Remembering Eats

My mother made a dish one time called Chicken Divan. It had broccoli in it, yech, broccoli! It was a casserole and was actually quite good. Even the broccoli tasted pretty good. I do not remember much about the dish but have seen the recipe advertised several times over the years. However, being a family who made fun with words Chicken Divan became Chicken on a Couch. So from time to time when she made that dish we all talked about having Chicken on the Couch which thoroughly confused some who were unfamiliar with the family name game tradition.

I loved bacon and eggs, still do. I call them "something different." So my wife gets a little smile on her face when I say I think I'll have "something different" for breakfast. My first wife and I called them "baswan and oggoose." How the hell we came up with that name is beyond me. I like "something different."

Chicken on a stick was actually a pork dish or veal. You could buy some type of ground pork or veal that was formed around an actual piece of wood and lightly breaded. It was quite tasty. We had it when I was a kid, then later on in my first marriage my wife and I found the same meat from time to time. It did seem to disappear and for the life of me I do not know what it is really called. Our name was Chicken on a Stick. It had a drumstick appearance.

Milk Toast was a favorite of my Dad's and I also. It was just toast, buttered. You poured milk over the toast until it was saturated, then salted the toast and dug in. I could eat a lot of that when I was a kid. It did not take long to go through a loaf of bread at our home.

Chicken Noonie soup was a great favorite. I always ate the broth first as I loved slurping up the noodles with a saltine cracker in my mouth. There was something comforting and warming about Campbell's Chicken Noonie soup.

My Dad loved Oyster stew and he passed that love on to me. Now I make my own from scratch. Have for many years. However Campbell's came out with a frozen Oyster Stew, with few oysters, that my Dad would buy from time to time and have my mother prepare. He loved to get an oyster, but made sure we all got one or two. When I began making Oyster stew I made sure there were a lot of oysters in the stew and that you could get a lot. That is another dish that speaks to me of the Christmas Holidays, New Year's Day and the taste of a good batch of Oyster stew and friends. Even today I made that stew several times during the holiday. I have begun to experiment with it, adding onion, mabe a little bacon bits. It is all good.

Vollwerth's Meats located in the U.P. used to come out with a hot dog that still was in a casing. It had some fine seasoning to it that was excellent. I've purchased those kinds of hot dogs for years when I travel back home. I freeze them and we enjoy them throughout the year in Arkansas. However, they don't taste the same as a hot dog cooked on a stick over a bed of coals. Perhaps the fresh air of camp, the natural fire, and the situation we found ourselves in added to the seasoning, or maybe they changed their recipe. I don't know, but I do enjoy hot dogs still in a natural casing.

My Mom's ham loaf. I have the recipe and from time to time Terry and I grind our own meat and make the dish. It is excellent. It was my traditional birthday meal when I was a child. It still tastes as good today as it did then, provided you get a tasty ham. Ham loaf, baked potato, and some vegetable side dish and you got a good evening. It is even good cold on a slab of bread. I always put some ketchup on it though as that makes it a little better.

Then I end with pasties. A Danish dish carried into the mines by scandanavian miners back in the late 1800's still can be found in most communities in the U.P. You run out of pasty places the further south you go, but in the U.P. the pasty is a staple of a good meal. A meat pie with potato, some type of beef, rutabega, and onion all finely chopped, or ground together as I do, encased in a pie dough shell. Baked with some lumps of butter to provide moisture and the crust painted with a mild or egg wash to give the crust that pretty brown appearance and you've got a meal you will not forget. The next day, cold left over pasty, a salt shaker, some ketchup and a cold beer to wash it down and you will not have a bad day. I make pasties, not too often as they can seem like a lot of work, but they are to die for.

That eats from my youth. Good days, good people, family and fun. You cannot ask for more.

A Little Humor From the Past

This should be kind of inclusive of humorous events that come to mind from our family history. Recently a few short memories have been popping up so I thought I get them down, just in case someone else in the family has my strange, earthy sense of humor.

When I was perhaps 10 or 11 years old I went on a smelt dipping excursion with someone. I don't remember who now. We were successful and I was given a bucket about half filled with smelt to bring home. We lived at 820 West Superior St. in Munising, MI. Being young, tired from the excitement and it was after dark I was in no mood to clean the fish. Mom & Dad were out, so with no other options I ran cold water into the bathtub and dumped the fish in. I reasoned that they would certainly last till morning and perhaps Mom would help me clean them.

Morning came, and along with it came a squeal of concern from my Mother. She called me into the bathroom and I discovered all of the smelt, some 50 or 60 floating belly up in the water. That wasn't too bad. What was really bad is in their last desperate act of procreation they spawned in the bathtub. Fish eggs have a natural glue to adhere to rocks on the stream bed so the fish can come to term, ingest the yolk sac in the egg and then swim on their way. The texture of the bathtub was that of coarse sand paper. It took me much of the day and the better part of a Ajax powder can to get the eggs off the tub. Needless to say, my Mother had to suffer the indignity of bathing in a fishes spawn bed.

Another time:

We had company in the small apartment at 820 W. Superior. My mother was sitting on a couch in the living room participating in the conversation. She became very engrossed in the conversation and realized she had to go to the bathroom. I was sitting on the floor listening to the adult talk, enjoying being part of the scene. My mother left, went into the bathroom, came out and resumed her place on the couch. In a few minutes, I happened to look up and she was "jiggling." My mother was a heavy woman and jiggled when she laughed. Only once or twice did I ever hear her cut loose, most of the time she seemed to snicker and jiggle. Well here she was jiggling, so tickled that she could not talk for a period of time. Finally she managed to say, she had to go to the bathroom, but was so engrossed in the conversation that she had gotten up, gone into the bathroom, sat on the commode, flushed, got up wash her hands, but had forgotten the most important part. She forgot to go potty.

Another time:

My mother was a heavy woman. She wore a girdle. One morning I heard my Dad loudly proclaim that he had gone to bed the night before with his wife, but had awakened next to a horse. After all, there was a horse collar in there. Whereupon he proceeded to march around the living room with my Mother's rolled down girdle around his neck, somewhat resembling a horse collar. We all laughed, but Mom got after the old man for embarrassing her like that.

Another time:

I was in my bedroom in our apartment at 820 W. Superior St. My parents were home and it was just a day where everyone was kind of doing their own thing. I don't recall what I was doing, however my revere was broken by three distinct sounds kind of like a person clapping their hand loudly three times. Very distinct noise. I came out into the living room to see what the hell had happened. There stood my Mother, "jiggling" again. She was really tickled because she was standing and had her legs crossed to stop from having an accident. Well, here I am asking what was that, what made that noise? I do not remember how the story came out, but the fact is my Mother was a very heavy woman who wore a girdle. Well, in the privacy of her home she was encountering a gas problem and had to pass some gas, or "break wind." When she did, apparently the girdle was under a lot of stress and held the cheeks of her behind so tightly that instead of her breaking wind in a normal fashion it resulted in three separate and distinct explosions sounding a lot like someone clapping their hand. My poor Mother.

Just some examples of life at the Floria's in the mid-50's.