Food and Philosophy

Culture begins and ends on a plate. We eat to live and then we live to eat. From the earliest times to the present, food has played a key role in the bonding of families and society at large. An infant bonds with its mother while feeding. A family bonds with each other when they share food. We define hospitality with friends by inviting them to ‘break bread’.

Food played a central role in civilization itself. The day that food sharing moved beyond the immediate family was surely the beginning of a village. The day when a family produced a surplus of grain or livestock was surely the beginning of markets and commerce. Villages and markets combined and grew and the rest is, as they say, history.

The original Greek symposium was a meal at home where the host would provide entertainment or provoke serious conversations. Romans had similar traditions. Even in the Dark Ages, communal societies such as monasteries took their meals together. As civilization progressed, we advanced from eating to dinning. Indeed, dinning is the one activity which the various elite professional ‘clubs’ have in common. The act of eating became a kind of social cement where the table was used for things beyond nourishment. The wooden board around which people sat to eat became the building blocks of what we now call family and civil society.

Somewhere in recent memory, we lost touch with this very important tradition. A few years back, Hilary Clinton rationalized her dysfunctional personal life by asking; “What did you expect me to do, stay home and bake cookies?” In an attempt to defend the indefensible she sent the wrong message to stay at home parents everywhere. Still, her unfortunate use of a kitchen metaphor is fairly typical of the dismissive attitude of many women towards all things domestic.

Maybe it was the social turmoil of the 1960’s or just bong resin of feminism; nonetheless, many women have come to see cooking as demeaning or the kitchen as a place of bondage. Men and women are too busy to prepare food or eat it with each other or their children. Dinner and lunch out - was in. An entire junk food industry matured around this selfishness. Adult greed became more important than what children need.

If you are offended at this point, stop now. It gets worse.

Eating out at the places your children select is expensive (for what you get), unhealthy and irresponsible. The same can be said for buying most packaged or “instant” food. No one goes to the grave thinking they should have spent more time with prepared or fast foods. Married or unmarried, if you have children, life is no longer about you, it’s about the kids. If you can not or will not accept responsibility for your children, the rest of us get to pick up the pieces and the expense. It doesn’t take a village; it takes you. No occupation on earth is more important than parenting, feeding and caring for the next generation.

There is a body of literature on food production and food retailing where the villain is always industry or government. Rachael Carson and more recently, Margaret Visser and Michael Pollan have made significant contributions to this popular theme. Unfortunately, the critics of agribusiness or government are seldom candid enough to place blame where it belongs; on voters, on parents. Junk food is like illegal drugs; the real problem is the consumer, the user.

We elect representatives at every level in our society; from town, to county, to state to the federal governments. This very expensive overlapping if not redundant superstructure is our creation. You not only voted for the nitwits who make environmental law, but you vote again every day with every dollar you spent on junk food and processed supermarket crap. Want to know who is responsible for pollution and nutrition problems? Look in the mirror. The beauty of democracy is that sometimes we get what we want and sometimes we just get what we deserve.

The hope here is that you might take responsibility for your nutrition and that of your children. This argument has three premises; it’s cheaper, it’s healthier and it’s socially responsible to cook for and eat with your kids. This isn’t an attack on supermarkets or restaurants; it is an appeal to common sense; you have the power to control what markets sell and what restaurants serve. When your kids are young, you are in control also – at least you should be. By the time they reach their teens, all you have left is influence. If you miss these opportunities, you have wasted part of your life and damaged part of theirs.

In the first instance, you have food for thought. Secondly, what follows covers all that is necessary, from soupspoons to nutcrackers, to prepare and cook, economical and nutritious meals; breakfast, lunch and dinner. This is not a recipe book but there are recipes (use the index). It’s more about how than what; the hope is that once you have mastered some basic dishes, you will create a suite of goodies to call your own. Cooking is to science what jazz is to music.

Economics - Let’s begin with the pizza principle. Made properly, pizza can be a cheap, healthy and nutritious meal; dairy, grain and vegetables. You can make your own at home for a third of what you pay for eating out or having one delivered (see pizza recipe). The value added for home cooking is your kids get to watch and participate. Do you know the ingredients of a frozen or take-out pizza? In the ensuing pages, with numerous examples, we hope to establish beyond doubt the economy and value of home cooking.

Health - The key ingredients in packaged, fast food or take-out are: calories, fat, salt, sugar and all the additives required to stop the awful from becoming inedible. The great virtue of home cooking is that you have total control of your families’ diet and nutrition. Enough said?

