food thing

[keryx]

From all my femjays.

What I ate as a kid... or rather, what I remember eating as a kid. Except for my mom's idea of breakfast and my very very sketchy attempt at early vegetarianism, I think we ate okay. I realize reading this that we kinda always put an emphasis on eating well (that is, not so much healthily as tastily), so it makes sense that good food is still a big part of my overpaid yuppie budget. I hadn't really thought about how big a role restaurants play in my family memory. Or how much my kitchen is modeled on my dad's cooking.

When mom and I went out shopping, we'd split a Happy Meal. It was a huge treat. Dad would take me for hash browns at breakfast, and we got those lemon-shaped lemon drops when we had to go to the base together for something. I think, actually, that they sold those at the package (liquor/beer) store. And when mom was out of town, we'd cook all the smelly seafood and green veggies we wanted. Or we'd go places that had specific food associations. The Pottery in Williamsburg had this "pottery meal", which was a mini loaf of bread, mustard, a sausage & a thing of sharp cheese. I remember eating a lot of pineapple at friends' houses (I had a handful of half-Pacific Islander friends).

If mom was cooking:
Goulash, with egg noodles, tomato sauce and hamburger.
Mom's Special Bland Chili, with tomato sauce and hamburger.
Meatloaf, with tomato sauce, ketchup and hamburger.
Tuna casserole, with more egg noodles, the standard canned mushroom soup plan.
Egg salad sandwiches.
Assloads of cantelope. Watermelon in the summer when you could buy them hot off some stand, but cantelope all year (you could get it at the Commissary all year round). When we got older, melon with prosciutto.
Pancit and lumpia, with barbecue meat skewers (this was a whole family meal, and lasted days like Thanksgiving, but we'd also get Filipino takeout).
Frozen strawberries that we picked. Not the kind with juice and sugar, just cut and frozen.
Rice Krispy treats.
Cupcakes for breakfast.
Caramel apples. Peanut brittle. That weird pseudo-chocolate candy that you melted into molds.
Roast beef in gravy with potatoes and carrots.
Spaghetti-Os.
Ham and scalloped potatoes.
Kool-aid. Loads of Kool-aid. Always that or milk to drink. Mom drank a lot of coke.
Corn and peas from the little plastic bags inside the boxes.
Chinese takeout. Rice, sweet & sour chicken, egg rolls, soup, the stuff with everything in it.
Takeout fried chicken from Pollards, which had these deep-fried rolls. Takeout sammiches.
Wheat bread with butter on it.
Clementines & tangerines.
Fresh carrot & celery sticks.
Jello salad, with red jello and bananas.
Later, this would turn into lots of takeout salads from Harris Teeter.

If dad was cooking:
Broccoli and cheese sauce.
"Baby April's favorite soup", which was just a tomato-based beef and veggie soup but was apparently the only thing I ate when I was very very tiny.
Steakum and egg sammiches.
Omelettes with everything known to man. The thin kind, with the egg as just a wrapper.
Sausage and sauerkraut (if mom wasn't home).
Crab legs and asparagus (also if no mom).
Salmon steaks grilled with various marinades.
Dad's kickass never the same recipe twice chili, which came in Mom-flavored, hot, and please-kill-me-now.
Tomatoes off the plants, before they even had time to lose the sun's warmth.
Salads. Lots of complicated salads.
Chocolate malt milkshakes, made extra thick in the blender.
Pizza with everything known to man, starting from a bake-yr-own Chef Boyardee crust.
Tacos with everything known to man, starting with a mix in a box and heavily elaborated with multiple flavors of salsa. Plus nachos.
English muffins.
Sauteed mushrooms. Garlic, butter, salt or soy sauce.
Lasagna with everything known to man.
Blueberries. Raspberries. Blackberries.

Holidays:
Turkey (breast only), salty Smithfield ham with pineapple and brown sugar, seven layer salad, deviled eggs, stuffed (similar to twice-baked) potatoes, at least 3 kinds of pie, a variety of veggies from boxes, stuffing amplified with sausage and veggies and nuts.
OR we'd just eat out somewhere nice and american (i.e. with steaks and prime rib and crab soup).

Restaurants I remember:
El Hombre (Mexican dive, that gave me 2 umbrellas in my drink).
Victoria Station (one of those nice American places, with this really yummy chocolate mousse). I think I always got fried shrimp.
Tandems (replaced Victoria Station - seafood and steak, amazing salad bar and local seafood).
Number 7 (my friend's dad's Chinese place).
Pollard's Chicken. We could walk there, and get Slurpees for the walk home.
Zero's Subs. Sometimes we biked there.
Krispy Kreme. Not a restaurant, but I remember my mom's kruellers.
Bobbywood. Much later addition - a hipster yet posh place with a changing menu of deliciousness.
There was a cafeteria-style place near one of the malls or strip malls (maybe Military Circle) where my mom always made me go. I ate a lot of cottage cheese and fried shrimp there.
Doumar's (old school drive in downtown).
First Colony coffee house & Baker's Crust - I remember when they both opened. So very urban. And Cafe 21. And the Jewish Mother. Of these, only Baker's Crust survived.

Comments

[snidegrrl.livejournal.com]

Cabaret Voltaire.

[maryjholliday.livejournal.com]

It's funny how people are so defined by their food, and what a wide variety there is of "normal" food. I grew up in New England with a relatively-health conscious, Sicilian mother, and everything I ate is so different than yours! As a kid, I would have killed for some spaghetti-o's or kool-aid. I remember going to my friend Natalie's house and having bologna for the first time. And campbell's tomato soup with white rice added. Heh.