Craving poverty suppers

My oven is broken therefore it's no surprise I really want a baked potato and 4-H meatloaf now that fall has nipped the air.  Limited to stove-top prep I'm remembering suppers from the Sixties. My mom put supper for five on the table every evening and believed in the beneficial force of a round table to promote egalitarian conversation. 

May Fritzi dine at the celestial Outback for all eternity!  She deserves it.  Some of her Sixties suppers I now realize were poor family desperation basement pantry concoctions. And they were among my childhood favorites.  

Mom used to toast "open-face" left-over hamburger buns in the oven topped with salted slices of American (not Velveeta) cheese.  I'm craving one right now.  

Another deeply satisfying meal was Creamed Salmon on Crackers.  That was basically a can of salmon, a can of mushroom soup, and a lot of Tabasco sauce heated together in a double boiler, then ladled onto saltines.  The thrill was in arranging the cracker squares on our plates. 

Bread-and-gravy was one of my childhood favorites.  We each got a piece of white bread (bordering on stale) to tear up into pieces.  We competed to form the tallest heap. Served with thin slices of leftover rump roast and warmed-up "scram" gravy.  The cornstarch gravy was flavored with brown sauce. One good rump roast could make up for a lot of cheese buns and canned beans.

In those Ed Sullivan GI Bill years a carrot stick, a canned pear half, and a Flintstone jelly glass of skim milk were considered a balanced meal.  If you were living large you might have a Duncan Hines cake or some Jello instant pudding for dessert.

© 2012 Nancy L. Ruder

SALT Talks After New Years

"You guys are fat!," I told my feet. "You, too, fingers! It's time to cut out the salt. You can't go around looking like grubworms, eating chips and salsa at all hours of the day and night!"

It was a darn good pep talk. I could give it in a locker room at SMU for the salary June Jones accepted to rebuild the Mustang football team. I like June Jones and his UHawaii style of football. Having Mike Leach and June Jones both in the Lone Star State could be interesting.

News broadcasts in the late Sixties droned on and on about the SALT Talks. Water retention was not the topic. Seems like much of the time I was unsure of the topic! You take the quiz--to a kid, these were mysterious entities:

U Thant
UFO
GOP
DQ
DMV
DMZ
DWI
Cold War
Iodized salt
Strategic Arms Limitation Talks
Assistant DA
AP
UPI
LP
ICBM
Big 8
Top 40
Sinai
Gaza Strip
OB-GYN
SAC
Sack the QB
Blitz
Zip Code
USSR
YWCA
KFMQ
When it rains it pours

Tonight I'm puzzling about the tiny plates in the set of Bavarian china. Six of the eight are in good shape. As best I can remember, these little plates are for salt. They are smaller than the bread and butter plates. Maybe I am confusing them with cut glass salt cellars. My searching for table setting information hasn't yielded any clarification, iodized or otherwise. I feel like a Miller and Paine Charm School failure!

© 2007 Nancy L. Ruder