I ♥ food - stories and musings from the life of a foodie
How much of your day has to do with food? Thinking about it, buying it, preparing it, fretting about the fats or carbs in it, savouring it, dealing with leftovers, daydreaming about more food … I realised a long time ago that I was fairly consumed with what I consumed! Some people eat to survive. For others, like me, thoughts of breakfast get us out of bed in the morning!
It all started … when I was born. The focus on food, that is. My parents were both excellent cooks, who put their talents to work. My father had learned to cook in the Navy. His style was intuitive – putting things together in the kitchen and watching what happened. He was a creative free spirit, who knew what to combine with what and in what quantity! He was also messy. None of this “clean up as you go along” nonsense. No, that was left to my mother.
Mom had inherited many wonderful recipes from her German-background mother and Grandma’s parents. She made delicious meals for us, and was a fabulous baker. If you ask me to make a pie, I will start out by making 10 pounds of pie dough, just like my mother did when I was growing up. I’ll use what I need for that pie and then freeze the rest, after patting it out into a number of equal portions, each big enough for one pie shell.
Because she supplied restaurants with fruit pies – peach, cherry, blueberry and more – it was understandable that my mother made a huge quantity of pastry. She continued this practice when baking for her family, because it’s helpful to have ready-made pastry in the freezer.
My entrepreneurial parents had restaurants of their own too, famous for Mom’s pies and Dad’s beer-battered chicken. At one point they had a successful donut-making business. “S&S Donuts” was named after my brother Steve and me.
But the only business I have any recollection of is the Dairy Queen, a popular ice cream franchise in the US. My pre-school days revolved around that joy-bringing frozen confection. I even looked a bit like a DQ ice cream cone: the tight curl in the middle of my forehead was not unlike the curlicue at the top of the cone.
Of course children love ice cream. But even adults know it makes everything better. Once, when backpacking with my husband, the promise of a clotted cream ice cream cone was the only thing that kept me moving. And the dumped person in a rom-com heads straight for the Ben & Jerry’s!
I can cut other things from my diet, but not ice cream. It’s related to milk, so surely it’s good for me? And yet there are those who insist on labelling ice cream, or all dairy products, “unhealthy”. If you are looking to identify a conspiracy theory, surely these are the people to watch!
Published in Konect September 2021
Author: Suzanne Green