As cooking is not one of the gifts the Lord bestowed on me, I have become quite adept at making sandwiches. Give me two pieces of bread and some meat, lettuce or spinach, tomatoes, and mayonnaise, and I will give you an edible meal, along with canned corn or pork and beans. Sandwiches were the main staple in my home as a child because my mother did not cook except on Sundays.
She made sure there were the makings of a good sandwich, which, on some days, did not include meat. She regularly bought bologna, cheese, and potted meat. But there were days without meat, because we were poor, and sometimes the money didn’t stretch to buy meat. So, if you are from the South, you may have also eaten tomato sandwiches and mayonnaise sandwiches. When things were really dire, I remember eating sugar sandwiches, which might explain my sweet tooth.
Indeed, the worst punishment I remember from my mother was for using up all the bread in one afternoon. Mama had bought apple butter, a wonderfully sweet, brown, jelly-like substance I had never tasted. When I took one bite, I grabbed the loaf of bread. I ate the whole jar of apple butter and the bread! It was an orgy of gooey goodness that I never forgot, despite the spanking I received afterward.
I believe I never learned to cook because it was supposedly a chore shared by daughters and mothers. Because my mother worked two or three jobs at a time, as a single mother, she didn’t have time to cook or teach us to cook. I think she could only cook a few things, because she made the same meal—roast chicken, green beans, and cornbread — every Sunday.
It’s ironic that I fed my children a lot of frozen food from Sam’s Place, combined with canned vegetables. But, both of my daughters are caterers, one only her own business. They told me that they became good cooks, because they didn’t want to eat any more frozen food. They both cook everything from scratch. I don’t know if they can even make a sandwich. That’s where I one-up them!
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