As a writer, I am used to making “write” my default activity when I am not reading or sleeping. But as I aged I pay more attention to my health, and in the USA much of that involves cooking to avoid chemicals and other nasty additives.
I was raised by a teenage mom who had three children at eighteen. She liked to say we grew up together. Indeed, we did. One day when I was grown up and a mom myself, I was visiting and watching her make a big salad for a family dinner.
“Why didn’t we have salad as kids?”
“They didn’t have much fresh produce in the grocery store,” she said.
My husband Allen’s dad went to Farmer’s Market in Detroit every week and bought fresh produce from local farms. They were farm to table before farm to table was a thing. But I didn’t meet my guy until I was in my late twenties and already divorced with two children of my own. I learned to cook and to love food from the highly palatable items available in the grocery store. And from McDonald’s where high school dates sometimes took me for a cheeseburger and Coke. And the candy store where I indulged in yet more highly delicious sugar. Penny candy and nickel candy bars! Little hostess cakes with thick icing.
I read in today’s news that scientists have finally found a direct link between the food you are raised on and your food cravings as you age. This is particularly true in the good old USA where we Hines’s ate Pop Tarts and sugared cereal for breakfast, had three cookies with our Wonder Bread and peanut butter (plus a big glop of grape jelly) and glass of milk. For dinner, maybe spaghetti (jarred sauce) or Minute Rice stirred with catsup, ground beef, and if you had it, a green pepper. No green pepper? Open a can of corn, peas or beans.
That was my childhood diet and while I very much liked most of it, canned vegetables (and not the kind my mother-in-law canned in her kitchen every fall) made me gag. I did love mashed potatoes though, despite them being instant and dehydrated.
This is not a slam against my mom, who did her best, with what she knew, at a very young age, in a bewildering new world of housewifery. Her biscuits, from the grocery store bread aisle, were yummy, and so was the gravy, from a jar. Or sometimes a little cube. We had square meals and sometimes syrupy fruit cocktail or applesauce after dinner.
Back to today’s news: American folk with weight problems, diabetes or other digestive issues like IBS were likely raised on highly palatable junk food. I know this isn’t true for every obese person. My grandmother weighed hundreds of pounds and put on more each year she aged, but she also raised seven kids during the Great Depression and had a bit of a sweet tooth. Plus her husband was a raging alcoholic who tried hard to beat his disease with little success. So she was probably eating her emotions and getting sweetness from her homemade cherry pies. She picked fruit off trees in her own backyard orchard in Allen Park, Michigan. No pre-made pie crusts from her, just sugar, flour and Crisco. Or maybe butter instead of Crisco. I watched her roll out many a pie crust. Grandma Hines made excellent Christmas cookies, too, and put a spoon of sugar on half a grapefruit. At least the fruit was nutritious.
Frankly, I’ve been borderline obese and borderline diabetic off and on and badly IBS since my fifties. Before that I was fine through my twenties and thirties and sometimes overweight in my forties. I was always on a diet. Like a yo-yo. I liked being thin and was not above smoking or skipping meals to keep the weight down. Once I quit smoking at about age thirty, it was harder to stay small. One ill-advised very short term boyfriend (before Allen) called me fat. I was a size 12.
I was pissed! Told him Marilyn Monroe was a size 12. He said “Marilyn Monroe was fat!” Thank stars for Oprah. Because of her, I knew he was bad news and kicked him right to the curb, despite some insincere begging and quickly wilted roses. Dear Oprah brought weight out of the closet crammed with different dress sizes. I learned so much about relationships, myself, my spiritual life, food, and health both mental and physical from that woman at four o’clock every day. Oprah was mom and grandma rolled into one with the mind of an empathetic shrink to boot. We saw her struggle; she didn’t hide it from us.
I still miss Oprah at 4 o’clock. But what she taught me about food and everything else has been the study of a lifetime. Instead of just simply focusing on writing these days, I’m again in the kitchen trying to eat the way my husband did when he was a child. He could never figure out why I craved sweets and wine. I could never understand why he could eat just one potato chip! Now I blame it on the government and big Agra who continue to condone the terrible food Americans eat in good faith.
Today I made cookies from whole ingredients with no added salt, sugar, butter, or flour. based on a recipe my great-aunt Janice from Erie, Pennsylvania used to make for me. Even Allen approves of my Fudgie No-Bakes.
Mix oats <2 c> and cocoa powder <1/4 c>. Melt coconut oil <1/4 c>, almond butter <3/4 c> and maple syrup <1/2 c> and add to oat mixture. Form into balls and chill for 30 minutes. Refrigerate for up to a week.
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