Responsibility – There are four clear and constant dangers to the modern household and possibly civilization at large; the cell phone, the television, the internet and junk food. We allow the first three because they are cheaper and more convenient than tutors, baby sitters and nannies. Indeed, the advantage of the first three is that they support a kind of electronic autism where neither parent nor child has to communicate directly with the other. When we don’t dine with our kids, the loss is social. With junk food the penalties are biological; obesity and God knows what from emulsifiers, stabilizers, preservatives, coloring or additives in general.

Parents who do not dine with their children and feed them junk food should be sued for malpractice or arrested for child abuse. So let’s define junk food.

Junk food is served at almost every chain restaurant (you know who you are) at the off ramp. There are some exceptions where in addition to junk food you might also get a healthy meal; IHOP, Popeye’s and Noodles come to mind. Junk food includes almost every pizza chain. There are great pizza restaurants, they are not chains. Almost all hamburger joints serve junk, but the hamburger, done right, is still a noble American institution.

Almost all super market prepackaged or prepared foods are junk; this includes many foods that are frozen or canned. This is not to say that you can’t use these things, but you do need to read the ingredients. If the ratio of additives to foodstuffs is 5:1 or more, leave it on the shelf. Almost all snack foods and prepared deserts are crap.

This is not a rant against restaurants or markets. If you patronize the junk food purveyors, they will thrive. If you patronize quality, it will flourish. There’s no trigonometry here. In a free market, you control the menu. By all means, eat out and by all means, shop until you drop; but do both with taste and discrimination.

Are you still there? Good, let’s continue. The purpose here isn’t to make anyone feel guilty. The purpose is to rethink the synergy of cooking, eating and interacting with children and friends. The dinner table is your best early opportunity to educate and socialize your children. If we’re too busy for this, we have to ask ourselves; what are we working for and what are we doing with our lives? If adults have no answers to these questions those ‘at risk’ children should come as no surprise. At risk kids are usually the sons and daughters of clueless parents.

What follows here has three currents; a philosophy of food, a biography of the authors experience with kitchens and restaurants and a cook’s guide to simple, wholesome and thrifty meals for breakfast, lunch and dinner. The biographical part is what’s different from the usual food or cook book. Too often, you pick a book and wonder what qualifies this author to write about this subject. What follows contains the warp of philosophy and life experience woven with the weft of simple wholesome suggestions about food and cooking.

This is not a cook book. The recipes are for living well. The target audience is children. If you can get your kids interested in food, how it is prepared, and the value of sharing these experiences with others; you will have provided them with home schooling for life.

Next, tools of the trade….

Tools of the Trade

Let’s start with the fundamentals. The kitchen is the room in your house without a toilet or shower. Other rooms have appliances, but only a kitchen will have an oven and a spice rack. Now that we have you situated…

Kitchen gadgets, tools and appliances are like wedding presents. You will never take most of them out of the box. So if you already have closets full of hanger queens, think about regifting. The tools required for home cooking are few in number but specific in kind. In a pinch you can find everything you need at a flea market or second hand store, even the stove and oven.

Stove

The Stove is arguably the most important tool, not any stove, a gas stove. No serious chef or cook, amateur or professional, uses an electric stove. At a minimum, you need a gas range; you could get by with an electric oven. Even if you don’t have gas utilities in your neighborhood, a propane tank with a line just for your stove would do the trick. The problem with all electric ranges is that they don’t heat or cool fast enough. The trick to efficient cooking is not just heat but heat control. With electric, you are not in control.

Pots and Pans

You don’t need to get carried away with pots and pans, but here again, you need to be particular; stainless, cast iron and glass. No substitutes. Actually, cooper is the best conductor of heat, but it can be a maintenance nightmare. You can not use cooper or tin clad cooper on an electric stove under any circumstances. If you must have something to polish, cooper clad stainless represents a compromise. In any case, your restaurant quality set of stainless should include a large stock pot for lobster, corn and such. You will need two omelet pans, one steel and one cast iron and a crepe pan which has many uses other than crepes.

Cast Iron

Your cast iron suite should include a small deep fryer up through a three or four quart stock pot. Modern cast iron is awful, too porous. Fortunately, cast iron is pretty much indestructible and therefore excellent American made cast is available on the secondary market; flea markets and thrift shops. Look for the Griswald or Wagner trade marks; they owned this market at one time. You will seldom find tops for old cast, glass tops are a great substitute. Cast iron has many virtues not the least of which is that it is indispensable for many traditional dishes such as authentic fried chicken, soup and all manner of stew.

