LOW-FAT • GLUTEN FREE • LOW CAL •LOW SALT • CHICKEN VS STEAK • DIET DRINKS WITH FATTY MEALS, • High Fiber.
These are all capital issues that seem to dominate how we eat these days.
Grandma lived to 97-years old, ate whatever she wanted and as much as she wanted. She was an immigrant who couldn’t read English but could count money in both Italian and English and knew how to cook, and cooked like she knew what she was doing.
When grandma shopped she didn’t look at calories or sugar content, salt was never a problem. Gluten, what was that?
She was a steak-eater who hated turkey and rather have capon for Thanksgiving Day. Seafood was her passion and good cheeses, salami and pork products were always in her possession.
One year as she was returning from a pilgrimage to Napoli on a ship she had a trunk filled with Italian produced salami, hams and cheeses along with figs and other delicacies. This was a NO-NO as far as the customs people in New York were concerned. As luck would have it, the harbor police or immigration authorities came sniffing around with dogs to smell out what was being slipped by their noses. Grandma got caught and the whole cache of delights went floating in the Hudson or East River or wherever they unloaded the stuff. Unfortunately the custom agent, he got a swift well-aimed kick in his ankle and a blessing that can’t be repeated either in English, Italian or Pig Latin!
Grandma had a recipe file she kept hidden and took with her when she passed. This file was coveted by daughters, daughters-in-law, and grandchildren that she kept in her head even as she died.
Owning one of the biggest pasta pots I ever saw, probably leftover from when she owned a restaurant in the 1930s and 40s, she would feed on any given holidays four to eight families including children and friends.
Worrying about content was not something Francesca cared to do, just give her the damned stuff and she would make everyone happy.
One year at tax season, my Dad and I went to the old neighborhood in Brooklyn to see Dad’s tax person, a friend of the family that did your taxes on her kitchen table with a cup of coffee and some cake, taking your shoebox filled with recipes and making sense out of it all. After that visit, since we were in the neighborhood on this particular Saturday night, Dad decided to visit his mom, Grandma. Arriving unannounced she was surprised to see us and immediately pinched and squeezed my cheeks then flew down the basement to her gas stove and tossed two large steaks on the burners in an open flamed rack. Delicious! With those steaks, she laid out pepperoni, hard cheese and olives with the best crust Italian bread you could find! Then came grandpa’s homemade wine and a salad with grandpa’s homemade vinegar! That vinegar is the best I ever tasted!
Grandma died at 97 and never looked for low-fat or low cholesterol products. Gluten? Who knew gluten?
Mom, on the other hand, lived to 96, she was fooling around with low salt, that got her in the end, I think.
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