I am listening to Stanley Tucci's memoir called TASTE: MY LIFE THROUGH FOOD. It centers on the meals enjoyed by his Italian-American family growing up north of NYC and the years following. The recipes are wonderful, but there is no way I can eat like this. He must belong to the just a taste of it club because he is thin. He has the most wonderful forearms I have ever seen (based on his show on CNN). Also I can not imagine spending the time necessary to make some of these recipes. And each day many of them were served.
Food did not play a big part in my childhood. My mother was an indifferent cook and liked us all to be thin. Which we were. A pound of meat was more than enough for four and a frozen package of green beans was too. I think we lost a lot by not enjoying food together. I can only think of one dish of hers I ever tried to repeat and it still was nothing special. I am not a great cook, but even cooking for myself I try to make a dinner I want to sit down to. There was not a cookbook in our house and the only spices were cinnamon, nutmeg, salt and pepper. Surely there were others but I can't remember them.
How about your childhood! Was food a big part of it?
Also reading the newest Peter Robinson mystery. I think I have read them all, which is unusual for me nowadays. I have the new Michael Robotham at the library if it ever cools off enough for me to walk there.
It has been such a hot week here I have barely been outside. I would have to walk to the park to sit outside and it just doesn't seem worth worming my way through the construction to get there. A real deficit of this building is there are no sitting areas outside.
TV-Still watching the super-creepy BLACK BIRD. FOR ALL MANKIND has sort of lost my interest even though lots of stuff has happened this season. ONLY MURDERERS IN THE BUILDING also seems lacking. It probably is me.
And rewatching MAD MEN, which is my favorite show ever. Watched a great documentary on Kanopy about the Hollywood photography coming out of the agency Magnum.
Please notice this. http://jerryshouseofeverything.blogspot.com/2022/08/catherine-keane-house-march-7-1949.html
What are you up to?
13 comments:
Western NY sweltered under high temps and high humidity last week. I stayed in the A/C and read a lot of books. A cool front is supposed to arrive here later this week.
I'm watching THE SANDMAN on Netflix and haven't made up my mind about it yet. Five more episodes to go.
I came from a family of five kids and two adults. My mother was constantly cooking. Family dinner was a fun time to get caught up on all the stuff that was going on with everything. All of us developed a Bad Habit of eating quickly. If you didn't grab your share fast, you lost out.
Glad to see the Democrats passed the legislation that the Republicans hate!
Thank you for linking to my blog, Patti. When I get my head together I'll be posting a tribute.
Growing up our meals were basically meat, potatoes, a vegetable, dessert. Not a lot of spices-salt and pepper was it. Not much of a cook myself. I eat way too much processed food. I like watching Tucci's show but I couldn't eat Italian food-too much garlic and onions, Both of which I hate.
I read Winter Work by Dan Fesperman. He writes very good spy novels. Now reading Folly and Glory by Larry McMurtry and The Next Time I Die by Jason Starr.
Watching Better Call Saul, Animal Kingdom, Bill Mahar, and John Oliver. Didn't see any movies at the theater. Rrewatched Mulholland Drive, my favorite David Lynch film.
Take your time, Jerry. Your tributes to her came every Monday on here.
That is much like Tucci's mother, George. She was in the kitchen all the time.
How did I forget Better Call Saul. Of course, that. Yeah, my family dinner was just like yours. And dessert was canned fruit or packaged pudding.
No, I don't think it's you. ONLY MURDERS was fun but it is yet another series - there are so many - that made a big splash with the first series, said all it had to say, yet whose success almost guaranteed a second series. But they have nothing left to say but more of the same, only less interesting. It has happened over and over with streaming series. Whatever you can say about FARGO - and some I liked way more than others - they did something new and different every series. The latest show we abandoned: THE UMBRELLA ACADEMY.
Best thing we've seen lately by far was IT'S A SIN on HBO Max. Still very much enjoying HACKS too. We watched Kenneth Branagh's BELFAST on HBO over the weekend. Well done, good acting. The kid reminded both of us of the boy in Chris O'Dowd's MOONE BOY (I know that's a comedy). I finally started series 4 of the gritty French SPIRAL. Jackie isn't a big fan, says it is too down and dirty and prefers "prettier" French series like TANDEM. But then she just watched all 4 series of OZARK and it doesn't get much darker.
