Food: An American Icon

Food has always played a big part in American life. In almost every great memory, food enjoys a major or, at least, a minor role. As a child growing up in a typical 2 bedroom, post World War II GI bungalow, the tastes and smells of food were never far away.

I remember lazy September Sunday afternoons when an early dinner meant roast beef and potatoes, carrots and gravy, the smell wafting out the windows into the late summer breeze. We ate early on Sundays because Dad worked nights on the railroad and often left after we went to bed. It afforded him some time to digest, read the paper and eat a huge bowl of vanilla ice cream with chocolate sauce for dessert. Sometimes Dad worked the afternoon shift and would arrive home around ten. We, of course, were in bed, but the smell of onions and green peppers frying with bacon tweaked our noses and brought us out of the bedroom to kneel on the dining room chairs, leaning with our forearms on the table while Dad ate a Denver omelet with toast and coffee.

I’ve always been intrigued by comfort food, which I truly believe is another word for food created from nothing when the pocketbook was empty. My father-in-law, a burly Italian from New York City, had a penchant for one such food. I remember his reminiscence. “Grandma used to save up the heels from Italian loaves, then drizzle them with olive oil, hot water and Italian spices.” He would press all of the fingertips of one hand to his lips and emit a loud kissing sound. “Mmmm-mmm. That was delicious!”

“That was “poor” food,” I said at one point. “You know, when you were poor.”

He looked quizzically at me. “No, that was a special treat.” But I thought I was on the right track. I remember chipped beef on toast or ground beef in white sauce over toast or biscuits. Sometimes we had breakfast for dinner. Bacon and eggs, French toast with maple syrup, always a seemingly creative delicacy to us, but likely a last resort for Mom, resulting from the bleak contents of the refrigerator. Hot dogs, bologna, egg salad sandwiches – all foods created from the last remains of something else. My mother used to make eggsalad/tuna salad sandwiches, which we thought we the best things since, dare I say it, sliced bread. I now realize it was probably a measure to stretch either the tuna or egg salad to accommodate an unexpected lunch guest.