BSK describes her culinary history while growing up in the Midwest as: The Good, the Bad, the Very Bad and the Ugly.
THE GOOD: A foot long chili dog at Porky’s, Galion. Ohio. Lemon meringue pie (in fact, all Midwestern pies especially those cooked by church ladies for socials). Scalloped potatoes (but, only if made by BSK’s Mom). Milk punch and ham and biscuits at a neighbor’s New Year’s Day party. Roast pork and sauerkraut served at the end of the Christmas/New Year’s holiday season (supposed to have a salutary effect on the digestive system of overindulgers). Seckel pears from a neighbor’s garden. Canned baked beans enhanced by molasses, brown sugar and bacon. Church social ice cream. Root beer floats served at the A & W stand in frosty mugs. Hot and spicy deviled eggs. Concord grapes in Mansfield, Ohio (an intense flavored grape which made the best jam). Tin Roof dessert (vanilla ice cream, Hershey’s syrup. Planter’s salty canned cocktail peanuts). Super yummy lunch: Peanut butter, lettuce and mayonnaise sandwich served with a bowl of hot tomato soup.
THE BAD: A wedge of iceberg lettuce,with orange supermarket dressing glop.
THE VERY BAD: Chinese food in Mansfield, Ohio. (Brown glop with brown glop on top served on a bed of glop).
THE UGLY: Big frog’s legs from frog “gigging” expeditions. Schoolmates devoured the legs. BSK found it too horrible to even contemplate. Many years later, BSK wouldn’t even eat tasty, buttery frog legs meuniere at Le Dome in Paris (despite urging from HG).
HAPPY MEMORY: BSK’s first bagel with cream cheese at Charbart’s, the coffee house hangout of the cool set at Ohio State University. Fledgling actress BSK drank black coffee, smoked many cigarettes and inhaled the second hand marijuana fumes from the “hip” apartments above Charbart’s. Even then BSK knew her destiny was New York. The bagels sealed her fate.
Leave a Reply