As I mentioned in a previous post, I grew up with your garden variety Betty Crocker 1950s Cookbook (Betty Crocker)kind of food. You know the stuff – Tuna Casserole, meatloaf, etc. But there were also some interesting variations on the norm.

I think it’s necessary to separate this post into two parts. My parents are divorced, so I grew up with not only my mom’s cooking, but also my stepmonster’s. One can cook. One only thinks she can.

My stepmonster is the one who thinks she can cook. She’s the worst kind. Her cooking is mostly edible, but that’s giving her too much praise, really. She screws up pasta. For example, she’ll cook angel hair pasta because it’s quicker, ok. Then she’ll go sit down and play a couple hands of solitaire (with a real deck of cards. No sophisticated computer games for her.) As she’s playing with herself, the pasta is boiling away. Keep in mind that angel hair pasta only takes about 3-5 minutes to cook, depending on the variety you buy. Hers? Comes out way thicker than regular spaghetti. And all the starch that cooks out of it and sits in the cooking water ends up as giant blobs of slime all over the pasta, because she doesn’t understand the concept of rinsing. I mean, if she doesn’t understand the concept of cooking time, then it’s a given that she doesn’t get everything else that comes after that.

Let’s see, what else has she messed up? Oh, speaking of cooking times, there’s the roast beef that takes 45 minutes to cook. Sure, she likes her meat rare, but the rest of us would at least like it warm in the middle. So yeah, gross. And then there’s her famous debacles:

Pot Roast – you know how when you cook a pot roast you usually put some root vegetables in the pot, like potatoes, carrots, turnips, etc? She gets tired of the same old thing. So one time there was broccoli in it. It was so nasty that the dogs wouldn’t even touch it, and these dogs ate nearly everything. My sister and I were stuck eating this crap.

Chicken Cordon Bleu – chicken breast with a stuffing of ham and cheese, usually Swiss cheese. In this case, my stepmonster decided to use Velveeta. Oh yeah. AND – it gets better – she put melted Velveeta on top of it before she put it in the oven. Do you know what happens to processed cheese product when it’s in the oven for that length of time (because she never undercooked chicken)? It turns into a plastic shell. ‘Nuff said.

Then there’s her famous food combos. My stepmonster is of the belief that all meals must include a meat, starch, and vegetable. What she doesn’t get is the whole concept of complimentary side dishes. There is one combo in particular that sticks out in my mind. (I fully expect a scathing phone call from my sister for bringing back this repressed memory.) One summer evening, dear old stephag decided to feature summer squash on the menu. Summer squash was always watery and soggy, way overcooked. That cooking time thing again. The meat has long since been forgotten, since it is not important in this equation. What is important, however, is the starch that was on the meal. It was – get ready for it – Spagettios. You read it right. My sister will tell you that summer squash and spagettios do not go together. So will my old next door neighbor, who got out his garden hose to wash all the puke out of the neighborhood, most of which landed in his yard. Nine times she puked. I don’t think my sister has had either one of those foods since.

Meals with my stepmonster weren’t all that bad. Sometimes we went out to eat. In fact, it was a regular weekend thing, so we always had that to look forward to. Also, we visited my mother on the weekends, and my mom can cook. Most of what and how I cook today comes from her, and of course my dear Gram and Grandma.

So, Mommy’s cooking. Mom has about a dozen tried and true meals that I always look forward to when she makes them. However, being blond, my mom has been known to mess things up on occasion. (No offense to blonds who would be offended by that.)

My mom’s meatloaf rocks, because she makes it like a giant Swedish meatball (my Mom’s grandparents came from Sweden, so we know how to make a real Swedish meatball). Basic meatball recipe includes finely chopped onion, salt, pepper, and allspice. One night I took a bite of the meatloaf.

“So, how is it?” Mom asked.

“Well, it’s good, but there’s a bit too much cinnamon in it,” I replied.

“What? I didn’t put any cinnamon in it. That’s allspice!” Mom took a bite, realized that it was cinnamon, and went over to the spice cabinet. She starts tearing through the carefully arranged yet overflowing cabinet to get to the designated allspice spot, where she sees… cinnamon. Well, it must be someone else’s fault, because the allspice is not where it’s supposed to be. The rant went on for awhile about this, as my human garbage disposal stepfather happily ate the cinnamon-infused meatloaf.

Another time my mom made tuna casserole. “So, how is it?” she asked. It just occurred to me that whenever my mom asks how the meal is, it must be messed up. She never asks that when everything turns out ok.

“It’s really good, Mom, but there’s not a lot of tuna in here.”

“I forgot it,” she said with a sheepish grin on her face.

Those are the two that come to mind. Luckily, my mom doesn’t make it a habit of screwing up dinner. Though she did call me last night to ask how to de-heat chili. I didn’t know, but Boyfriend did, so when I called her back to tell her she said that the chili wasn’t too hot, it was just that all the spice seemed to land on the spoon that she was stirring/tasting with. Just another blonde moment.

One of my favorite meals, though, is something that was created from a screwup of Biblical proportions. I mentioned before that my family came from Sweden. Well, Swedish cooking is rather bland, and somewhat basic. When I was in Sweden about 10 years ago now, my friend told me that a lot of stuff we take for granted now, like spaghetti, is still considered exotic cuisine, mostly by older Swedes, but it’s fairly new to Sweden. When my family came over less that 100 years ago, they’d never seen the stuff before.

One night, I believe it was one of my mom’s cousins, ate over a friend’s house and had spaghetti for the first time. The meal was described to my great-grandmother, who tried to replicate it as best she could. Pasta, hot dogs, and tomato soup. Campbell’s, straight from the can. Ok, maybe the first incarnation had ground beef in it. It’s good that way too. But hot dogs is where it’s at today, and it must be made with elbow macaroni so that it can be called by its proper name: Smiles. It is my ultimate comfort food, the one food I will eat when nothing else appeals to me.

So now you know the story of how my palate was developed. I bet my sushi post makes a lot more sense now. Boyfriend certainly is a lot more enlightened about my food cravings than he was when we first met.