Comfort Food and Memorabilia

I love to fish. I have always loved to fish. I don't fish very often anymore. I miss it....
When we were kids we would take the boat out and catch baskets of fish. Without a fish finder, mind you. I would catch the most fish, always. And with all brothers, dad, male cousins and uncles, it rocked. I would drop my line in the water and catch fish so fast that everybody would start getting closer and closer to me. I would leave and go to a unoccupied area of the boat. I would do it again. They would follow!

We used to catch so many fish it was insane. But, we ate the fish too. We didn't have a lot of money so fish was a good way to feed our family. We would set up an assembly line at the fish cleaning site and get them cleaned in record time. We would feed the whole bunch of us at the lake and we would always freeze fish when we had too many.
One great thing about fishing is it gets hot fast, once the sun comes up and it is okay to start drinking beer. As long as I wasn't driving! I can't think of anything more relaxing to me than fishing!

I also love okra. Not nuke and slide down you throat okra. Gross. But the kind placed in corn meal and fried. Yes, fried.
We would buy ten pounds at a roadside vegetable and fruit stand. My parents, brothers and I would again set up an assembly line and clean, cut and put the okra into bags with cornmeal. We froze it and had it all the time.

When David and I got married, he knew how much I loved okra. I had a broken ankle and he was doing the cooking.
He told me we were having okra for dinner. YUM. Well, he gave me a bowl of nuked okra. WTF? This is not how you cook okra! I took one bite just to try it and my way was better. I suppose I should have realized he was cooking it
differently, since there was no smell lingering in the air, making my mouth water!

My dad's cousin, the one we went to see in Oklahoma every summer, always had okra when we came. His wife Jeri made the best food ever. A few years back, we went back and they had something for dinner called Shut up and eat it. I asked what it was and got the story. Bob, the biggest heart in the world, would give you the shirt off his back. When he goes looking for a tractor or another farmer's item, he would have to call around to find out who borrowed it. Anyhow, one night Jeri had dinner ready and Bob was being annoyed by a man who just wouldn't leave. He finally invited him in to eat with his family. When this man asked what it was, Bob said, Just shut up and eat it! This delicious dish is made with okra, in cornmeal, with tomatoes, onions and zucchini. All fried up together. Jeri never wasted food. Always came up with dishes like this, and it rocked!

When we were young, we always made our own ice cream too. The old crank kind with block ice that had to be chipped with an ice pick. We would sit in the front yard and take turns cranking the handle on the ice cream maker. I was sitting on the grass one day and found a four leaf clover. I still have it. We got peaches off the tree in the backyard and added them to the ice cream and it was the best of summer.

I learned how to cook primarily from my father. Mother was at work and if my father could get me to cook, it would be great for him. I learned how to make, chicken fried steak, gravy of every kind, pot roast, round steak, fried chicken, burgers, chicken with homemade noodles, stew, cream dried beef w/ scrambled eggs, potatoes of every kind, the best bacon and eggs around, pots of beans. We would get a ham, eat it for a couple of days and then make pinto beans with the bone and leftover ham. Then after a couple of days of pintos and fried potatoes, we would make chili. I would crunch a bunch of crackers into my chili, as I still do to this day and my brother still laughs. I learned how to make biscuits too. Listen to this recipe. I would put self rising flour into a bowl, make a hole in the middle, pour in one can of milk and some water and mix. The use the biscuit cutter and put them into a Pyrex dish that had a whole cube of melted butter. I would put the biscuits in and then turn them over coating both sides. Best damn biscuits...We used bacon grease from the fridge to make the potatoes. When I married Daivd, the potatoes stopped except a few times a year. He taught me to eat pinto beans and rice.

The of course there was the ice tea we had every day of our lives. I made it after school every day and we had it every night. Never saved it, always fresh, with a lot of ice.

Yesterday, while cleaning out the garage, I found my mother's lasagna recipe. I thought it was the best ever. Pre jar sauces, and full of mushrooms of all things. I am going to make it soon, and see if is as good as I remember!

I also found autograph books, with names like Dottie Lamour, Jimmy Durante, Cecil B Demille, Ozzie and Harriet Nelson, Gary Cooper, Greta Garbo, William Benedict, Danny Kaye, Van Johnson, Mel Blanc and many others! My mother grew up in LA, after leaving Iowa at a young age. She and a friend used to go to different haunts of the stars and wait outside CBS and NBC studios. I also found all our childhood photos and her childhood photos and many other memorabilia.

Cleaning out the garage was worth it. Thinking of all the above comfort foods just came along with the memories.