Have you ever wondered why eggs, home fries, burgers and pancakes at a greasy spoon have a flavor edge that you can’t replicate at home? The answer is that cast iron grill. All food cooked on a diner grill has a little flavor of every thing that has gone before. The health bonus is trace elements of iron. The down side of cast iron is care. You can’t put acidic food in or on cast; tomatoes and lemon are examples; if you do, your dinner will taste like rusty nails. Further, you can not wash cast with soap, it will remove the cure. Cast iron must be washed with a plastic scrunchie and hot water only. If you’re overly concerned about microbes, dry your cast iron in the oven. From time to time you must rub cast iron with a very thin coat of bacon fat, lard or oil to maintain the cure – the quality that stops stuff from sticking to the pot.

Oven Proof Glass

The final type of cookware you need in the pantry is glass, ovenproof glass. Her again the class act is American made types such as Corning (Pyrex). I look for vintage pieces in the secondary markets. Pick up a variety of shapes and sizes with tops if possible. There’s no better apparatus for going from stovetop to table top. Food artfully cooked in clear glass looks great. Oven proof is indispensable for things like casseroles, cassoulet, macaroni and cheese or anything that needs to be baked, covered or slow cooked. If you have a timer on your oven and some covered glass cookware, stand by for some idiot proof comestibles.

Other Gizmos

Microwaves and toasters are handy in the kitchen but not indispensable. You can’t really cook in a micro but it is good for boiling water, popping corn and reheating certain dishes. What can be done with toasters and toaster ovens is fairly self-evident. Blenders and mix sticks are another story. A blender is a must if you never use it for anything other than margaritas and bread crumbs. A stick or hand immersion blender is also mandatory. This gadget may be the most useful kitchen aid since fire. We call it the magic wand in our house. It can be used for chopping, whipping, mixing, blending and cutting nose hair in a pinch. Speaking of mixing, every kitchen needs a nested set of stainless or glass (oven proof) mixing bowls.

The rice cooker is almost as important as the magic wand. This device allows you to cook perfect rice every time, without watching. Think about it as idiot proof starch or carbohydrates. Pilaf, sushi, beans and you know what, stir fried or whatever. A rice cooker is like a third hand in the pantry.

Knives

Buy a good set of knives and you will have something to pass down to your kids. If you can live without a ‘matched set’, think about finding them piece meal in the secondary market. Also pick up a good steel. This is nothing more than a fine round file. A vintage steel often combines art and function. First choice for blades, however, should be a set of Japanese Sushi knives with cleaver. Today, as always, the best cutting blades come from Japan.

Second choice would be a selection of different sized vintage carbon steel knives from Sabatier. New French stainless knives are not much different than any other stainless knives on the market – only more expensive. The virtue of old carbon steel is that you can easily sharpen it at home and it keeps a better edge. As anyone who has ever dated a politician knows, there is nothing more dangerous than a dull knife.

The classic Sabatier is otherwise known as a ‘chef’s knife’; you will find them in six, eight, or ten inch blades. I have five knives, three with ebony handles; I never paid more than a few bucks for any of them. All knives, especially carbon steel, must be washed by hand. No machines – ever!

Grills

The origins of bar-b-que are shrouded by the mist of time. The best guess is that the practice as we know it originated with pirates and buccaneers. In their heyday, these lusty chaps would secrete a pair of breeding pigs, sheep or goats on an island along the sea lanes and let nature take its course. Upon their return, they would find a ready stock of protein which then would be cooked over an open wood fire. Oddly enough, these fellows never thought to use gas grills.

Cooking on a gas grill just to say you cooked outside is a little silly. Why not just use your oven? Indeed, expensive outdoor gas grills are a waste of time and money. And they don’t make for authentic bar-b-que. Traditional outdoor cooking is done over a wood or charcoal fire – real charcoal not briquettes. Pillow briquettes (charcoal dust, paste and kerosene) are to cooking what scoreless soccer is to real football. It literally and figuratively stinks.

Why would you want a good rack of lamb, a Delmonico or your chicken wings to smell like your tailpipe? No serious cook, amateur or professional uses a gas grill or briquettes to bar-b-que. Authentic bar-b-que requires real hard wood or hard wood charcoal - from deciduous trees not conifers. If you try and cook meat over a fire made from evergreens, your meat will taste like turpentine. Preferred woods are oak, mesquite, maple or apple. If you don’t cut your own wood, real hardwood charcoal is now available at most retailers.

Meat, fowl or fish cooked over an open wood fire summons all your recessive primal genetic memories. We did it that way since the discovery of fire. Don’t sneer; it’s never too late to conjure up your hidden buccaneer.

Coffee, Tea, Herbs and Spices

Freshness is the thread that binds good coffee, tea and herbs. If you freeze your coffee, caddy your tea and hide your herbs in the dark; it matters not. These things do not improve with age, nor can you retard their deterioration with temperature control or storage containers – not much anyway. With all three, you need to buy often or grow your own and only pluck as much as you can use in a reasonable amount of time.

