Poor food shouldn't be an apology, but a boast.

I wish I could say that it was me who coined that phrase but I'd be lying.  It was found in the words of John Baxter who writes for Food and Wine magazine and I have to say I totally agree with him.

The article outlines his younger years growing up in Australia and the foods that were prepared not only by his family but those in which he found on his travels to Europe.  My history isn't nearly as grandiose as his but there are similarities in the points that were made.  One particular point being that some of the best meals a person has had may have come from tougher times with the simplest ingredients.

Just look at some of the dishes of our grand-parent's time.  On the Polish side of my family there have been many meals where I can recall Czarnina being served.  As repulsive as I thought it was, my relatives and many others like them truly enjoyed it.  There were casseroles and stews that contained absolutely every piece of the animal that you either shot or brought back from the butcher.  Nothing made it to the floor, it was all in the pot.  Anyone who has relatives who lived through that era and are still alive today will tell you that things were tough for a lot of people back then.  Jobs were scarce, money was tight, and families were large.  If you were going to survive you made sure that nothing went to waste.

By no stretch of the imagination was I raised in hard times.  Both my father and mother worked to provide my sister and I with everything that we could need.  Albeit my sister still believes that I was their favorite and that she should have gotten the braces on her teeth, that in itself is a whole other story.  But even though we were a comfortable middle class family who could afford a nice meal or two here and there we had our share of poor meals growing up.  These were contributed more to time constraints than to any financial hardship.

Meals that consisted of rice and sauce, wieners and potatoes, and ground beef buttered on bread and cooked in a toaster oven.  These were some of the staples of my diet when I was growing up.  We occasionally mixed it up with take-out from several different establishments but when it came time to cook this rotation was a common one in our home.

After all, this wasn't the Cleaver residence.  June didn't stay at home and cook while Ward brought home the paycheck.  With both parents as bread winners there were very few times, if any, where a meal was on the table when we would get home.  Dinner was usually discussed moments before the stove was turned on, and the finished product was determined by what left overs were in the fridge and just how ambitious you were to cook after a hard days work.  Aside from the reluctance to waste anything, I'm thinking situations like these are what must have introduced the world to Shepherd's Pie.

So here I am 30 years later and I'm the appointed chef of the household.  My wife cooks, just not a lot.  And in her defense I'd say that if roles were reversed and she showed as much enthusiasm to spend way too much time cooking as fancy of a feast every night for me, then I certainly wouldn't cook either.  I don't know if it's because of my childhood deprivations that I do this or that I bore too easily and want to try different things.  Either way, I feel I have to go over the top every time I cook.  It doesn't matter if I get home from work at seven-o-clock, an eight course meal is always on my mind.

Honestly though, who has the time to do it?  In our dual income little world we would be sitting down to eat at nine-thirty if leg of lamb and creme brulee were on the menu.  You just can't carve out enough hours in the day to prepare meals like that.  When time is at a premium, we just try not to make dinner from a box.  This I can live with.

So there is something to be said for poor food, comfort food, or whatever it is that you may call it.  No, I'm not talking about a gallon of Haagen-Dazs chocolate peanut butter ice cream.  I'm talking about stuffed green peppers, tater-tot casserole, and yes grilled ground beef slathered on sandwich bread.  If not just for the simplicity in preparing them; it's good stuff that hits the spot, made from things that most people already have in the pantry.  Cooking shouldn't always be a marathon.  Sometimes the best meals are only a few minutes away.

Man I can smell mom's kitchen already.