The important fact you need to know is the actual amount of time each of us has spent in the kitchen cooking together…in our case, it’s been the better part of 50 years. NOW, rather than one of us showcasing our very best chicken dish or pasta specialty, we seem to be competing for who did it BEST? And so far…well. Read on, you'll see how this ends.
Ok, before I go any further, I am sure if this were posted on a social media page, the trolls would be jumping on the comment section to bash the audacity of complaining about who cooks what better.
To that I say, run along and go order your door dash and leave me alone.
The history…Brooklyn was the place of our original home.
I was taught to cook by my grandmother. A stay at home all her life, gardener who grew the food we consumed, baked our breads, indulged every sweet dream we ever had for all manner of confections and crushed the grapes to make the vino in the wine press that we drank at the holidays. You name the occasion, she knew how to create the perfect compliment of 4 courses plus dessert to suit.
NO recipes required. The preparations, the ingredients, the setting on the gas oven, the right size pots, the pans on and on.
All these details lived inside her memory…
It was that style of cooking, back in the day, that came from intuition and recollection and true functionality and need to feed the family. Oh, yes, Grandma lived with us even when Grandpa was alive and then afterwards as well.
Moving on with this story… He admits to only having cooked scrambled eggs as a young boy. He used 2 eggs and butter in the pan.
His claim to fame was how perfectly he created this delicious breakfast once a week.
Fast forward to later on and to what we now refer to as
THIS LIFE TIME…and suddenly HE’s recreating Sunday SAUCE on the stove and reading recipes for how to make proper meatballs in Lydia Bastiainch’s cook book.
RECIPES????? No one wrote down the ingredients to make a
Meatball…you just MADE THEM.
I’m not going to lie. HIS were good, great, actually. I was giving him lots of praise, sort of, right up until he said that the reason for the success was because he added a magic ingredient…wait a minute!
Meatballs didn’t need magic ingredients. To that he said,
“I just add whatever I feel I want to at the time!”...
NOPE that was not how Grandma did it.
This debate went on until the last meatball was consumed right out of the fridge a few days later.
That’s when we decided our competitive natures had to be put to the test…who made the best meatballs…and the contest was ON!
We gathered friends, family, neighbors and the mail man.
We wanted a good sampling of trustworthy palates who knew how to distinguish the best of the best flavor components that made up a meatball.
GAME ON!
I think we made 75 meatballs each…concocting our specialty versions in secret many times…they were baked, fried, cooked in sauces, microwaved (bleek, that wasn’t me folks) etc etc.
The time had finally come to count the ballots that were placed in the giant CONTADINA containers that had been washed out and decorated with HIS OR HERS labels.
And the winner was….!
Pat Larsen is a syndicated columnist, author and fitness instructor for her favorite people, Boomers and Seniors.
Have a story to share or a meatball recipe you want her to try…contact Pat at 518-275-8686.
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