A Story from my childhood: Fartloaf

Good morning my friends!

Continuing my trip down memory lane this week, I started thinking about my mom's cooking.  If you've read this blog for a while, you know that wasn't exactly a happy, misty nostalgic moment.

My mother is not a good cook.  To be fair, her mother before her was not a good cook.  It wasn't a lack of talent, for I can recall meals at my grandmother's home that were tasty, and I know my mother can whip up a fairy decent lasagna when called upon.  And, to be very fair to my mother's side of the family, my paternal grandmother did not enjoy cooking, and therefore did not do it terribly often.  She preferred going out to dinner, a recessive trait I've inherited.  No, the women in my family were not bad cooks because they had no talent.  They were bad cooks because they just didn't care about cooking all that much. 

Case in point, my mother's meatloaf.  There are many jokes about meatloaf, but when it comes down to it, there's a reason everyone knows about meatloaf.  It's because, even the lamest cook can make a meatloaf that people will enjoy.  I do.  It's one of the few things my kids eat that I make.  My mother's meatloaf was, when first out of the oven, a delight.  It was hot, bubbly, just crusty enough on the outside and sweet from the ketchup glaze. 

When it cooled off, however, it became something else entirely.  My brother has some very colorful names for it, but I like to call it FARTLOAF.

Yes, when my mother's meatloaf cooled, it smelled like farts.  I'm not sure why.  Perhaps it was the green peppers she stuck in there  "for color."  (Is there anyone out there who's on the fence about eating meatloaf and then sees a touch of green and says, "Yes, that is the loaf of meat I'm going to eat!"  No, I didn't think so.)  I'm not a scientist, I cannot say what happened chemically speaking during the cooling process.

Since eating farts is not appetizing, there were always leftovers of the Loaf of Fart.  Which was perfect for my mother, who used said fartful meat for lunches the following day.

I'll give you a moment to wrap your head around the image of an inch thick slab of cold meatloaf nestled on two pieces of whole wheat bread.  And not the soft, mouth friendly whole wheat we have today, no, no;  the twigs and bark type of whole wheat that crumbled in your hands.  Now, put that sandwich in a fourth grader's lunch.

A meatloaf sandwich in a child's lunch?  Why ever would you do that, Dear?

So you can see why I , the fourth grader, threw those chunky, crumbly, fart tasting sandwiches away.  See, the worst crime you could commit in my family back then, besides lying, was throwing away food.  It was the 70's, we were the lower lower lower middle class, and wasting food was wrong.  Also, we lived under the iron clad rule that you had to eat your main course before dessert.  Generally this rule was moot since my mother, on an eternal quest to get my father to lose weight, rarely provided a dessert of any kind. 

It's completely logical, then, that I would have to dispose of the the sandwich if for no other reason than I wanted to eat whatever "dessert" sort of thing was in my lunch.  (Generally a home made marshmallow rice cereal treat with as little marshmallow as possible.  It really was like eating mildly sticky cereal.)  And I had  a sweet set up.  I couldn't toss it at school, no.  You can't throw out food at a parochial school...that's sinful.  But, on the walk home there was a vacant house.  And in front of that vacant house there was a ditch and in that ditch was a culvert.  And in that culvert were the remains of about six months' worth of my sandwiches.

Yep, it was fool proof.  I walked home alone, I ditched whatever lunch remains I had, and I moved on.  Given how perfect this was, I still scratch my head over the rest of this story.

One day, like any other, I had a fartloaf and wheat sandwich to dispose of.  Why I didn't go straight home from school that day, and send the sandwich to the culvert, I will never know, but on that day I threw the sandwich away at school and a classmate, I'd like to use her real name because it's one of those names you never forget, but let's call her Dora Donaldson, saw me and instantly told the teacher.

Let me tell you about Dora Donaldson.  Ours was a tiny school and there were only three girls in my class.  Dora, Kayla, the super cool girl who had horses, and me.  We were friends because there simply was no one else.  But Dora was one of those girls the teachers all like, but the kids can't stand because they constantly wreck whatever game you're playing at recess with things like, "Well, it just doesn't make any sense.  I'm left handed, so if I get a hit in softball, I should run to the left."  (No worries, Dora wasn't any good at sports, so the actuality of her getting a hit was non existent.)

Dora had lunch issues of her own.  She hated all things fruit.  But Dora was clever.  She would tell Teacher she was going to eat her fruit on the playground at lunch recess.  Then she'd go out, put the fruit in her special spot  (35 years later, I bet I can go to that playground and there will be a grove of apple trees there.) and "forget it."