Coffee – There are four ingredients necessary for good coffee; whole beans, freshly roasted, recently ground and water that doesn’t come from a tap. Never make coffee, tea or soup in any liquid you might use for a bath or a shower.

Most packaged whole beans are no better than packaged ground coffee, if you don’t know when they were roasted or ground. And it doesn’t make any difference whether you drip, perk, squeeze or use forced steam – although steam (an espresso machine) will extract the maximum flavor from beans. A can of ground coffee will be fresh for a day. After that, you’re drinking muddy water.

There’s no secret to making a good cup of Jo; find your local roaster, buy beans in small quantities, grind your beans just before brewing, and use good water like Deer Park. If a good water source is necessary to brew a good beer, you can bet your biscuits it’s crucial for good coffee and tea.

The best tool for the best coffee is an espresso machine – the most popular unused gift in every bride’s wedding booty. This is a boon to all coffee lovers; many yard sales and almost every estate sale will part with an unused or hardly used espresso machine for nickels on the dollar. A cheesy new German machine goes for $200, a middling unit for $500 and a stylish Italian semi-pro machine will set you back $1200 or more. Many folks complain about the trouble and expense of home brew, so let’s do the math.

We bought a $500 Italian machine at an estate sale for $30. A pound of beans from our local roaster goes for $10. We buy a pound every two weeks; that’s $260 per year. Our grinder was $12. We pay $60 a year for potable bulk water and let’s say an equal amount for coffee milk. We drink two double cappuccinos a day at a cost of $402 annually, including hardware.

Were you to buy two double shot coffee drinks at Starbucks at let’s say an average price of $8 (a conservative estimate) a day your bill is nearly $3000 per year. If you only have one double or two singles the bill is still $1500. If you went to Dunkin’ Donuts for two smalls a day, the cost would be over $750 a year without the donuts. Think of it this way; if you make your own favorite coffee drinks at home, with the money you save, you can buy a brand new Italian espresso machine in a year or a new car in four years.

Tea – Here again the key is fresh, the freshest leaves you can buy. Most of the stuff in tea bags is not leaf; it’s more like tea dust. These days almost every good sized shopping mall has a tea monger. Buy your leaves often and in bulk. Loose tea is like loose women, if you buy quantity, there’s a substantial savings.

Co-ops are also a good place to find selections of bulk tea, as are oriental markets. By weight, if you purchase loose tea, you can buy four to five times more tea for the same price you pay for bags - and the bags make crummy tea.

The only tools required are a stainless kettle, a good ceramic tea pot (English, Irish or Japanese) and a mesh stainless ball infuser. A level spoon of tea for each cup of boiling water is just about right in most cases. Don’t let the tea steep for more than ten minutes. Very strong tea goes bitter before you can say; ‘one lump or two’.

Sun tea is a great alternative to brewed tea. Just fill a half gallon clear glass jug with water and a tsp of tea for each cup of water and let stand in the sun for a day. Strain, refrigerate and enjoy. Before we leave tea and coffee, a word about plumbing.

Aged tea or coffee is a natural laxative. Take a cup of strong coffee or tea, with a little milk or cream, and age it for a day in the fridge. Consume rapidly and walk briskly to the room with the bidet. Talk about your stimulus packages!

Herbs – Fresh and dried herbs are a world apart. Take oregano. The dried variety has a very distinctive barnyard smell; while the aroma of fresh oregano is much more subtle, less like autumn leaves and more like spring flowers. And so it goes with most herbs. The dried variety is usually stronger but that taste works well in some dishes. But like tea they don’t have much of a shelf life. When your dried herbs start to turn lighter or darker, they have oxidized and it’s time to throw them in the round file. Spoiled herbs as spice is not nice and like old fishes, ruins many dishes.

Compare the price of a jar of supermarket herbs to the price of loose or bulk herbs at a co-op. You will not believe what you’re paying for that label and that jar.

Without digressing into truck farming, there are many annual and perennial herbs that can be grown in your yard, on your deck and in your kitchen window. Tending a robust herb garden can be a fun project for your kids or a maiden uncle; and they’re a lot cheaper than five cats or a pony. You don’t have to walk your plants either; and indoor plants, unlike indoor cats, will sweeten your indoor air.

How bout the economics you say? We have a single parsley stalk in a flower pot that has been throwing sprigs for three years. We bring it into the kitchen in winter. One small bunch of parsley at the grocer costs $2 to $3. Our rosemary bush in the yard is older than most of the neighbors. A laurus nobilis (bay leaf) can be passed to your children. Sage grows like a weed, as does mint. Our basil patch in the garden seeds itself every fall and new plants appear as if by magic every spring. A tub of cherry tomatoes will do the same thing. There are some varieties of green onions or chives that you couldn’t kill with an air strike. You get the drift I’m sure.

