Fashions come and fashions go; tastes change with the changing times. And it’s not only clothes, cars, and forms of entertainment; it’s also what we eat. What we consider tasty today bears little resemblance to the things we ate twenty, thirty . . . all right, seventy years ago. Think back with me, as far as you can . . .

Fine! So some things don’t change! I can’t explain the mystique surrounding mac and cheese; but like the lights on a Christmas tree, it’s here to stay. Maybe because every child who’s ever been born goes through that phase of refusing to eat anything else. This may not be the most nutritious toddler food, but at least it fills their little tummies. And the cheese does have protein. Why we adults continue to worship at its altar, is another question entirely.

I’ll skim quickly through my early childhood, because my family didn’t eat like everyone else in those days, so I have no frame of reference as to what was generally popular. My Russian/Ukrainian grandparents were an ever-present (and wonderful) part of our lives then, and my maternal grandmother (Bubbe) was a fantastic cook, while my grandfather (Zayde) owned a one-man Kosher bakery. So we ate pot roast and potato latkes, knishes, rolled cabbages, blintzes, kasha with bow tie pasta moistened with real chicken fat (rendered from real chickens), along with those chickens fixed a dozen different ways . . . and lots of bread. Rye bread, challah, bagels, all fresh from the brick oven in Zayde’s bakery just down the street. And in the summer, fresh vegetables from the garden in the back yard.

But by the ‘50s, we had moved on. Zayde had passed away; my aunt was looking after Bubbe, who didn’t cook as much by then; and life had changed. My mother was a good cook and had held on to a lot of her mother’s ways, but with the addition of a few more “contemporary” things. Like the spaghetti sauce she learned to make from an Italian friend. And the incredibly light cheesecake from a New York lady she knew. And fish . . . always fried. But I also began eating some meals at school, and at friends’ houses. And I remember something called chicken a la king. It was, as I recall, chunks of chicken floating in a creamy sauce, and it had peas and pimientos in it. I hate pimientos, so I tried to avoid it, but it wasn’t always possible when it was the main course at your friend’s house. And sometimes pork chops, a treat that we didn’t get at home because they were tref and might kill us.

In later elementary school (through the 8th grade), we came home for lunch. I think my mother kind of resented having her daily radio soap operas interrupted by my lunch hour, because those meals were always quick and easy: grilled cheese and tomato soup (still a winter favorite); tuna, bologna, or PB&J sandwiches; and canned Spaghetti-os, or Chef Boy-ar-dee ravioli. Fortunately, dinners were much better because my father would not have been happy with Spaghetti-os.

There were even more changes when we got to high school. Pizza — or a reasonable facsimile of the Italian original — made its way to the United States, and we kids couldn’t get enough of it! In the Washington area, we also had a chain of family-style restaurants called Hot Shoppes, where my mother took my sister and me for dinner as a special treat at the end of each work/school week. Their food was about as original as the theme song to their TV ads: “East side, west side, morning, noon or night . . . you’ll always find that Hot Shoppes food is absolutely right.” Can’t you just picture James Cagney tap-dancing to it? That was the ‘50s for you.

Ice cream concoctions were also all the rage, some big enough to serve twelve gluttonous teenagers, to finish off the evening after a school dance or football game. We didn’t worry about double-dipping in those days; sharing our germs wasn’t an issue because we were all friends. And nobody died from it.

It wasn’t until the later ‘50s and into the ‘60s that things started to change drastically. I was out of school and working by then, and mixing with an older group of co-workers who ate out (and drank out) a lot. I remember a growing interest in “foreign” foods: quiche, ratatouille, chicken Kiev. And my older sister was quite fond of throwing dinner parties, where she liked to experiment with the latest trends. One of the big things at the time was fondue — chunks of crusty bread dipped into a hot cheese mixture, or fruit and cubes of cake slathered in melted chocolate. It was messy, and you didn’t eat a lot of it, but it was yummy. I understand it’s made something of a comeback, though obviously not among the health-conscious.

Through the ‘60s and ‘70s, people gave a lot of parties, especially around the holidays. Our tree-trimming party in December was always a big hit, mainly because my mother and I would spend two full days preparing a mountain of food. She made miniature versions of her rolled cabbages — a huge job — while I worked on the three-layer taco dip, sour-cream-and-onion dip with potato chips, veggie platter with more dip, fruit-and-cheese platter, jumbo shrimp platter, and the last-minute preparation of hot mini Reuben sandwiches (served on a platter, of course), and a delicacy called Rumaki: chicken liver and water chestnut wrapped in a slice of bacon and broiled just until the bacon was crisp. And to top it all off, my mother created the world’s best cheesecake for dessert. If there was no cheesecake, it wasn’t a party.

And the bar in those days was not just wine and beer. We stocked up on bourbon, Scotch, gin, vodka, rum, ginger ale, soda, tonic water, and every kind of mixer ingredient you can imagine. Bags of ice were brought in and set outside in coolers on the balcony, and the jars of olives, cocktail onions and maraschino cherries were neatly lined up on the bar. And if we could persuade her, one friend would bring a huge bowl of her homemade eggnog, amply spiked, thank you. As you can imagine, by the time our food-and-booze orgy was over, the tree trimmings sometimes looked a little cockeyed, but that was half the fun. The other half was sleeping it off the next day.

That was also a time when families began to discover a “need” for all sorts of marvelous new kitchen gadgets, like electric knives (you could dissect that Thanksgiving turkey in no time); deep fryers (everything soaked in yummy, recycled grease); blenders (frozen daiquiris sent sales of rum through the roof); and a whole assortment of Ron Popeil’s magical goodies like his Veg-O-Matic (a best seller thanks to an endless barrage of TV commercials). All we needed was a bigger kitchen to hold it all.

And today . . . what do we have? The electric knife is still around, but I don’t know anyone who actually owns one; we do, however, have a lovely set of Ginsu knives. The deep fryer has been replaced by the air fryer; the blender — some of the more pricey of which will also make hot soup without a source of heat — is mostly used for healthy smoothies; and the Veg-O-Matic is a collector’s item, long since discarded in favor of a food processor that does everything except the dishes.

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And what about the food itself? In this calorie-counting, reduced-sodium, sugar-free, vegan, Keto, low-carb world of ours, what do we eat? Not much worth remembering years from now . . . or even tomorrow. Salads with a drizzle of olive oil and a splash of lemon juice or vinegar. Broiled fish or white-meat chicken, and maybe — very rarely — a very lean steak, which usually means a tough, dry steak, so why bother? Sushi, if you can stand it. Or, as an occasional treat, the diet plate at the Chinese restaurant where you used to order, in the good old days, the wonton soup, coconut shrimp, fried rice, fried dumplings, egg foo yung, mooshu pork with extra pancakes, and a couple of spring rolls.

We have become “health-conscious” . . . in a world that has given us in return a hundred different varieties of cancer, kidney disease, diabetes, pancreatitis, reflux, hiatal hernias, and all sorts of heart diseases. And you can’t convince me that they’re solely the result of our formerly bad diets. Because back when people just ate what was available, and what tasted good, we felt better. And we enjoyed life, without all the guilt we suffer today if we dare to order dessert. So if we’re going to get old and die anyway, why not go back to the rolled cabbages, and the fried everything, and the eggnog and cheesecake? And wash it all down with a couple of frozen daiquiris. At least we’d have better odds of leaving this world with smiles on our faces.

In this era of “body positivity,” when we’re also told that “curvy” is a good thing, why not just go ahead and let it all hang out?

Just sayin’ . . .

Brendochka
11/5/23