn’t distinguish it from shoe leather.
Jerky is softer. I was 20 years
old before I learned of medium rare meat, a liberating moment.
We also ate a variety of dishes made from leftovers. The names included hash, goulash, and
gubervarsh. Yes, I know that last is not
a word, but that’s what we called it. As
children of the depression, that event produced an absolutely-no-waste
lifestyle in my parents. Fair enough,
too. But pot-gut (ground squirrel) kebab
would beat some of the entrees. To be
fair, the food was mostly good and we would about once a week in warm weather make
homemade ice cream, my brother and I taking turns on the crank (no
motors). But in our model of never
changing consistency we always made just one flavor, pineapple sherbet, again
favored by my father. And the turkey at
thanksgiving, fresh, not frozen, was just wonderful, even with fairly dry
dressing.
We have recently travelled to Spain, Germany, and
Mexico. They have better food than the
U.S. It is fresher, more flavorful, has
more fruits and vegetables. If we
continue to export McDonalds, Burger King, KFC, and the like we will eventually
kill inhabitants of countries who buy into those franchise fast food. On the other hand, we do have one incredible
place at Bear Lake to feast on food that is delicious beyond description. It’s called Elvira’s.
