Watford City, ND - McKenzie Electric Cooperative, Inc.

McKENZIE ELECTRIC COOPERATIVE
mind’s meanderings by Myra Anderson
It never tastes as good as when Mom made it
Our 3-year-old grandson,
Drew – more commonly
known in the family as
Drew Bear – had to have his
tonsils out this summer. As his
private nurse for the week that
he was recovering (the child
does know how to make the
most of any situation), it was
my job to find foods that he
could and would swallow.
The first foods and the ones
he was promised before his
surgery were ice cream and
pushups. I quickly added root beer
freezes to that list because Drew Bear
loves a root beer freeze and no sore
throat was strong enough to keep him
from that. Soft scrambled eggs were
next on the list – those were a little
harder to swallow, literally.
While I was planning my food
strategy, I thought about the times
when I was little and needed comfort
food. The first and best thing on my
list was custard. That was Mom’s
answer to all of life’s ills. And my
family loved it. When someone was
sick and Mom started making custard,
you could be sure that the rest of us
would begin to complain of aches and
pains as well. Mom always made
enough for all of us, but the extra
dishes were for the “sick kid” even if
the “kid” was Dad. I still can’t explain
why custard was so wonderful.
It was creamy and smooth, rich
with a hint of nutmeg. It slid down
your throat and filled your tummy.
But the real appeal was that each custard
came in its own little glass dish.
Most desserts back then were served
in pie plates or 9- by 13-inch cake
pans. Custard was individualized. It
was a dish just for one person. I didn’t
know until I was well grown up that
you could make custard in a common
pan and call it flan. The first time I
C6—McKENZIE ELECTRIC NEWS • SEPTEMBER 2010
saw that on a dessert buffet, I was
more than amazed. But somehow,
though I tried it often when it was on
a buffet, it never tasted as good as
custard in an individual glass dish.
Once I got thinking about custard,
my mind immediately went to milk
toast. I don’t know how many others
make that connection. But that was
the other cure-all in the Marshall
house. I haven’t made milk toast
since the first year of my almost 40year
marriage. Ron was sick and
being the attentive and devoted wife
– remember we were newly married –
I took it upon myself to make a nice
bowl of milk toast.
For those of you who didn’t have
the milk toast remedy growing up, it
is simply toasted white bread which
you butter and break into small
pieces and then cover with scalded
milk. It, too, is made one bowl at a
time. Others might have added cinnamon
and sugar or so I have been told,
but we ate it plain. Again, when Mom
was making milk toast, we all wanted
some. It was delicious!
When I brought my steaming bowl of
milk toast into Ron, he looked at it with
undisguised disgust and demanded to
know what that mess was and why I was
trying to poison him with it. I was hurt
and decided that he could get well by
himself. I never made him
milk toast again, and to tell
the truth, I forgot about it.
So my boys never had the
pleasure of milk toast
either. I never even suggested
another favorite
from my childhood –
saltine crackers crumbled
into a bowl of milk.
I decided that Drew Bear
wouldn’t like milk toast, it
is better for a stomachache
than a sore throat. We
stuck with the ice cream and freezes
along with popsicles and Jello and
pudding. I did think about custard,
but with the individual pudding packs,
the thrill of an individual portion has
been lost.
And I couldn’t even find any custard
cups – the young gal at the hardware
store suggested I look at the mugs they
had. It reminded me of when my Mom
sent me to one of my aunt’s neighbors
in California to see if they had a donut
cutter when we were out there in 1966.
The neighbor looked at me as if I were
crazy and told me that out there, they
ate them whole.
I think we have lost a lot of the
old comfort foods or they have
changed so drastically that they are
unrecog nizable. When was the last
time you had a slice of homemade
bread spread with jelly and covered
with cream? I don’t even want to think
about how many Weight Watcher
points that would be or the fat level.
Yet Ron’s dad, John, had that as a
nightly treat for most of his life and he
was still wearing a 32-inch waist jean
when he passed away, and he never
had any cholesterol problems either.
I still make bread pudding when I
have leftover bread that’s going stale.
That was another favorite dessert at
our house. My mom’s generation