DelBloggolo: THANK GOODNESS FOR THE DEPRESSION!

Wednesday, April 01, 2015

THANK GOODNESS FOR THE DEPRESSION!

I stopped at a fast-food restaurant recently. I was fascinated by a sign which offered Fat-Free French Fries. I decided to give them a try.

I was dismayed when the clerk pulled a basket of fries from the fryer, which was dripping with fat. He filled a bag with these fries and put them in my order.

"Just a minute!" I said. "Those aren't fat-free."

"Yes, they are. We only charge for the potatoes . . . the fat is free!"

Well, I’m not being callous, just realizing that without the Great Depression, life would have been more boring.

Peppers and eggs

Last week while driving home late morning, my mind turned to lunch. I wondered what I would eat for lunch and starving from the meager breakfast of yogurt, I started to think and realized I had a red pepper in the refrigerator and thought: “Why not make a pepper and egg sandwich?” This would be a treat for me since I hadn’t had one since mom made it for me so many years ago.

In the summer and spring, while I played outside, my mom would cook up the concoction and call me in for lunch. She would put the pepper and egg into a long slice of Italian bread and add a little Parmesan cheese to it and I was sitting next to St. Peter for all I knew!

Then once many years ago, before the Mets won their first World Series, Dad decided to take us all to the ballgame, son, daughters and son in law. Off we went to the spanking new stadium in Flushing Meadows called Shea Stadium. Mom was excited, and for a whole week prior to the game kept repeating how she couldn’t wait to have a ballpark hotdog. The day of the game came as we headed to the car, mom came out holding two shopping bags.

“Mom, what’s in those shopping bags?” I asked.

“A little something to eat while we watched the game.”

“But Ma, what about the hotdogs you are dying for?”

“Oh, you can have a hotdog too!”

Needless to say, no one ate a hotdog when we had peppers and eggs in Italian bread, with a sprinkle of cheese on them, all wrapped in aluminum foil and ready to go, one for each of us. While others sat eating hotdogs, we sat eating these long hero sandwiches, wrapped in aluminum foil like privileged aristocracy!

Mom and Dad grew up during the Great Depression, and my grandmothers knew how to cook from very little and cheaply. My grandmother Mary was a single mom with three girls and Grandma Frances a widower who remarried and made some money during the depression with four children. Both cooked the same things!

Potatoes & eggs

Today, if you go to an Italian restaurant with roots to the past, you will pay top dollar for some of the great foods that were made so cheaply, and so long ago. Peppers and eggs, potatoes and eggs, ‘make believe cutlets’ (made from breadcrumbs, grated cheese and scrambled eggs), lentil soup, pasta fagiola, beans and macaroni, beefstew, and other great dishes that as children we didn’t appreciate enough to the point that today we miss them all dearly. Even Mom’s roasted chicken, in olive oil and garlic, a simple dish that to this day I can still taste, surrounded by potatoes and onions bringing me back to the late 50’s and early 60’s.

When you talk to an Italian about comfort foods, you better be prepared to hear about an extensive menu, filled with not only memories, but warm love and flavor.