Martinex1: Okay, Bronze Age fans... here are two rather random questions for you to kick off the weekend!
QUESTION 1: In the States, we just had a rather large lottery drawing. We know that back in the Bronze Age we were all dreamers... so what would you have done if you won $1.6 Billion? (And with that much money you don't have to limit it to one answer).
QUESTION 2: I can distinctly recall my favorite meals from my childhood. I can also remember a particularly repugnant dish that my mother whipped up. What were your favorite dinners? And conversely what was the worst you recall?
11 comments:
We luuuuuved “Hungarian Lasagna “ (so called by my Hungarian mother)!
Hungarian lasagna was egg noodles, cooked chopped bacon, ALL the bacon grease and a ton of cottage cheese all stirred together! Even my haute-cuisine French wife loves this as well as our kids! It ain’t healthy LOL!
My goals for $1.6 Billion dollars (or, as our cousins across the pond might say "$1.6 thousand millions"):
Last year, St Jude raised one billion dollars to treat sick children. I would want to give them a billion this year as well.
With the remainder, I would start a project to finish scanning my comics and any other people's collections then find a way to make available for sharing. Take care of a lot of people's debts and see how much progress we could make on a Fantastic Four movie (or trilogy).
It would be my vision of the FF and I know I've mentioned them before:
Origin and first fight with Namor.
Meeting with the Mole Man and his Sub-terraneans.
Dr Doom.
What I would probably end up doing is St Jude's, going to all those rallies and paying the bus drivers to drive away so when the demonstration was over, all the buses would be gone and much like all my other monies, whores, hooch and singing lessons, you know, waste it.
And the comic book thing, I'm serious about that.
One of the dishes my mother would make was Saturday's beans. Friday night, she would go through all the beans and take out the broken ones, dirt clogs and anything else that wasn't "beans". Then she would put them on to soak. At some point on the "God awful AM", she would put them on to stew. The beans, a ham bone, carrots, spices, onion and a couple of bay leaves. Much of the rest the week, these beans, whether in the original form or refried, was part almost every meal. We knew when they were close to being ready because Mom would start to make the tortillas. She took her big bowl, we called it "the tortilla bowl", and she would make the dough. Then she would roll the dough into small balls and she would line the lip of the bowl. Usually, she could make a complete circle but every now and then she would have to start a second row. A plate of those beans, Spanish rice and fresh tortillas hot off the stove was a meal of the Gods!!! I remember when I was young, Mom would put the tortillas on a plate in the middle but later on, she would just lay them on your plate...
If there was one meal my Mother made that I never ate was Chicken and Dumplings. Part of that was I thought it was Chicken and Ducklings so there's that. She made it as a soup in the pressure cooker. The whole chicken would go in, then be removed and deboned with the chicken going back in. Add carrots, celery, egg noodles and biscuits cut into quarters. Don't know why I never ate it. Later, during college, I spent a summer in East Texas, The Piney Woods area. There, chicken and dumplings is casserole with canned Swanson chicken, peas and carrots, cream of chicken soup and the topping was the biscuits. I don't know why, but I ate that...
Post too long so the song will be it's own post!!!
Probably the most PG13 song I've ever posted...
((Ain't life a bitch
Whoever said the best things are free
Let me tell you it don't come easy
Life's a game but I still believe
You have to take it seriously
The world tells so many lies
They say
Money talks, hum
But listen to me
Gotta take control
And you can never stop
You gotta keep on climbing till you reach the top
Never giving up
Ain't life a bitch
You gotta keep on going till you strike it rich
Don't let them tell ya you ain't got a soul
Only sinners cast the first stone
And even if the sidewalk ain't gold
Anyone can be bought and sold
The world tells so many lies
They say
Money talks, hum
But listen to me
Gotta take control
And you can never stop
You gotta keep on climbing till you reach the top
Never giving up
Ain't life a bitch
You gotta keep on going till you strike it rich
Don't let them tell ya you ain't got a soul
Only sinners cast the first stone
Life's a game but I still believe
You have to take it seriously
The world tells so many lies
They say
Money talks, hum
But listen to me
Gotta take control
And you can never stop
You gotta keep on climbing till you reach the top
Never giving up
Ain't life a bitch
You gotta keep on going till you strike it rich
Gotta take control
And you can never stop
You gotta keep on climbing till you reach the top
Never giving up
Ain't life a bitch
You gotta keep on going till you strike it rich
Gotta take control
And you can never stop
You gotta keep on climbing till you reach the top
Never giving up
Ain't life a bitch
You gotta keep on going till you strike it rich
You gotta take control
Gotta take control
And you can never stop
You gotta keep on climbing till you reach the top
Never giving up
Ain't life a bitch
You gotta keep on going till you strike it rich).
PS: Two Bananarama songs in a row!!! I know! Right?