Before we leave the seasonings, let me say a few words about garlic and shallots. As bulbs go these are pretty expensive items by weight. And when you store them, you can’t tell which have gone south until you peel them. If you shop at a Korean grocer, you can buy peeled garlic by the half or full pint for the same price you might pay for a few bulbs elsewhere. Garlic and hot red peppers are the literal spice of life for Koreans. Their passion is your buying opportunity.

Store the closed container of garlic in the fridge and use as required or cover the cloves with olive oil and after a few days you have your cloves and infused oil - a ready made Busch Etta spread. Cloves stored in oil will last until the Mets win a pennant. Korean families roast garlic cloves like peanuts and serve them salted as a beer snack. Roasting tames the pungent taste and smell. Try it!

Spices – Most spices have a better shelf life than herbs; but for most of us they are a little impractical to grow. Any spice that can be bought whole kernel, like pepper corns, should be ground just before use. Indeed, if you are making something like pepper steak, the powdered stuff from a jar doesn’t get it. Ginger can be had in the crystallized form and used like the fresh type if you scrape off the sugar and soak it for a couple of minutes. Cloves and the like age pretty well in a cool dark place. Like coffee, tea and herbs; buy at a bulk outlet and you can save a bunch.

A final word on coffee, tea, herbs and spices. These industries exploit economies of scale. You are sold small amounts at modest prices, or so it seems; the per capita outlay is just a few dollars. Even then, you get an amount of product that probably will probably spoil before it’s used. However, over time these small but frequent purchases represent a small fortune. With coffee alone, if you price it by the retail cup over a lifetime, you can spend nearly a quarter million dollars. Add up the other “smalls” over a lifetime and, well – you get the picture.

America is the greatest food producer and distributor in the history of creation. This doesn’t mean that you as a consumer should throw caution or prudence to the wind. Be frugal in small ways and the big ticket items take care of themselves.

Chapter Three; Early Years

The first thing I remember about food is not having much. My Dad, like many Irish immigrants with no prospects, left most of his paycheck in various gin mills in the shadow of Yankee Stadium. He had come from a family of fishermen up on Newfoundland. There were a lot of things in the Bronx River – none of them fish, nothing worth catching and nothing edible.

My mother, with four kids, struggled daily between credit from the corner grocer and day old bread from the A&P at the corner of Morris Park and White Plains Avenues. Sam West and his wife “Goldie” owned the little store at the corner of White Plains and Rhinelander. My mother and her sister Marge would often sit on folding chairs in front of the store or on my aunt’s porch and commiserate as neighbors did in the days before the Bronx was air conditioned. Mrs. West often comforted my mother Frances with bromides from her own unhappy past. “Frankie,” she would say “too old too soon, too smart too late!”

Goldie West had a very prominent crudely lettered numerical tattoo on one of her chubby arms. We kids would often ask about the serial number and she would shrug us off with: “Honey, you shouldn’t want to know”.

The West’s had cornered the local market on “heroes”, elsewhere known as submarines, grinders or hoagies. My favorite was ham and Swiss, mayo on one side and mustard on the other. When I was flush with quarters earned carrying bags at the A&P, I would go to the corner grocer for my favorite sandwich. I always ordered a small and Mrs. West would never fail to produce a large. When I would point out the error, Mrs. West invariably replied: “Small price it is; children shouldn’t pay for the mistakes of adults”. Whenever I hear the word hero, I still think of Goldie West.

For the Irish and Italians of Van Ness, Friday was pizza night – cheese pizza for us Catholics. In those days every neighborhood tavern had an Italian cook and an Irish bartender. Our local bar, next to the firehouse, was called the Step Inn. My family didn’t go out for pizza on Friday or any other night for that matter. But on Friday, my mother would take slices of stale Wonder Bread (eight great vitamins), smear them with tomato paste, top with a slice of American cheese and pop them under the broiler. She called it Irish pizza.

On weekends, we four kids would run up the hill on Rhinelander Ave to my Aunt Margaret’s house. She owned the last house on the block. There was a cherry tree and all of Bronx Park beyond my Aunt’s back yard. Marge had a great sense of humor and three boys; the former surely a prerequisite for the latter. On Saturday she would make a proper breakfast of bacon and eggs for seven kids. We would sit in awe and watch her cook up an entire pound of bacon and at least a dozen eggs. For me, my sister and two brothers this was gourmet dinning. To this day bacon and eggs is one of my favorite meals.

