I had a treat recently—a non-travel Friday—so I cooked dinner. With a chicken roasting in the oven, I wrote on my Facebook page that we were about to enjoy a comfort food dinner. Shannon, Rayna and I were just about to sit down to eat, when a text message from Nolan arrived on my iPhone.
“Dad, that dinner sounds sooo good, everything here is covered in cheese!”
“It is good,” I replied and sent an 8 megapixel photo of a heaping pile of mashed potatoes and gravy, kale and a mouthwatering chicken thigh.
“you poop.”
A few minutes later, I sent another shot of a clean plate with a chicken bone and some gravy smudges. I’ve been told I have a wicked sense of humor.
My mom was a high school cafeteria manager, so I understand about industrial food. Let’s face it, school food then as now is not about inspired cuisine. There’s a reason for chili fries—you can cook the fries hours earlier and then throw some hot chili on and you’re good to go. Or cheese pizza—unless you're lactose intolerant, most people under 21 will eat it and what’s left can be reheated the next day.
I had my share of that stuff. When I left for college I had to fend for myself—no three-squares-a-day meal plan for me. And since I had a full time job wrangling sheep, I quickly learned about the one pot meal with the help of an ancient crock pot I got at a yard sale. My second week of school I called my mom for advice on what I could make in my fifty-cent crock pot; once it stopped smoking.
“hey mom, the hot plate burned out”, so I bought a crock pot, I began.
“you boiled a pot dry didn’t you?” she guessed.
“Yeah, some sheep got out in the middle of dinner and headed for campus”, I’d been boiling a dozen eggs at the time, and it took me and two sheep dogs an hour to get the escapees off the lawn in front of the administration building.
“Well, you could make beans, get a ham hock and some navy beans; put it on medium and in two or three hours you’ll have dinner.”
“That’s it?”
“yes, it’s cheap and you should get a couple meals”
Well, I reasoned that a couple ham hocks and a lot of beans would make a lot more than a couple meals. I was in business, something besides hardboiled eggs and fried egg sandwiches. My parents came down the following weekend for the one visit they made. On the table in the corner of the sheep barn office was my little crock pot; in it bubbled a nice little batch of beans. It was about noon.
“oh, you made some beans”, my mom observed lifting the lid of the crock and releasing the warm smell of smoked ham.
“Yep, Sunday night,” I beamed with a look of proud self-sufficiency.
“Two batches in one week?” she started to look skeptical.
“Nope, just one, all week. I made it Sunday and just kept it warm.”
“You what? You could get food poisoning.”
Before I could say Ramboullet, my crock and its steamy goodness where in the bottom of a trash can. There were other culinary close calls my freshman year involving attempts at menudo at Christmas time and a pigeon sausage in Meats Processing class using “locally sourced” meat. Mom never knew about those, and she didn’t visit again. So maybe a meal plan for Nolan is a good idea, even if it is a little cheesy.
On the Friday that I snapped a picture of a plate of home cookin’ it had been four weeks since we dropped Nolan off at school. Four weeks is a long time to go cold turkey—not just with a different diet, but the ritual of eating together. For lots of cultures sharing a meal is sharing your life. Since Nolan and Rayna were little, we have eaten together as a family more often than not. Four or five times a week it has been a touch-point, an opportunity to reconnect.
We visited Nolan two days later and took him out to eat. It was a Mexican place; good, but not remarkable. We all talked through the whole meal. We all needed the sustenance of the family. It wasn’t just the comfort food of roasted chicken and mashed potatoes Nolan hungered for; it was the company of his family, and the ritual of a shared life.