My mother (learning from her mother and mother in law) was a very good cook. WHen we were kids, my father often worked late and we got junky dinners (fish sticks, hot dogs), but when she made a big dinner (leg of lamb was a favorite) she really did it well. I do remember eating a lot of terrible canned vegetables when we were younger, but once they moved to California in 1974, they started cooking fresh veggies and eating more seafood and less beef. My father even got a wok and cooked in it.
Still reading a lot of short stories (mysteries plus Emma Straub at the moment). I quit another book - Martin Edwards's new Lake District mystery was a snore- but I very much enjoyed Paula Munier's fourth Mercy Carr K-9 mystery, set in Vermont.
Going through a hotter than usual, very humid period the last few weeks. We have our last two Long Island concerts (and hotel stays) this week - Jimmy Buffett on Tuesday, Santana and Earth, Wind & Fire on Saturday. We saw THE MUSIC MAN on Broadway last Wednesday, and they "encouraged" people to wear masks but no longer required it. I'm guessing the packed theater was close to half masked and half not. It seemed like a real out of town audience to me and they were incredibly enthusiastic from curtain up to the end. I thought it was (in the words of a friend) good but not great. Jackie was impressed with how much dancing there was, and we were both very taken with how good the littlest kids were. I remember when ANNIE first opened in 1977, the producers complaining about how hard it was to get young kids who could sing and dance. Well, those days have gone and these kids were wonderful. Hugh Jackman was good, but he was so much more impressive as Curly in OKLAHOMA! in London in 1998.
Jerry, so sorry to read about your loss. You have our deepest condolences.
Food was not a big part of my life as a child. Our meals were standard, and for someone who grew up in the deep South, not much of our food was specifically Southern. Except for cornbread and biscuits, and I think my grandmother mostly cooked those. I did not have grits (at least not at home and we never ate out when I was a child) or Hoppin' John (black eyed peas and sausage on rice) until I was adult. My father was interested in healthy food and we were the first people that I knew to have anything close to whole wheat bread. Barbecue pork in the South is special but I did not have that until the teenage years and college.
Thanks for linking to Jerry's blog.
Right now I am reading THE ADVENTURES OF SHERLOCK HOLMES by Arthur Conan Doyle and FIFTH BUSINESS by Robertson Davies and DEATH AROUND THE BEND by T.E. Kinsey (a humorous historical mystery).
Childhood meals were not part of any region or ethnicity that I can think of. Meat, potatoes, vegetable- Frozen fish occasionally. Sometimes shrimp in the summer. I think the fifties-sixties women were seduced by frozen food. We never ate canned though.
TYpical breakfast was cereal, egg or french toast. Lunch, half a sandwich, usually pressed ham. Dinner- piece of meat, vegetable, half a potato, fruit or pudding. I weighed one hundred pounds when I got married. We did eat candy between meals or cookies. My father did not like any food mixed together so no stews or the like.
Lot of fish sticks. Lunch was often soup (Campbells) and PBJ or tuna fish sandwich. As long as I ate my meals I could snack all I wanted. Lot of roasts on Sunday and homemade mac and cheese. I remember creamed corn which I refused to eat and would end up forfeited my dessert. I weighed 170 when I graduated HS. I'm 6'2 so that was pretty good.
I often had Lunch with Soupy which ran at noon weekdays in the Detroit area.
Yes, Mrs. Paul's. Same for me as to snacks. I grew up in Philly but it was much the same except no Soupy Sales.
Belated input--Tucci's been keeping himself in good condition for some years...in a shortlived tv series with Indira Varma from about 15 (or precisely 16) years ago, 3 LBS., a medical drama with an uncompelling ttile, at one point they're in a locker room and Tucci pulls off his shirts, and aside from thinking I'd much rather see her do so, it was hard to miss that he'd been working out.
My parents were both good cooks, and I picked up modest "short-order" cooking ability from them and the fact I was a latchkey kid for some years. Alice and even a friend or two who have either not had a good culinary example or are a bit too rule-following in their own cooking (one of my most orthodox friends was startled once to learn it was Allowed to put hummus on a bagel) have been impressed by things I would take for granted in broiling a steak or mixing a vegetable salad (entirely too muny of of the skills developed in my youth were for meat-based foods, so Alice has benefited more than I from that legacy, and a friend of hers told me that I'd cooked the best t-bones she'd ever tasted).
Oh, and Tucci presumably needs to eat hearty to keep himself as toned as he presumably still is beyond the thews.
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