Holiday meals were usually done at Aunt Margie’s. She had three sisters and among the four O’Grady girls, there were thirteen kids and five husbands. My favorite aunt outlived two of New York’s finest. Cooking for twenty in a two bedroom apartment (she rented the top floor to make ends meet) was a holiday routine at the Hickey/Varley house. It was also one of the few times in the year when the Donovan kids had vegetables, a starch and meat in the same meal.

The best holiday was Thanksgiving. We had a distant relative who was a teaching priest at Cardinal Hayes High School. On Thanksgiving morning he would take us kids down to Randal’s Island, in the East River, to watch the annual game with Mount Saint Michael. It was class warfare served up with a breakfast of cokes and hot dogs. Even in those days Hayes was being singed by the Bonfires of the Vanities; while, the ‘Mount’, then as now, was in a nice neighborhood. Sometimes football is more than a game.

After being whipped by the cold winds of the East River for three hours, we would return to my Aunt’s Margie’s hoarse and hungry. The Thanksgiving venue always seemed to be her Bronx homestead. Yet, the other O’Grady sisters would contribute as their culinary inclinations allowed - desserts usually.

My most memorable Thanksgiving involved a twenty five pound turkey and a TKO. The O’Grady sisters got along well enough, but their husbands, not so much. My Uncle Jack, husband to the hostess, was a large, taciturn, no nonsense cop. My uncle Everett was a short fast talking, smarmy Oldsmobile salesman. Uncle Jack had worked the graveyard shift and, as was his custom on that schedule, stepped in at the Step Inn for a few adult beverages on the way home. My uncle Everett, a Scarsdale resident, was stone cold sober and more that a little put out by the annual trek to the Bronx –and a little too loud and rude about O’Grady girl holiday rituals.

Just before desert was to be served, my Uncle Jack stood up and rested his fists, knuckles down on the table, and suggested that Everett might want to haul his ass back up to Westchester before desert. Everett, directly opposite Uncle Jack, pushed his chair back and rose to the bait like a fish. Silence fell on the room like a November draft. Small children retreated to the kitchen. Testosterone rose to flood tide. Eyes locked across the table.

At such times obsessive eye contact can be a handicap. My uncle Everett never saw the haymaker that caught him flush on the nose, rendering him senseless as he ricocheted off the hutch and fell onto the dinning room table. His fall neatly cleaved the table in two, throwing the remnants of the feast to the four corners of the room including the chandelier.

My Aunt Rita, the quiet O’Grady’s girl, and wife to Everett, had had several highballs herself at that point. She surveyed her prone husband, lying in a mix of dressing, excellent giblet gravy and nose bleed. She danced off into the kitchen and chirped to her sister: “Look, Marge, these things always have their ups and downs. Let’s have dessert!”

That next summer, things went from bad to awful over at our house. My father lost his pride and my mother lost her grip. She went to Rockland State Hospital for an indefinite stay; and he just went – never to return. After a summer with various relatives, the Donovan kids became “wards of the state”. In those days that meant an institution of some sort.

We were placed in the Lt. Joseph Kennedy Jr. Home and School for Children – a euphemism for orphanage. Among the inmates of 1770 Stillwell Ave, the Kennedy Home was known as the “ranch”. There were only two ways out; graduate from High School or turn eighteen. At the time I was twelve, still in grade school.

So I settled in for the long tour at the ranch. As I recall, the Kennedy Home had six groups off 30-40 children from toddlers to teens all segregated by age and sex; toddlers, grade school and high school. We lived in separate cottages, divided into dormitories or shared rooms. The buildings all had fanciful names like Bldg. 1 or Bldg. 2.

We ate in age appropriate dinning rooms in the administration building; girls on one side, boys on the other with a convent between. There were a total of eight dinning rooms, two for staff (civilians and clergy) and six for inmates. All were serviced by a central kitchen under the convent. The cooking was done by a solitary nun with help of course. A kitchen helper might be anyone who got on the wrong side of Mother Superior. A conservative estimate of the Home’s population would be somewhere on the short side of 300, including staff. Thus Sister Chef prepared nearly a thousand meals a day or 300,000 a year.

Our cook was short, stout and, understandably, cantankerous. She was first generation Italian and she spoke little English. How she found her way to a convent in the Bronx is still a cipher. She had little patience with adults and none with children.

Sister Chef was known to the Big Boys (teen residents of Bldg. 2) as Stir-fry or Meatball. All the nuns were known as “Stir” something or other because stir was the Bronx pronunciation of sister. Sister Chef was also fond of all things fried and small steamed globes of mystery meat. In her real life she had been named after some obscure, unpronounceable Italian saint, hence she was known to us as Stir-fry or Meatball. We never called her such things to her face; she ruled her domain with an iron fist.

