I almost neglected this thread, since my grandma was a five-star cook. Everything was made from scratch and cooked with loving care, just the way they did in the “old country”.
But then there was her fish-head soup. All I remember is Grandma happily sucking out the brains, while the rest of us ran to find the nearest vomit receptacle.
I was lucky enough to experience some of my great-grandmother’s cooking. It was plain, unobjectionable hearty fare for the most part. There was one memorable Sunday dinner, though, where she thought the chicken gravy looked a bit insipid. So she put yellow food coloring in. Neon yellow gravy is strangely unappetizing. We all had a good chuckle over it. Incidentally, I made the same mistake many years later–the kids wanted macaroni and cheese, and all I had was white cheeses, so I added a little orange food coloring. Somehow it came out a weird vomitous pink color.
One of my grandmothers didn’t cook much, because she was wheelchair bound. The other one, though. Hoo boy. Like the girl with a curl, when she was good, she was very very good, but when she was bad she was horrid. It was a running family joke that Grandma always had an explanation about supper. “Well, you know, I was out of raisins, so I threw in some olives…” kind of thing. I can’t think of anything specific right off hand, but there were quite a few dishes that were just bizarre.
Oh, and she loved to make this 70s version of taco salad that wouldn’t have been too bad, but she used that sweet red salad dressing (Russian? Catalina? whatever) which ruined the whole thing for me. She also never drained the ground beef, so it would be super greasy from that as well, with about half a bag of crumbled Doritos soaking up the sludge. Ugh. She also liked to make egg rolls (as an entire meal). They were actually very tasty, but they were HUGE! She would have to glue two egg roll wrappers together to contain the filling, and they would still be bursting in the pan.
She also always burnt cookies and toast, so I got used to the sound of scraping; I ate it anyway, of course. And her pancakes were atrocious. She could make pretty good crepes, oddly enough, but her regular pancakes were these weird, alkaline, rubber things. Later I figured out that she must have used baking soda instead of powder, and plain milk instead of buttermilk, so there was no rising going on. My eldest son loved them the few times he got to have them, go figure.
I lived with my grandparents for a while when I was a teenager, so sometimes she’d fix me a little something I could gulp down on the bus since I was always running late. That was really thoughtful of her. But half the time she would make these monstrous stoner sandwiches–like a sunnyside fried egg with American cheese, fried ham, and cream cheese and mayo and mustard on a buttered English muffin (with most of the burnt bits scraped off, of course), wrapped in a paper towel. So I would inevitably get some sort of dripping on my clothes.
Miss ya, Grandma.
As for Mom, she was/is mostly a boring cook of the crockpot potroast variety with canned veggies on the side. I can only think of two things that were simply horrible, however. One was a very bland pasta dish (found later that other people make it and call it “goulash”). It’s basically elbow macaroni, ground beef, big honkin’ chunks of bell pepper and onion (never browned, just…boiled with the noodle, maybe?) and canned diced tomato. I don’t think it had any real herbs or spices. Sometimes she would put in shredded mozzarella to make it extra glorpy. For variety, she would add a packet of taco or chili seasoning, plus a can of corn. shudder
The other was her “pizza.” Spread out a can or two of refrigerated pizza crust on her biggest cookie sheet, top with half a can of plain tomato sauce, sprinkle a random amount of dried “Italian herbs”, top with a layer of ground beef seasoned with a little fennel seed, a can of sliced mushrooms:mad:, and a bag of cheap shredded mozzarella. Bake till congealed.
For bonus points, I will mention my late dad’s method of making barbecued chicken. Marinate the chicken in the barbecue sauce. Throw on very hot grill. When first layer of BBQ sauce is burnt to a crisp, slather on another coating. Repeat till chicken is no longer bloody, and hermetically sealed in a 1/2" thick charcoal packet. Why, Dad?!
My grandmother didn’t bake cookies–cookies were my grandfather’s job. He did chocolate chip and oatmeal cookies, and there were nearly always some of one or the other in their cookie jar.
His oatmeal cookies were the only ones of that type I remember having growing up, and to this day I have trouble eating oatmeal cookies without thinking of him and getting depressed … My wife only recently came to actually understand this fully. She knew I didn’t eat oatmeal cookies and sort of why, but she’d missed part of the story. “Your grandfather,” she said, “must have made wonderful oatmeal cookies, huh?” “Oh no,” I told her, “they were just awful. Tough and crunchy, flavorless, horrible, horrible cookies.”
Also, I think he used the same chocolate chip cookie recipe as your grandmother. Lost in time, alas.
Most everything grandma cooked was great. Mom said she could never understand how she could just put in “a little of this, some of that” and turn out so good. Grandma never could explain it to her. Mom had to use cookbooks and was mostly good, although she had one dinner that turned out bad.
my Grandma did some things great. City chicken, Gołąbki, pierogi (yes, we’re Eastern European.) she could hammer out hundreds of pierogi in a weekend to both cook for Christmas dinner, and have plenty to give out to all of us. her gołąbki were legendary.
but man, you didn’t want her to cook vegetables. She was a 1950s housewife, who cooked vegetables until they were “good and done” so you wouldn’t be “good and done.” we’re talking broccoli which was grayish-brown, and only edible for the cheese sauce it was in.
I don’t remember either of my grandmothers’ cooking, but my mother had some interesting quirks. To start with, my father for some reason believed any pink at all in meat meant food poisoning, worms or worse. Every type of meat, fish or fowl in out house was one step away from leather.
Add to that, my mother thought the only way to cook vegetables was to boil them to the consistency of pond algae. My father said that it wasn’t until my mother died and he started to make his own meals that he actually liked vegetables. (Of course we felt the same way about him and meat.)
Oddly enough, both of them baked as a hobby, and they were pretty good at it.
Maybe we’re related. :p:p