Sunday, Dec. 26, 2010 - 3:02 p.m.
Sacred Macaroni ***************** My deepest and most profound memory of my Mom was ....macaroni. We ate it by the pailfull as kids . This was before Kraft dinner, when junk food was still made at home - Here is the family secret of perfect macaroni I am now at liberty to reveal: pre boiled macaroni elbows, margarine, skim milk and salt and the topping ! here we go .. stale bread grated into crumbs, some kind of cheese grated, salted some more and them poured atop bake in a corningware dish for 40 min or just 20 min if people are hungry til its golden brown or beige, whatever .. serve immediately onto melmac plates add ketchup to taste.. top off with jello and a cup of tea sustained for another day in paradise I believe macaroni was an exotic Italian dish that entered the North American culture sometime after WW2, along with Pizza & Lazagna
and feeding us kids macaroni was my Mom's way of introducing us to the world out there I know Yankee Doodle went to town riding on his pony stuck a feather in his hat and called it macaroni but how that relates to a 7 pound slab of oven baked macaroni casserole I have yet to discover My Mom worked a 40 hr week and dinner was fast rough and basic macaroni was the answer to feeding her family esp in wintertime. .I never recall any macaroni leftovers we ate every scrap everytime... like starving sled dogs My Mom, always the experimenter would routinely buy a product, long since discontinued called " Macaroni and cheese slices "- it was essentially, industrially cooked macaroni and cheese pieces industrially imbedded into a log of baloney meat bi products, sliced and vacuume packed for sandwiches. I much preferred peanut butter, but we ate what we got Starving Children in China would grab it if we didn;t a vegetarian since I was a student, my cuisine choices presented a dilema at family dinners when meat was served, The compromise for me was always macaroni-- and i was grateful for those ivory coloured elbows and the brightly orange tinted cheese. And I received no complaints from anybody in China For years afterwards, visiting my Mom always meant MACARONI - no exception even if I brought a flaffel with me Macaroni even became a joke between my sister and me - and when the pot of rapidly boiling salted water received the load of dry macaronis we just knew that we were in for another round of comfort food flashbacks - Good times = macaroni bad times= macaroni macaroni in sickness and in health macaroni to celebrate success or mourn loss
i will always be grateful to my Mom for showing me the true path to macaroni perfection and as practise makes perfect I got closer to perfection with macaroni than i did with other aspects of my life Macaroni made me the man i am today thanks Mom this noodle's for you
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