Thoughts on the Atlantic's Home Cooked Meal Piece


 * from: The Atlantic's facebook group

My paternal grandparents lived in what was now Slovenia, and my Mom was born in eastern Germany. I was born in 1967 grew up in New York city after my parent's immigrated from Munich in 1963. I got to live with my father's parents for a couple of summers growing up. An elaborate family meal was served once a week, with my grandma being responsible for most of the meal. The amount of work shared by my grandparents was remarkable compared to my Mom's concoctions of dinner done speedily when she got home from her work outside the home in the 1970s and first half of the 1980s.

I have incredibly vivid and detailed memories of those meals. To share a couple: My grandma used a wood stove. It took effort to create the right heat and maintain cooking temperatures for frying and baking. The most memorable meal was a weekly breaded pan fried chicken dish that was delicious. The most memorable part of the dish was that she once invited a neighborhood kid over for a meal to demonstrate to my brother and I how wasteful we Americans were. The kid was praised for eating every single shred of meat off the bone, crunching down and eating the cartilage, and sucking out the bone marrow.

I remember my Mom being a model of efficiency. On weeknights when she got home she made a similar dish (breaded pork cutlets) by pulling out ingredients from the cupboard and fridge and whipping it all together in a few minutes. I would often sit at the kitchen counter and watch. A fast dinner was sped along by frozen vegetables and some form of potato.