Telegram From Planet Dull

     Had a commenter the other day refer to my cooking as "experiments" and express the hope that I "won't poison my renter."

     Look, mister, I'm sorry if your Mom raised you on boxed mac'n'cheese, bologna sandwiches on white bread and box-mix pizza, supplemented by Mickey Dee and The Colonel, but there's nothing particularly experimental about my cooking, and normal, ordinary supermarket vegetables aren't random weeds.  Turnips, rutabaga, beets, parsnips, fennel and celery root have been eaten and enjoyed by millions of people for thousands and thousands or years.  Likewise rice, blackeyed peas, crowder peas, green and red kidney beans, pinto and black beans, garbanzos, lima and butter beans and so on. This stuff is food.  Shishito peppers are a little new in most U. S. markets, but bell and banana peppers, chilis and poblanos aren't.  Radishes and leeks have been around since almost forever -- diakons or "watermelon radish" (red on the inside!) is still uncommon.  Kale and other greens are as old as the hills!

     I grew up eating a lot of it.  We grew kohlrabi, snap peas, green beans, cucumbers, zucchini, carrots, radishes, cabbage, various kinds of tomatoes and melons and more in our own garden.  In the winter, we enjoyed an assortment of canned, frozen and dried vegetables along with the supermarket's fresh stuff.  (Mixed-bean soup made from many different kinds of dried beans plus some strong ham, simmered for hours and served with chopped fresh onion and celery is a winter treat not to be missed!)

     Mom cooked a variety of meat -- various cuts of beef and pork, ham, chicken, turkey (at the holidays) and so on.  At least once, my parents got together with friends and bought an entire side of beef, had it butchered, divvied up the results and stocked the freezer for months.  Several times a year, my Mom made a delicious clear-broth beef stew that neither my sister nor I have ever quite duplicated, and she could turn out chicken and noodles that would float you the the dinner table by sheer force of the aroma.

     There were always cookbooks in the kitchen, and my mother liked to try new foods and encouraged us to do so as well. 

     I'm proud of my cooking, and it is deliberately a little intuitive.  I'm especially proud of being able to cook well over coals.  I've been doing that since I was of junior high school age -- when my family would go on vacation, Mom preferred her Coleman (white gas) or, later, LP stove but I did most of the campfire cookery.

     How and what I prepare and the ingredients I use are about as ordinary as you can find.  They're not very processed.  Both of my parents grew up during the Great Depression and WW II, and in large families without large incomes.  As children, they ate mostly fresh, unprocessed food whenever it was available, and when they started their own family, they fed their own kids the same things.*  It was not health-nut stuff; bacon and eggs was our usual breakfast and there was plenty of red meat on the dinner menus.  But it was often fresh, there were nearly always two different vegetables to go with the meat and they preferred whole-grain bread (Roman Meal, which has about vanished) or home-made white bread to the squishy supermarket version.  Other starches like rice or potatoes were counted the same as bread, not as side veggies.  Highly processed snacks were discouraged and highly-processed sides and main dishes (corned beef hash!) were rare treats.  Mom did like those dinner rolls you buy ready to pop from the can and bake for Sunday dinner: they're a real time saver.  And did we ever have Sunday dinners!  It was a late lunch after church, a large and fancy meal.  Sunday supper was often no more than a late-evening snack.

     To judge by what the supermarkets around here stock, my notion of plain old regular food is pretty mainstream -- or at least it is for people who get most of their meals at the grocery instead of from restaurants.
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* Both of their families had vegetable gardens and their own chickens well before WW II rationing.  Mom's family raised goats for milk and meat; Dad's always had a milk cow.  I don't know if Mom's family kept bees, but she took it up in middle age and did well, using honey in place of sugar in many recipes.