Misadventures in Food, 8-18-08
Aug. 19th, 2008 12:15 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
redneckgaijinIf you follow my life at all, you know I currently live as caretaker-of-sorts to my grandmother, who just turned 92 and still won't get out of the kitchen.
I have a great many complaints about her cooking (the prevalence of fat, her serving of four starches and no actual vegetable at a meal, her tendency to leave things cooking and unwatched while doing other things, and above all the fact she cooks for twenty all the time). However, one of the few things she usually does right is meatloaf. (Okay, for many of you meatloaf is inherently wrong, and she -does- overcook it without exception, but it's usually edible.)
She made meatloaf today. I got my usual huge wadge of it (plus some french fries, passing over the joys of boiled cabbage four days left over) and went to eat. This meatloaf, unlike all prior experience, didn't taste so much of meat or loaf as... well, of some kind of pastry. Far too sweet, especially in a dish which is not supposed to be sugary. I managed to clear my plate, with a little bit of nausea and a resolve not to have any more... and there's still plenty more, alas. She used up about three to four pounds of hamburger meat, which at two bucks a pound is a bit expensive to blow all at once.
Later on I discovered the reason. My grandmother's meatloaf recipe includes oatmeal. However, we were out of standard oatmeal, so my grandmother decided to substitute some packets of my instant oatmeal, the stuff I keep around on the rare occasions I feel like eating oatmeal.
This is not unflavored stuff. I had enough of that in public school breakfast lines, on those rare days when the public schools were inclined to any sort of hot food at all before lunch. This is the Quaker Instant Flavored Medley, which means that this meatloaf had, in addition to oats, a large portion of sugar... and some combination of Cinnamon Toast, Apple Cinnamon, and/or Maple Sugar flavoring.
And what really galls me about this is my grandmother has her own unopened box of instant oatmeal packets- unflavored oatmeal packets- and she'd forgotten it existed.
This is along the same lines of her liking only sweet pickles and relish, me liking only dill pickles and relish, but we've got five unopened jars of sweet relish while any jar of dill relish I buy gets emptied first thing for tuna salad sandwiches to take to the church.
Right now I'm having a bowl of Wolf brand canned chili- testing it as a home remedy for toothache. It's worked a couple of times before...
I have a great many complaints about her cooking (the prevalence of fat, her serving of four starches and no actual vegetable at a meal, her tendency to leave things cooking and unwatched while doing other things, and above all the fact she cooks for twenty all the time). However, one of the few things she usually does right is meatloaf. (Okay, for many of you meatloaf is inherently wrong, and she -does- overcook it without exception, but it's usually edible.)
She made meatloaf today. I got my usual huge wadge of it (plus some french fries, passing over the joys of boiled cabbage four days left over) and went to eat. This meatloaf, unlike all prior experience, didn't taste so much of meat or loaf as... well, of some kind of pastry. Far too sweet, especially in a dish which is not supposed to be sugary. I managed to clear my plate, with a little bit of nausea and a resolve not to have any more... and there's still plenty more, alas. She used up about three to four pounds of hamburger meat, which at two bucks a pound is a bit expensive to blow all at once.
Later on I discovered the reason. My grandmother's meatloaf recipe includes oatmeal. However, we were out of standard oatmeal, so my grandmother decided to substitute some packets of my instant oatmeal, the stuff I keep around on the rare occasions I feel like eating oatmeal.
This is not unflavored stuff. I had enough of that in public school breakfast lines, on those rare days when the public schools were inclined to any sort of hot food at all before lunch. This is the Quaker Instant Flavored Medley, which means that this meatloaf had, in addition to oats, a large portion of sugar... and some combination of Cinnamon Toast, Apple Cinnamon, and/or Maple Sugar flavoring.
And what really galls me about this is my grandmother has her own unopened box of instant oatmeal packets- unflavored oatmeal packets- and she'd forgotten it existed.
This is along the same lines of her liking only sweet pickles and relish, me liking only dill pickles and relish, but we've got five unopened jars of sweet relish while any jar of dill relish I buy gets emptied first thing for tuna salad sandwiches to take to the church.
Right now I'm having a bowl of Wolf brand canned chili- testing it as a home remedy for toothache. It's worked a couple of times before...