Yeah, so Dora tattled.  That meant a note from the Teacher, who made me gather up as many of the pieces of the sandwich  (which had all but disintegrated in the garbage can by this point.) and put them back in my lunch box  (Emergency! with the Thermos!)  I had to take note and lunch home.

Now, a normal child with a normal childhood would have tossed the note.  Not me.  I wasn't living a normal childhood.  See, my DAD was the OTHER teacher in this two room school.  So I was smart enough to know that my teacher and he had conversations, and undoubtedly, the subject of a note would show up.  So I couldn't throw out the note.  I had to come up with a plan.

And I still had to ditch the sandwich. 

Hey, rule number one in the house:  Don't eat dessert before your main meal.  Since dessert was long digested, I had to do something with the chunks of farty wheaty goodness in my lunchbox. So, passing by my favorite culvert, I dumped the sandwich and cooked up a foolproof plan.

I got in trouble because Dora Donaldson lied.

Yep, that and some real tears was going to get me out of this.  Never mind that there were countless witnesses to me picking the sandwich out of the trash.  This was the gold star story that was going to save me from a week of no TV. (No Emergency?  No Johnny and Roy? Horrors!)

I'm not going to bore you with the court room drama, or lack thereof, that followed.  My parents were fooled by this story for about six seconds, which is how long it took my father to ask where the sandwich was now.  Knowing I couldn't tell the truth, I said, "I ate it."

Yeah, I'm not what you'd call a criminal mastermind.

Well, I didn't lose a week of TV.  No, I lost a month of desserts.  (Sort of like getting Al Capone on tax evasion.  Without the evidence, they couldn't really prove I'd thrown out the sandwich.  So, they nailed me for eating dessert before the main meal.)  The worst of it was my darling Aunt Carol  (her real name) was coming for a long weekend.  Aunt Carol, unlike my mother, was a BRILLIANT cook, and her speciallty was dessert.  So, in the final review, it was a painful punishment.

Did that stop me from throwing sandwiches in the culvert?  Nope. 

Know what did?  Two things:

1)  Shortly after this, someone actually bought the vacant house. Food dumping became trespassing and littering pretty quickly.

2)  We moved.  My walk to school got shorter, and there was no place to hide food.  I wound up having to actually eat it.

I shared this story with my parents about ten years ago, at Thanksgiving.  (Now you understand why I try to avoid Thanksgiving?)  I figured that, at age 42, I was safe from further punishment.  Besides, confession is good for the soul.

It wasn't, not really.  My mother glared at me over a platter of dried out turkey and muttered something about being poor and being grateful for having any food. My father slapped a spatula of pasty, unbuttered, dry mashed potatoes onto his plate (They only parted from the spatula if you gave it a really good whip of the wrist.) and said nothing.  Which really doesn't mean he disagreed with me or anything, it's just a funny mental image of him smacking mashed potatoes onto his plate.

Flashback Friday: Of Baking, Biking, and the One Armed Man.

I used to tell the kids in my Sunday School classes stories from my childhood to make them see that I wasn't always the very together, oh so grown up person I am today.  (Yes, readers, I can hear you laughing...)  This is one of their favorites and, I might add, the very first story I ever sold to a magazine.  Enjoy!

I crashed my bike into the back of big silver car while I watched a one armed man build a house. 

Let me elaborate.

It was one of those sticky hot summer days when I was twelve.  It was the kind of day kids today would spend in each other's basements playing video games or drinking canned beverages and instant messaging each other.  But, since this was 1980, there were no video games, canned beverages came in bottles mostly, and instant messaging meant you ran over to the other kid's house and yelled at their window until they came outside. 

For fun on this hot sticky day, I was baking my chocolate chip cookies for my county fair 4-H baking project.  Because that's what you want to do in a house with no air conditioning.  You want to bake cookies.

It was a Thursday, and the reason I remember that is because my mother only did laundry on Mondays and Thursdays and everyone knows that fairs run Thursday through Sunday.  So it was a Thursday morning and we were, predictably, out of chocolate chips.  (When I say "out" I mean either we never had any or my father ate them in the in the middle of the night and then put the empty bag back in the freezer.)  So I hopped on my Schwinn three speed "Sundowner" model bike and got pedalling to the grocery store a mile away.

About halfway to the store, I noticed some workmen fixing  a house.  What really caught my eye was a one armed man climbing down the ladder.  I couldn't take my eyes off of him.  See, this was the guy who'd been electrocuted months earlier.  We'd prayed for him in church every week.  I could have SWORN he was dead.  I was so certain of it, that I stared and stared and stared at him...

BAM!

That's about the the time my bike smacked into the back of a big silver sedan outside the Methodist church.  I rolled up onto the trunk of the car and then onto the street.  The workmen stopped and yelled across the street, asking me if I was okay.