Hm, that lottery question: I know it's probably not the type of answer you're expecting, but like Prowler, I have to say that if I fell into that kind of money, I'd first see to any financial needs/debts of family, friends and loved ones and then put enough aside for my partner and myself to live out our days comfortably. The rest (which, I believe, would be the bulk of it) I'd just give away to various worthy causes. If, as the question was posed, I had come into that kind of money back in my youth in the '70s or '80s, I probably would have blew a ton of it on back issues of comic books and various other books, and travel.
Favorite meals as a child: there were quite a few; my mom was a pretty good cook, so she made a lot of good stews, and I always particularly loved anything she made with chicken (which were always home-grown): bread fried, baked with potatoes, or paprikash. Even though she was originally from Croatia, she also learned to make a lot of non-Croatian stuff to please my siblings and me. Of course, even when she made something we really liked, like hamburgers, the beef was usually from a cow my parents had either raised or at least bought and fed for a few months, and the vegetables, including the potatoes for the French fries, were from our own garden.
My dad also frequently purchased a hog or two that we fattened, and he made really good sausages, and also smoked ham and bacon.
And since, as noted, my parents were originally from Croatia, there were some down-home 'specialties' they, as people of hardy Balkan peasant stock, loved which I never liked, usually involving the livers, kidneys or brains of various slaughtered animals. And as an exception to the aforementioned stews, I never liked it when my mom put barley in them.
Well, I'd rather win the lottery up here in Canada than in the U.S., because here we don't have to pay income tax on lottery winnings. So if I won the $1.6 billion up here (and there weren't a bunch of stupid restrictions about how much I actually got), I guess I'd just use it to live comfortably. I wouldn't go hog wild, but I'd buy a decent house and probably travel a bit; it'd also let me concentrate on writing, since I wouldn't have to worry about paying bills.
My mom was a good cook too, especially with desserts. Brownies, puffed wheat cake, apple brown betty, that peanut butter/caramel cake with the little pink and green marshmallows ... great stuff!
If I won the lottery . . . .
After a lifetime of wearing shoes and boots made for the mass market that fit me either almost right or ill indeed the first thing I would do is find a cobbler.
Don't tell her this, but I'm actually a much better cook than my mother so I'm going to have to wait until I get well into my second childhood before I can answer the favorite meal question.
Gotta run, I just got a new culinary flame and I'm making a cream brulee for later.
pfg
Besides loving my mom's "Hungarian Lasagne" (above) I can say that I did not like meat growing up. So, her pork chops covered in creamed corn dish, which my day and my siblings loved (she recalls thinking I loved it too... NOT!) was served rather frequently.
I would eat the corn and then go through various machinations, like hiding the meat in my cheeks and spitting it out in the bathroom, or other such clever antics to get rid of the pork chop.
"YOU can't have any pudding if you don't eat your meat!" LOL!
Ha - great story CH 47. I had some favorite strange dishes my mom cooked up from a tattered cookbook she had. One was called Madhatter Meatballs... beef balls and rice swimming in a pool of tomato and cream sauce. Strange things but I’d probably have them as my last meal if able to choose. On the other hand she made this “yellow pot casserole” so named because of the yellow pot it cooked in. It was hamburger, green beans, ketchup and other ingredients that together make me gag a little. My family loves it but just the odor still makes me cringe.
She once made an Eggplant Parmesan that still had the eggplant seeds in it that til this day I cannot eat that vegetable. I sat at the table for many hours trying to choke that one down.
As for the lottery...like others I’d help out as many as I could through charitable works. But I also think I’d start a business of some type and hire a bunch of people that I’ve grown respect for over the years and reward them handsomely.
If I won the lottery: As with many of you, I'd help out family and friends,and set aside enough for my wife and I to retire pleasantly. I'd make contributions to some favorite charities, and perhaps spend Saturdays handing out 20 dollar bills to passing children. I wouldn't go wild spending, but I would get a new car (mine is 18 years old...).
Meals: my Mom. like Mike W's, is good with desserts. Especially her "Cookie Sheet Cake",a magnificent chocolate cake made in a flat pan. Like brownies, but much better. She made me one for my birthday just about each year growing up.
On the other hand, she often served Lima beans with dinner. I couldn't stand them as a kid, and still can't eat them...
The funny thing about my mom's "Hungarian Lasagna" was that she often served it during Lent. For us Roman Catholics, we were not supposed to be eating meat on Fridays during Lent, which is the 40 days (or so) prior to Easter Sunday.
For some reason, perhaps because she was a stay-at-home mom and had 4 kids under the age of 7 years old (YIKES!), and this dish is hyper-easy to prepare, she would tell us bacon and bacon grease do not count as meat during Lent, LOL.
Of course, we had the obligatory fish sticks on many a Friday too, LOL!
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