Cleaning, Cooking, Calamity

I was not born to be a housewife. I still feel my calling was to be a cabaret singer with fish net stockings. A lot of people miss their calling in life.

Cleaning was a mystery. It never stayed done. I do like things clean however and somehow managed to master it. 57 years ago most men did nothing in the house. I went to work the same hours Mate did, but was not finished when I came home. There was cleaning and washing and ironing and all those things to be done. I invite you to read the last chapter of the Book of Proverbs. Written by Soloman. (a man) Keep in mind that Soloman was the most wealthy man that ever lived. He had, oh I have forgotten how many wives. I prefer to think that the "good wife" he writes about is a composite. Surely even back then if that was a single woman he left out the part about her having a nervous breakdown.

To his credit, when Mate got over that last chapter of Proverbs and found out it was okay for him to pitch in and not just sit in the gate, he did it and did it well.

Cleaning, though never ending, was not my main problem. It was Cooking. With a capital C.

I had never learned to Cook. My sister had the grandmother that taught her to cook. Oh what a great country cook she was. She could bake, stew, broil, saute, braise, poach and steam, as long as it was rolled in flour and fried in lard.

My grandmother........ more fun but alas no cooking. We ate sandwiches, made with store bought bread and pimento cheese and those orange marshmallow peanuts. She loved those and candy corn. No wonder we were soul mates.

Mate loved chicken and dumplings. A good old southern dish. I asked his grandmother how to make them. Been married nearly 57 years and have never owned a cook book. With all that cooking and cleaning and working outside the home when on earth would there have been time to read a cookbook? I do have a phone book and can call and order take out. She neglected to tell me that the broth should be boiling before you put in one of these lumps of dough that was yucky and stuck to your hands. I put several lumps in while it was just heating. Took it a long time to cook and it was one very large dumpling. Covered the entire pan. I only did it one time.

Another was Lasagna. We didn't eat Italian in Greer County. Don't remember where I first ate it, but thought it was the absolute best food I had ever tasted. Company coming. Went to the store found lasagna noodles, read the receipe on the box. In the Country you cook a LOT. Never do you want to come up short. I bought 3 boxes of noodles for four people. Ran out of pans, had the sink full. First time Mate ever got clever about my cooking. He went to the garage, came back with a shovel and said he was going out to the yard and bury that thing.

Later in life we had a garbage disposal. Still to this day my favorite appliance. Company again. Don't remember what I cooked but Mate went to the bathroom, came back with alka seltzer tablets and threw them in the disposal. Told the company that he got to take them every night and he felt the garbage disposal was entitled.

Mate and I stuck it out. I can put a pretty good meal on the table. I still don't enjoy it if there are just the two of us. I do like cooking for a big bunch because then you can revert to your upbringing and cook a lot.

We have a grandson in California. He loves breakfast and I love cooking it for him. When he is here I fix bacon, eggs, especially hash browns and cream gravy. And I fix it when we visit them. Once he told me he would sure like to have some more of that sauce. I explained that if you live in the South, cream gravy is not a sauce, its one of the food groups.