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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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