Yet, there were certain advantages to kitchen patrol. A male teen was required to push the eight odd stainless steel food trolleys to the various dinning rooms three times a day; they weighed near 300 lbs. The value added was first shot at the chow, a visa through the convent and a visit to the girls’ side of the ranch. Not that going to the distaff side was without hazard.

If the Big Girls (teen residents of Bldg. 4) didn’t like what was on the trolley, aka roach coaches, you might be subject to no end of abuse. You might also say that Kennedy school girls were not overly fond of institutional cooking. The halls would frequently ring with chants of “we will not eat mystery meat” or “throw the balls down the hall”. The Big Boys of Bldg. 2 never complained about food; they would lick their plates - and the trolley if they could.

Pushing food carts around the Ranch was just one kitchen chore. If Stir-fry could tolerate your presence, you might get to wrestle food crates or cavernous pots - or other manly chores. All of this in full view of several girls who had less strenuous tasks like slathering mayo on the ubiquitous day old bread or shaping balls of mystery meat with their hands. At such times the kitchen air would ripen with salacious chat. Sister Chef would feign ignorance as long as none of the innuendo interfered with work.

There was, however, one notable exception; Jean Anne Petrie – a classic specimen of virginal adolescence with curly red hair; flaming, set your heart on fire, red hair; north and south red hair. She also had the other ingredients for spontaneous combustion. Yet, it was the red hair that sent Sister Meatball into orbit.

She was convinced that natural redheads were the devil’s workshop; a Helen of Troy for any boy. To double the jeopardy, she knew that I was smitten.

To be continued….

Chapter Two; Eggs and Breakfast

Breakfast is the most important meal of the day and eggs are the quickest protein you can muster. You’re not hungry in the AM? Try eating less at night or eat your evening meal earlier. Go to bed hungry; wake up famished.

If you have never cooked or liked to cook, try eggs; they are idiot proof. Eggs and butter are two ingredients tossed together that become a delicacy greater than the sum of their parts.

For scrambled eggs, think two eggs per person. The secret is a generous dollop of butter and a splash of olive oil. Butter will scorch before oil; the oil is your safety net. Like a spy’s martini, scrambled eggs should be stirred (with a fork) in individual portions over high heat, in the pan, not beaten in a bowl. When the slimy stuff starts to disappear, turn off heat, salt and pepper to taste, give the eggs a vigorous shake and plate. After you master a scramble, you can guild this lily with bits of cheese, ham or mushrooms or any combination. Swiss, provolone and aged cheddar hold up well in a scramble.

You say your kids will not eat eggs or breakfast! First, put them to bed hungry. In the AM, cover a well buttered piece of whole wheat toast with scrambled eggs. Cut diagonally into four triangles; arrange in a pinwheel; and fill center with chopped ham, bacon or loose sausage. Yes, presentation is important, especially for fussy kids. We all eat with our eyes. If you try and make eating fun, it’s just possible that your cookie crunchers will look forward to sitting at your table.

Speaking of meat, the traditional packaged breakfast meats are quality casualties, starting with bacon. If you eat things like turkey bacon, stop it! This concoction has twice the salt and half the flavor of pork. The same is true for “lite” ham or sausage. The best ham in the world is made by Spaniards and Virginians. Find a good butcher and buy fresh side meats in bulk. Freeze what you don’t use immediately. It’s cheaper and healthier.

The not so secret ingredient in all sausage is fat. Steam your tube steak before browning if you’re worried about fat intake. Find a good Italian butcher or grocer and buy fresh – spicy or mild. Lamb sausage can be found at most Jewish or Muslim meat markets. Speaking of spice, Hawaiians serve the best breakfast on the planet; pineapple juice, papaya half with lemon wedge, eggs, rice and Portuguese sausage (chorizo). Left over rice is an excellent alternative to potatoes in the morning.

Back to eggs. The key to a good sunny side is two eggs, yokes intact, over high heat, cooked in butter or bacon fat – no oil. The idea is to brown the whites under the yokes without turning the yokes into hockey pucks. If you don’t like that runny stuff on top of your eggs, cover the eggs for the last minute or until the white becomes opaque. Salt, pepper, slide and serve.

“Eggs over” are sunny sides upside down - or another way of dealing with uncooked whites topside. The trick here is to turn the eggs without breaking or overcooking the yokes. You can do this with wrist English or a spatula. Impress your friends. Learn to flip eggs in the pan without a spatula. It’s not just showmanship; it’s a great timesaver.

