Ahh Sunday, that means it's sounds of the Subcontinent day, so I’m starting it off with a little AZN TV Show Biz India with my breakfast.
Later this afternoon we’ll tune all the radios to WCBN for what is usually a long mellow afternoon of various international music with Sounds of the Subcontinent being the highlight.
I think it’s rubbing off a little as some of Oliver's guitar solos are taking a distinctly Eastern tinge lately
I guess that’s an appropriate way to express it. If there’s “western twang” then “eastern tinge” makes sense.
French Toast. When I was a kid we had french toast infrequently. When we did, I liked to take my last piece, butter it, leave it to get cold, then eat it. For some reason this completely freaked my Mother. She would attempt to argue me into putting Log Cabin on it and eating it “hot for Christ’s sake”.
There is something about cold buttered french toast that really does it for me Ma, why is this such an issue?
Many of my Mother’s food freakouts I’m glad of now. No soda, that one has stood me in good stead. To this day I can’t just drink a soda. It is a rare and guilty pleasure.
Also no Hostess. Hostess was owned by ITT and ITT was making bombs intended for Hanoi. Whether this was true or not I don’t know, but I’ve never eaten a Twinkie and it was only in the last year that I attempted a Dolly Madison fruit pie, (they’re owned by Hostess now I guess).
I threw out 7/8ths of it. Normally I have huge guilt throwing out food, but as I’m pretty sure it wasn’t, I didn’t bat an eye.
And while there seems to be some difference of experience on this one, my recollection of cereal is that we were allowed 1 carefully watched leveled teaspoon of sugar. Never, ever, were we allowed to purchase any cereal with marshmallows in it.
I do remember that somehow Cap’n Crunch passed the litmus test. How that occurred is unclear. I suspect a rare occasion when the elder sibs must have worked in collusion to wear her down and I reaped the benefit or evil as the case may be.
There were perpetual milk and butter battles. When I was very young she would take half skim milk and mix it with water and powdered milk and shake it up in a yellow plastic jug with a blue top. When she died and my Dad was cleaning a bunch of kitchen stuff out it went straight into the give away pile. No one wanted that thing for remembrances.
She used to cry and beg me to stop eating butter. “My Father died from butter” she would weep. I’d say “Ma that margarine crap is the very devil, just trust me, butter is better.” Turns out I was right, Ma, all that denying yourself, you poor thing. Fucking Drs. made her life miserable.
They made her stop eating eggs. So once a month she would treat herself to an egg white omelet. I remember once she had made it all nice with a little orange garnish and what not, and put it out on the picnic table. She went back for something, probably salt substitute, and some frickin’ beagle came along and snagged it. She was completely wrecked.
She used to freak that I would eat a lot of avocados. I used to split ‘em, then fill the cavity with salsa and eat it with a spoon, YUMMM!
She’d say “That’s nothing but pure fat!” and I’d say “it’s green fat, it’s different” turns out I was right about that also.
The problem really was, that she came from a generation where if the Dr. said take two aspirin every four hours that is exactly and precisely what one did. Not one jot more or less.
If John Kennedy said ask not, then you asked what you could do for your country.
If Truman said buy war bonds then you saved your nickels and you bought ‘em by crackey.
She was raised to believe in God’s authority but when she no longer could, she could not shake off having people she perceived as authorities tell her what to do and how to eat, medicate and live. I think she was kinda miserable because her house was never really clean and her children were crazy wild and really avid self-medicators.
Me? I like me some buttered french toast with real eggs, and real maple syrup once in awhile and I don’t give a fuck what some suit tells me about it. In fact, just straight out, no suits at the table.
