My First Piece

Meat and potatoes.  Potatoes and meat.  Except for breakfast: pancakes and meat.  Meat and pancakes.  For 18 years.  Well, not quite 18 years; I was probably eating some kind of revolting mushy stuff the first couple years.  The high school cafeteria had a slightly more varied menu, but nothing memorable.

Mom was a decent cook but lacked the time and energy to be creative.  Feeding a family of 10 plus related household chores was burden enough.  Even if she had the time and energy, culinary creativity wasn't in the cards.  Dad liked meat and potatoes.  Fried.  Always fried.  The more grease, the better.

It was early September, 1962, when I headed off to college.  Shortly thereafter I had My First Piece! Pizza!  OMG!  Thought I'd died and gone to heaven.  Burned the roof of my mouth.  Didn't care. Couldn't wait to bite into that glorious stuff.

Pizza was coming on strong in the Midwest back then, probably a couple years behind the coastal cities.  Pizza restaurants popping up all over, grocery shelves stocked with DIY pizza kits.  Remember Chef Boyardee?  Pathetic excuse for pizza!  If you were blindfolded and someone gave you a taste of CB pizza, could you tell what it was supposed to be?  Maybe.

By the way, the Chef lives on, is still available at your finer (?) grocery stores.  Another once-popular item is also still available: Spam.  Pull out all the stops some evening, take a culinary trip down memory lane: chop up some Spam, spread it on your CB pizza, fire up your lava lamp, play your Henry Mancini album.