Grandma Ginny

     Page One Hundred-Ten.
      My mother's best friend, Virginia, was seriously old-school when it came to "old, protestant, white lady cooking". Which is to say that cooking was so low on her list of priorities that she probably spent more time plotting to overthrow the British throne. She liked to eat, and she enjoyed good food as long as it was severely overly salted, but making it? Not her strength. Interestingly, she did like to entertain. She probably made dinner for the two of us about ten times per year after I became an adult.
     Virginia died in '89 when I was twenty-seven and I will admit that she introduced me to a cooking concept that I value to this day: Stouffer's. She could put some romaine lettuce and a peeled, chopped cucumber in a bowl and it was a first course. She could cook up some salt/rice/salt mixture and heat up some frozen Stouffer's creamed chipped beef and it was a main entree (with a can of peas on the side). She could open up a box of Pepperidge Farm chocolate fudge cake and it was dessert. And we were both happy and satisfied. I'll tell you something else, I wouldn't have eaten during my college days if not for Stouffer's and I learned that trick from her.(Interestingly, she could make a great crudite. Baby beets, sweet gherkins, cherry tomatoes, carrot sticks, all fair game.)
     She did occasionally, truly, cook. Shudder. One time she had me over and prepared beef heart because she said she had a taste for it. I was polite and ate it, but believe me, I'd have preferred a colonoscopy. Even she admitted that it was too dry. Yeah right. We all know that "too dry" is a delicate Wasp euphemism for shoe leather. (Do you remember that scene where Charlie Chaplin eats his own shoe in the 1925 flick The Gold Rush? Well, I can say, "been there".)
     My sister once told me that Virginia invited her over for lunch. My sister arrived to discover that "lunch" consisted of  two slices of Brownberry Health Nut bread with Hellman's and a couple slices of tomato and a glass of iced tea. The bread was cut on the bias though, so it looked cute. Virginia explained that these were tomato sandwiches and weren't they just wonderful and refreshing on a warm summer's day? My sister had to stop at McDonald's afterwards to avoid fainting of malnutrition.
     Many years later I would learn that Virginia's heritage was heavily responsible for her distinctive perception of food and cooking. As much as the 17th century, white, protestant immigrants to the new world contributed to our wonderful country, a tradition of exotic food wasn't among them. (Virginia's ancestors came over, not on the Mayflower, but shortly thereafter, I believe.) 
     Only a couple of my nieces and nephews have vague memories of her , but they all know who she is. She's Grandma Ginny. We didn't call her that, my oldest sister came up with that name. (Not the sister Virginia almost starved, the other one.)
     I think that Virginia simply got in over her head with my family. My mother was hired by Virginia on a pre-marriage job. Then, after my parents got married and created a large family, we adopted her and she very much became a part of us. Virginia however, had zero personal experience with Jewish or eastern-European culture. As an example, though she attended our Passover Seder every year, she continually exasperated my mother by bringing up the fact that it was Jesus's last meal. She was simply clueless to the irrelevance and insensitivity of a guest bringing something like that up at a traditional Orthodox Jewish Service.
     But we truly loved her. She brought us countless gifts and invited us to do fun things. She was always kind and taught us how to play Scrabble. She was the never married elderly aunt that you occasionally read about in Victorian novels. And she was quite hip in her own way. She introduced me to the Congregationalist denomination - nowadays known as the United Church of Christ, a very cool protestant sect in which she was exceedingly active.
     By the way, my sister who Virginia didn't try to starve thinks that she was a better cook than I do. So there you go.
   

On Hating Your Own Food

     Page Twenty-Four.
     Have you ever been a Personal Chef and had a job where you hated your own food so much that McDonald's was your regular stop on the way home? I'm serious. Let me tell you the story.
     I was hired on by an otherwise pleasant household to come and cook a few days per week. I was also invited to always stick around and eat whatever I made. The job started out well enough and the money was much needed. Problem was, there was Asperger's in the home. At first I thought, "I can handle this, after all I've dealt with far stranger things in life". In fact, the person in question could be charming. But what caused the problem were the demands made on my menus. Shortly after I arrived, The family member in question convinced everybody else that an ultra-low fat diet was the healthiest way to live. Subsequently, I was told to make meals which contained no more than six grams of fat. Now, six grams of fat per meal is low. I mean that's LOW. LOW!!! Allowing for three meals per day that equals eighteen grams of fat per day. I bet an Anorexic tries to stay between five and ten. Weight Watchers, last I heard, allowed thirty per day to loose weight at a healthy speed. An average healthy-weight American needs, perhaps, forty to maintain their weight. One McDonald's Big Mac contains twenty-nine grams of fat.
     This person acquired cook books and gave them to me. This person learned a lot about nutrition. I was then instructed on the assets of an ultra-low fat diet. I was gradually given stricter and stricter guidelines to follow. WOW! Was that food bad or what?
     For the record, I'm in decent shape. Anybody meeting me might say that I could loose 6-9 pounds but no more. I'd like to loose two inches around my waste. I typically eat rather nutritious food. It's what I crave most often: salads, vegetables, fruits, lean meats, water and so forth. I also love the crap but I really don't crave it as often. I really do know and live healthy eating. (Plus, I exercise a fair amount.) So, I can be pretty objective about this topic. I'm telling you that the food I made just sucked.
     There were also food allergies in the home which added a further level of complication. (I was told in advance that the food allergies were psychosomatic.) Additionally in the home: one vegetarian and one deer hunter who loved venison.
     One day after I'd been there a year or longer, the phone rang and it was a relative. I took the message and then they began talking with me 'cause they'd heard about me. They said. "Jeremy, how do you feel having to make food that tastes like sh**?"  I hemmed and hawed and tried to be diplomatic but they'd have none of it. They just went on and on about how people knew what I was capable of and how I was stuck making terrible food. I was also told that all the relatives had been looking forward to coming over on a regular basis to eat my food, but as the menu changed to accommodate the ultra-low fat requirements, family members were making more and more excuses not to come. I wish I were making this up.
     That job lasted a little while. They would always give me a great reference if I ever asked for one. But I'll tell you, I probably ate more fast food food while working there than I have since becoming an adult. I simply wouldn't eat that stuff. I wouldn't give it to a dog.