My mom made hers with elbow macaroni. It was loaded with tomato sauce. I didn't like it.
But at least once every week or two, this was our dinner. I was reminded of the dish when I recently read Graham Greene's The Honorary Consul. One of the supporting characters likes to have the goulash at the "Italian Club". I immediately thought of this regular childhood meal.
We all have them, the staples of the dinners of our childhoods. Besides this dreaded tomatoey concoction, we regularly had cube steaks, liver and onions, hot dogs and sauerkraut, kielbasa, hamburgers, instant mashed potatoes, real mashed potatoes, cans of peas, green beans (french cut), corn, creamed corn, succotash, and carrots. We had pots of navy, lima, pinto, or great northern beans quite often, too. My least favorite would have been the lima beans. My favorite meal was probably chicken and dumplings.
We rarely, if ever, had fish. Fried chicken came from the Hitching Post in Cincinnati. Of course, we had our share of White Castles (my mom worked there when I was a baby) and either Gold Star or Skyline chili. Hot dogs came from Kahn's, beer came from Hudepohl and sometimes Burger or Schoenling, not that we were served beer as children, I just remember my dad having this.
Each week, during the summer when I wasn't visiting my maternal grandparents in Kentucky, I had lunch with my paternal grandmother, Elnora, in Cincinnati. We would go pick up her paycheck at Walgreen's each Friday. I would eat at the lunch counter. Chicken-fried steak was my typical choice.
Food is pretty simple when you're a kid. You either like it or you don't. If you don't, you have a strategy for dealing with it. For goulash, I ate the beef first. Cleaned the sauce off the pasta as best I could and used heaps of water or Mountain Dew to keep the acidic tomato taste off my palate. It isn't like I had options. Skipping a meal wasn't going to work. Though I could have made a meal out of Oreo's in those days. (According to Jocelyn, I could do so today, too.)
Was there a meal that you particularly dreaded? How did you cope? Was there one that you really looked forward to having? Did your family have a routine for meals? Leave a description in the comments.
(photo from belly-timber, who sadly doesn't seem to be producing entries anymore.)
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Sunday, April 27, 2008
Hungarian Goulash
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3 comments:
Where are the chili memories? I hate chili due to the thoughts of vast pots of it bubbling for hours on the stove (eeww! the smell, the texture...I am reliving it all right this minute). And spaghetti with just Ragu sauce...no spices whatsoever. I think garlic is a dirty word in the Thornton house to this day, isn't it?
Geez, of course, I left out the boiling chili. Ragu has plenty of spices for your Midwest palate. But, you're right, I don't remember using garlic until I was away from home.
Dad was a Heinz 57 guy, too, with our well-done steaks. I was the A-1 user.
Mom was a big-time Pepsi drinker, often straight from the 16 oz glass bottles.
One of my jobs at the time of this photo was to haul 2 empty eight packs of these bottles to Earl's store for the refund. It was my primary method of obtaining baseball cards. I still remember how the cartons would cut into my fingers with those heavy bottles.
My least favorite was salmon patties on Friday during Lent. Yucky little tasteless patties with the consistency of a dry sponge.
My husband accuses his Midwestern mother of putting all food throught the "deflavorizing unit."
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