As a rambunctious kid growing up in southern California, I was lucky enough to live at home under the loving dictatorship of two middle-income parents. In exchange for a few menial tasks like mowing the lawn, pulling weeds and cleaning out the septic tank, my parents gave me a comfortable place to live, a weekly allowance and sound nutrition through home cooked meals.
After I joined the Navy, it still didn’t dawn on me that I couldn’t cook. Why would it? Every day at five o’clock, we sauntered over to the mess hall, grabbed a dented aluminum tray, a knife and a spork and stood in line for whatever slop they were pushing on us that night. We spent the rest of the evening debating over exactly what it was that we just ate and how bad it tasted. But at least I didn’t have to prepare it.
It wasn’t until several years later that I had to figure out how to feed myself. By the end of my tour of military duty, I was too old to go back home and couldn’t afford a personal chef, so I was on my own. I’d either have to get married, learn how to cook or wither away to nothing.
As a young bachelor, it didn’t take long to discover that there were several options for feeding myself. The first was eating out. If you don’t care about good nutrition, cholesterol, sodium content, calories or price, you can find anything you want by going out to eat. For a few bucks more, you can order in. You never have to leave the comfort of your couch or change out of your stained sweatpants to remain well fed.
I started with the cheapest, greasiest fast food joints I could find. Howard Johnson’s, Shakey’s Pizza, Kentucky Fried Chicken, McDonald’s and Bob’s Big Boy were minutes away from my apartment, so I knew I’d never starve. I might die of rickets, Beriberi, Pellagra or Scurvy but I’d never starve. The joints with drive-thru windows got most of my business.
By accident, my roommate and I found Friggenberg’s Swedish Smorgasbord. For $5.95, we discovered a fool proof way to eat for days. We’d walk up to the cashier and ask for a take-out platter – one of those round aluminum pans with the cardboard tops. We never had any use for the top. The structures we built violated the local building codes for maximum allowed height.
We’d start by spreading a layer of mashed potatoes over the bottom and sides of the pan. This was our foundation and helped to anchor everything else in place. You can use herring salad or refried beans, but we found that mashed potatoes were more adhesive, better weight bearing and nearly bullet-proof after being refrigerated. Then, we’d press carrot sticks vertically into the mashed potatoes around the circumference of the pan. This provided a six-inch high framework and supported everything that was to follow. After lining the inside of the carrot sticks with a layer of cabbage leaves (the equivalent of dry walling your living room), we were ready to start building our masterpiece. We’d add the heaviest first – Swedish meatballs, sliced meats, various cheeses, sausages, cabbage rolls and Lutfisk followed by a variety of salads, rice pudding and jello, protected by a thick layer of gravy for the ride home. If it was raining, we’d cover the structure with an upside down tostada shell. The result was a 15-pound take-out pan that took two of us to carry out to the car. We were set for days.
Eventually, I got tired of eating out every night and because of my unusual table manners, I didn’t receive many invitations for dinner, so I moved into the “box” phase.
Betty Crocker made a wide variety of bachelor cuisine – the most popular was Hamburger Helper. It came packaged as Bacon Cheeseburger, Cheese Lover’s Lasagna, Cheesy Enchilada, Cheesy Beef Taco, Cheeseburger Macaroni and Cheesy Pasta and Broccoli-cheese Hamburger Helpers. Fortunately, I liked cheese because that seemed to be the central ingredient in every one of them. Just add a pound of ground beef, stir it in together and you have all the essential food groups in one pan – including cheese! For a change of pace, I’d replace the hamburger with Spam, canned shrimp, tuna, pork, chicken or canned cocktail weenies. When I was out of everything else I’d steal one of the dog’s Alpo.
After I got bored with Hamburger Helper every night, I moved on to the frozen food phase: TV dinners, Banquet fried chicken dinners, Swanson’s Hungry Man, Chinese food and frozen vegetables. The weight I gained was a natural segue to the Healthy Choice, Lean Cuisine and the Weight Watchers phase, which ultimately eroded to mixing Slim Fast with beer. Then I discovered the magic of the crock pot.
Large and indestructible, you can throw anything into a crock pot and come away with something that’s at least marginally edible. My crock pot came with a small cookbook, so I went ahead and tossed it in. I’d usually start with some type of animal part: an unidentifiable slab of meat, cut up chicken or whole cow’s tongue, then cover it with a can of some sort of liquid and anything I could find from the back of the refrigerator that’s wasn’t covered with green mold. That was it. Whatever resulted usually wasn’t too bad by the time it simmered for 18 hours. There were only a few times when the smell drove us out of the apartment. Most of the time it made enough to feed myself and all of my roommates for over a week, so I only had to “cook” once – if you call pressing the ON switch cooking.
It wasn’t until much later that I started experimenting with vegetables. As a child, I vaguely remember watching my mother chopping up plants for dinner, but I was clueless as to what she did with them. I should have paid better attention. It’s hard to cook with vegetables. They all have their own personality and if you overcook them, you’ll end up with a large pot of something that vaguely resembles the New York Times left out on the driveway in the rain. Fortunately, I didn’t have to wait long for the next phase: the gas grill.
You’ll find a gas grill on every deck across the United States. They’re easy to use, too. When you get home from work, just fire up the grill and throw on anything of animal or plant origin until it’s black, and voila – it’s meal time. The best part is there are no dishes to clean. When I’m really lazy, I’ll stand in front of it and eat right off the grill.
I don’t know how I’ve survived all these years with my unique approach to nutrition. But, the fact that I’ve lived to be as old and fat as I am attests that I must have done something right. I can hardly wait to see what they come out with next that makes cooking even easier than the microwave. When it does, I’m in.
