Bad Food! Bad! Bad!


Not all my food memories are good. I particularly remember “molded salads.” Remember those? I remember some that were green and some that were pink; some that were full of tiny marshmallows and some that were lumpy with pineapple. The pineapple, of course, had to be canned. Fresh (raw) pineapple has an enzyme that breaks down the gelatin and turns it into liquid. Some had mayonnaise, some didn’t. Some had cream cheese, some didn’t. Some even had canned salmon or shrimp. All were pretty bad.

Then there was tomato aspic. My mother loved tomato aspic. I never saw the point. I have seen it sliced, as a garnish, but in our house it was a whole side dish. It was made on purpose to eat. I haven’t touched it since I had a say in the matter.

Where did those recipes come from? Were they the nightmares of the home economists who made up recipes for food packagers? I don’t know, but a lot of cooks have carefully cooked or copied those recipes and tucked them into their recipe boxes or between the pages of a cookbook. And we encourage them by praising them when they turn up on pot-luck tables or buffet tables. We actually spoon them onto our plates and consume them, against our better judgment.

I never learned how to make any of that stuff. I didn’t like it. I have felt obligated to at least taste many of these dishes because people I worked with or went to church with made them and I didn’t want to hurt their feelings. How many of us have consumed bad food and remarked on it favorably because we didn’t want to hurt someone?

We have done it for other dishes, as well. There was, and is, banana pudding. It is an exercise in blandness. Bland vanilla pudding, bland vanilla wafers, bland bananas. It’s too sweet, too soft, too blah. Yet it turns up on church supper tables and family picnic tables with a consistency I can only wonder at. Maybe it’s because it’s easier to make than chocolate cake. It’s easier to make than almost anything except, perhaps, little dishes of vanilla pudding. I still can’t stand vanilla pudding because it has absolutely no character.

Bad food isn’t confined to side dishes and dessert. Take tuna casserole, for instance. As Henny Youngman said of his wife, “Please.” I may be prejudiced, because I can’t stand canned fish. That’s a personal problem. I don’t like canned tuna, canned salmon, sardines or anchovies. I don't even like smoked oysters. My mother had a habit of giving us chilled canned salmon as an entrée in the summer. Just plain canned salmon, complete with the little vertebrae. She liked to crunch them. The inclusion of the bones gives canned salmon a sort of dusty taste.

To read this one would think my mother was a bad cook. Within the limitations of the way she learned to cook, she wasn’t. There were many delicious dishes that she did superbly well. She just liked stuff that I didn’t, like green beans cooked with bacon grease until they were black and so salty they actually burned one’s mouth. I would literally gag when I had to eat them. I was a grown woman before I discovered what green beans really taste like.

Now that I’m grown, I don’t have to eat what I don’t like, unless, of course, it turns up on a buffet table made by someone whose feelings I don’t want to hurt. I plead with all those people who think folks really like their special dishes to watch to expressions of people in line when they come to the green mass with the pineapple and marshmallows. Do they smile and dig in or do they maintain a blank face and take a token amount?

You be the judge, then restrain yourself. Please don't subject your friends to stuff like that.

(c) 2008 Katherine DeWitt