Her mother was such an unhappy cook that Charlotte almost lost all interest in food as a child. Meat and potatoes, overcooked frozen vegetables, balogna on Wonder Bread. Lucky for her she lived near the ocean. In the summertime there were scallops, quahogs, and all kinds of seafood. Clambakes on the beach with lobsters and crabs and potatoes and corn steaming in an underground pit. But it wasn’t until college that she began to experience a wide range of food. Before long she was learning how to produce most of her own food. Nothing was the same after that.
Category: hunting
Humphrey
Once in a while, when he would leave his Dallas high school to deliver the school newspaper to the printer, Humphrey would stop off at Peggy’s Barbecue for a brisket sandwich with onion rings. Another favorite place was Jack’s Burger Shack where burgers and fries were sprinkled with celery salt. Simple, but it made all the difference to Humphrey. He loved food. His whole family loved food. It bound the generations and the siblings together, connecting them to the foods of his grandparents in Arkansas and Oklahoma. Whatever it was, chitlins, duck with shot still in it, Tex-Mex, his mom’s fried chicken and cream gravy, his grandmother’s apricot fried pies. And especially the barbecue his dad introduced him to.
Estella
Late on a steamy summer night Estella’s mother and father went to the shed and took out their spears. Quietly making their way down to the footbridge by the stream, they stopped just below it and stepped into the water. They took turns as one of them held a flashlight while the other deftly wielded the three-pronged implement, bringing out four eels in just a couple of minutes and dropping them into a canvas bag. As they made their way back home, they imagined how delighted little Estella and the other two children would be when mother put tomorrow’s fried eel dinner on the table.
Archaeology of Taste 