Humiliated, I popped back on my bike and waved at them, ignoring both the gash in my knee and the fact that the front end of my bike was so bashed in I could barely get the front wheel moving.

I got to the grocery store, picked up my chocolate chips and went to the counter.  The lady at the counter knew my parents.  (Everyone knew my parents.  My dad was the Lutheran school principal and my mom was the local piano teacher.  In a town of 1200, they were movers and shakers.)  She said, "Dear, do you know your leg is bleeding?"

I said, "Yes," waved at her, and got back on my bike.  This time I pedaled as hard as I could, but the front tire was smashed against the central frame of the bike and wouldn't budge.  So I had to walk the bike home, holding the front end up.  The good news was that the workmen were on a break someone in the back yard of the house.

When I got home, I immediately went to my mother to tell her what happened.  I mean, I couldn't hide this one.  First of all, there was something really wrong with my bike.  Second, I was pretty sure who ever owned that care was going to call her anyway and third, my leg really hurt.

Mom was in the basement pumping away on the wringer washer.  She loved her wringer washers.  She didn't get an automatic one until I was almost 30.  She loved wringer washers so much, in the 80's she bought one just for parts so she could keep hers going.  Anyway, she was down there, pounding away on the little foot pump that kept the wringer rolling. 

"Mom," I said in my most pathetic voice, "I hit a car with my bike because I saw that dead guy with the one arm building a house."

I know...it sounds nuts to me now, too.

All my mom heard was, "I hit someones car with my bike and we're going to have to pay to repair it."

She asked me for the coordinates of my accident.  Sure enough, when I told her, she rolled her eyes upward and said, "Oh Lord, that's the Thompson's. Did you stop and tell anyone?"

By now the blood on my leg was a really more a river soaking into my sock.

"No.  I had to get the chocolate chips."

So, in her ratty jean shorts and tank top, her laundry outfit that she'd worn to do laundry in since her high school days, my mother walked me the six blocks to the Thompson's house.  Mrs. Thompson's husband owned the only funeral parlor in town.  She came to the door looking calm and cool.  They had two air conditioning window units in their downstairs.

Mother explained my story, minus the one armed guy building the house who I thought was dead.  We looked at the car, which had sustained a scratch about an inch long and one, Mrs. Thompson said, "would buff out."  Her brother worked at a body shop, so she knew this sort of thing.

Then Mrs. Thompson looked at me and said, "Do you know your leg is bleeding?"

I said yes and then Mom thanked her and we walked back home. All the way home M

By the time we got home, my sock was wet with blood and my leg was sticky.  I was afraid to say anything because, well, I still wasn't sure if Mrs. Thompson's brother would be able to buff out the scratch and if he could, what would it cost?

"Mom,"  I said as she started going back to the basement to continue doing laundry, "I'll pay for the damage to the car, but can I have a band aid for my leg?"

It was then that my mother realized I was hurt.  She took me into the bathroom, washed my cut, bandaged it up, and stuck my sock in the bleach bucket until next laundry day.  Later, like twenty years later, she told me she was so wrapped in the fact that she was a mess, that she never even realized I'd cut my leg.

Oh, but I made the chocolate chip cookies before noon that day.  And I got a second place ribbon.  The judge liked the cookies, but said that using all butter on such a hot day made the cookies too thin and chewy.

I'll bet the one armed guy would have loved them.

Good "old" self check: Why I won't be shopping at Woodman's again.

Happy Thursday all!

Since Peaches moved out I really don't have a reason to get my girth out of bed much before 7:30, which is about when I need to run a brush over my teeth and get into my desk chair for work.  Generally, however, I do get up a shade before 7, get a walk in, feed the cats, make coffee, that sort of thing.

I accomplish more before 8 AM than I do the entire rest of the day.  Wait...that didn't sound right.

Anyway, this morning, I decided to get up at 6, and get some light grocery shopping done.  Now, we have two 24 hour stores the same distance from my house. One is Meijer, one is Woodman's.  Product by product, price by price, I like Woodman's more.  They have more local brands that I really like. They have the flavor of Yoplait yogurt that Skippy really likes.  The thing is, I always feel a little claustrophobic in Woodman's because they are always more crowded, they have a lower ceiling, which makes them feel smaller.  Also, Meijer has a better meat and produce department.

So the biggest deciding factor for where I go and spend my grocery dollar tends to rest on the check out experience.

When it comes to check out, I like Woodman's more, as well, because they unload the cart, scan stuff, and load the cart again.  Given the constant pain I have in my hands and back, any help I can get with the groceries is appreciated.

