Food Snobs

There's no cooking like home cooking. Seriously. Over the years, we told our kids that they ate pretty darn well and that someday, they'd realize it. I think that as they left home, they did come to realize that it was true, at least to some degree. During the 15 years that I taught early morning seminary, Rene made breakfast every day. While he did insist on serving hot cereal a couple of times a week, the other days he made good old-fashioned farmhouse type breakfasts--bacon, hash browns, pancakes, omelets, fruit, etc. While we generally did not have a lot of meat, we did have veggies and fruit of all kinds, canned and from the freezer. We made our own cider , dried our own apples and canned apple and peach pie filling. Mmmm...besides canning our sour cherries, we found a yummy recipe for sour cherry jam. It's still one of Joanna's favorites.

There were some notable failures, the aforementioned huevos rancheros being one. I also once made an eggplant dish that no one liked. My mom, who was visiting, ate it to set a good example but told me later that it was disgusting. Once Rene grew a bunch of Napa cabbages and those were not popular either.


Our recent trip to Chicago brought this topic to my mind. We went to dinner with a group from Rene's work at Geno and Georgetti's, a famous Chicago steakhouse.


Afterwards, Rene and I realized that we both thought it was okay, but not great. I had lamb chops, which were tender in the lean parts, but awfully fatty. The house potatoes and salad were pretty average. Calamari--meh. My favorite was the creamed spinach. It was really yummy.

The taxi ride back to the hotel was exciting, though. That guy went 50 mph on city streets, weaving in and out of traffic.

We rarely ate out when the kids were little. In fact, for many years our end of the school year treat was the annual trip to McDonalds. We still do not eat out that often. I guess maybe we are food snobs. We're pretty content with our own cooking.