Omelets are the royalty of the breakfast plate. Here the eggs (no more than three) are beaten in a bowl before cooking. The idea is to whip in some air, hence making them fluffy. Some folks add a tsp of water or milk but it’s not necessary. If you like your omelets browned, use butter only; if you like eggs saffron yellow use butter with a little oil. Cook eggs over medium high heat until they start to congeal evenly; place filling on one side of the egg circle; fold egg side to the fill side; flip and cook through.

It’s dealer’s choice on omelet fillings. Like strombolli, you can use damn near anything. Yet remember that eggs have a subtle flavor; they require sensitive companions like fungi. Indeed, try different kinds of mushrooms or spinach and see what tickles your palate. Cheese works also. But you can’t overwhelm the eggs with something that smells like ripe laundry. Almost all of the Swiss or provolone types work well. Some foods are born partners; corn and limas, tomatoes and basil and, of course, ham and eggs. Mild cheese and/or earthy fungus were made to fraternize within the omelet.

Were it not for Eggs Benedict, I would not eat a poached egg. I wouldn’t eat a boiled egg either except that Annabell likes to chop them onto various comestibles. So let’s dispense with the hard boiled first. Bring a small pot of water to a boil. Pierce blunt side of each egg with sharp needle to release sulfur (making your kitchen smell like a toilet). Gently drop eggs into water for 3-5 minutes. Remove, cool and smack with the round side of a spoon to peel. Discard the egg.

Eggs Benedict is really just an excuse to make hollandaise sauce (see below). Toast several slices of whole grain bread. Cut into a circle with a cookie cutter if you must have ovals. Butter bread. Trim a slice of salty ham or Canadian bacon to fit bread base. Gently, place a poached egg on top and finish with hollandaise sauce and a sprig of something green.

To poach the eggs, break gently into slow boiling water, again without breaking the yokes. When the whites have congealed and the yokes are still soft, remove carefully (with slotted spoon) to toast or a pan of warm water. If you leave them in the cooking water they will be overdone. If you have bain maries (small double boilers), you can make eggs benedict on an industrial scale. This gadget will keep the eggs or sauce warm until you are ready to serve without overcooking either. Think about it! Here’s a one egg dish where there are four egg yokes in the sauce. What’s not to like?

Hollandaise Sauce – Four eggs, 4 ounces of butter, 4 tbls water, 4 tbls white wine vinegar, serving spoon of flour and juice of ½ lemon. Make a paste of the soft butter and flour. Add to a sauce pan with the vinegar and water, whisk until almost boiling. Add four beaten egg yokes and continue to stir until the sauce thickens. Remove to jar immersed in hot water or the clean top of a bain Marie. The key to a really snappy sauce is to stir in that room temperature lemon juice just before serving.

The perfect sides are asparagus tips and a glass of well chilled Gloria Ferrer or a long tall mimosa made with fresh OJ. Americans get a little nervous about alcohol in the morning. Get over it! Extensive research has proven that a glass of grape in the morning is a sure cure for that wrong side of the bed thing. The Bulgarian sage of Templeton tells us to be moderate in all things, including moderation.

Egg Tools – There are only three tools necessary for the breakfast chef; a deep glass or stainless bowl, an omelet pan and a wire whisk. The pan should be cast iron or steel. No substitutes. The whisk should be stainless wire flexible enough to make a musical sound when you tap your palm.

Cereal – Most dry dog food is made of cereal. However, there are no known canines (lupus) that eat cereal in the wild. Canines are carnivorous. They eat meat – hair, bones and all. Cereal is a creation of the pet industry – a cheap way to feed an otherwise expensive animal. Cereal is good for the industry, not so good for the dog. So it is with cereal for your children. Most breakfast cereal is crap, processed grains with sugar. The crap is literal. There is a USDA allowable amount of rodent and insect feces in all grain products. Think about that the next time you buy a box of fruit loops.

Other grain products would include pancakes, crepes or waffles. Here again these are packaged sugar and carbohydrates. If you must have them, follow directions on the box. If you feel the need for seed, you’re better off with a slice of good whole grain bread soaked in beaten egg and fried in butter - aka French toast. If you use a topping, raw honey or real maple syrup is tastier and healthier than refined sugar.

The deficits of most grains are overcome by porridge; rolled or steel cut oats. Porridge is cooked with boiling water. So much for the foreign matter. Also, oats are arguably the most healthy and nutritious grain you can eat. Oat meal is good for your plumbing too. So if you must eat cereal, oats are the thing. For the kids, you can sweeten the pot with honey, maple syrup, raisins or dried fruit. Serve with butter, milk or cream. There’s nothing like a hot, steaming bowl of mush on a dreary cold morning.

Stay tuned. Next we deal with lunch.