The thing is, Woodman's NEVER has enough cashiers, which means standing in line forever, which, if you have read this blog for longer than a week, you know standing in line is not my favorite thing to do.  (Self check is NOT an option.  It's too hard on my hands and back.)  So if I shop at Woodman's it's either because Hubby is with me or because it's a weird time of day when the sto
re won't be mobbed.

Self check? You ask. Do I use self check?  NO!  Not if I can help it.  Unless they're handing discounts out for using a machine that gives you no customer service and yells at you for mystery items in the bagging area.

And, of course, I have trouble handling self check because it's never just SELF. Something always goes wrong, then I have to WAIT for a person to help me.  Add that to the sweat I build up (which triggers hot flashes) loading and unloading groceries and scanning them and bagging them and what you wind up with is a giant sweaty woman aching hands and back, swearing never to return to self check again. 

So today I arrived at the 47 check out lanes at the front of my Woodman's store.  It was 6:50 AM.  This is notable because, as I learned THIS MORNING, there are no live cashiers before 7 AM.  Oh sure, there's a big sign that says there's a full service lane....but there's no one in it. Which means self check.  So I hauled my cart down to self check...where there was a back up!  WHO ELSE IS SHOPPING BEFORE 7 IN THE MORNING ON A THURSDAY?

Apparently everyone.  Well, okay, four people which was just enough to bog down the self check system and make me wait in line.  TO CHECK OUT MY OWN GROCERIES.

Also, the people checking out their groceries at self check were all having, let's say, difficulty.  I actually waited four or five minutes before giving up and moving down to the regular lanes.  Better to wait for someone to open up a cash register than to watch people separately and in oh so many different way bog down the check out process.

I waited the six minutes (actually more like eight) it took for a cashier and bagger to walk over to an actual check out lane and open up. I then got my cart in there and let them do their work. It was early, so I expect little polite chit chat and I got what I expected.  But since I'd bought enough items for the silence to be uncomfortable, I thought I'd just kick things off a little.

"So I figured I'd wait for you to open up. I can't really do self check on my own," I said with a smile on my face.

"Oh then you're not going to like the news," muttered the cashier.

"Yeah, they're tearing out all of these lanes and putting in all self check," added the bagger, a sort of emo-hipster girl who could not have been more than thirteen.  (Also, she was clearly being trained by the cashier who was clearly exhausted with the training.)

"All?"  I gasp.

"Well, like, half of them.  That's what Gary decided," said the cashier.  "I wish I could decide stuff."

Granted, they never have more than half the check out lanes open at any given time. In fact, if Woodman's would open half the lanes, I would probably not have to stand in line there and I'd shop there more often.

Still, this was really disconcerting news.

"I'm not sure I like that. I have arthritis. It's hard for me to use the self check," I said in a conversational manner.  "Is this a matter of a labor shortage?"  (Woodman's is CONSTANTLY looking for cashiers. I figured maybe they just gave up looking.)

"No, this is a keeping things moving thing," grumbled the cashier.  "Other stores have all these self check lanes and it seems to be working."

You know what else would work?  Adding literally one, just one, more cashier to every shift.  Seriously.

"Wow. That's really disappointing that they are going that route," I say.

"Yeah, a lot of the old people aren't going to like it.," mumbles the emo-hipster bagger. 

Let's let that sink in for a moment.

Tiny blonde sad teen girl who is training on the job...did she just call me old?   Did she just lump me in with the OLD PEOPLE who can't operate self check, not because their hands are crippled with arthritis, but because they are confused by technology?  Did she just add me to the group of patrons who will be unhappy with this change not because it means, yet again, fewer services for the same amount of money, but because I'm too old to do things for myself?

I AM NOT OLD!  I was shopping before 7 in the morning! Old people don't shop then...well except for that one guy who was really bogging down self check this morning.  You know where old people are at 7 in the morning?  They are at DENNY'S. They are not grocery shopping.

I tried to reign in my rage.  "Well, I'm glad you're still going to have some real check out lanes.  I like having the extra help."

"Yeah, well, this wasn't my decision," said the very weary cashier.  "And a lot of old people are going to really not like this."

AGAIN WITH THE OLD!  First of all, aren't those OLD PEOPLE, also your customers?

Second...I combed my hair, I brushed my teeth, I put on eyeliner and a cool radio station T-shirt. I AM NOT OLD. I protect the use of self check because I don't like self check, and if it's not a matter of labor shortage, then why should I have to check out my groceries and scan them and bag them and load them in my cart?  

They don't make me do all that at Meijer.  

They also don't call me "Old" at Meijer.  

Just sayin'.