I remember Mama....

Unless you are at least as old as I am, you probably don't remember the radio drama of that name.....

For some reason  it popped into my head while I was laying in bed tonight not being able to sleep.  

I remember being flat broke busted when my oldest son was three and a half.   It was December 1971.   I spent  25.00 the month of December of that year on food.   It had already been a long, cold winter.  

I went to the store and bought liver.   Those days, thirty five cents worth of liver was enough to feed cox's army!   I fixed it the way my mother always had with a baby can of tomato sauce and onion and green pepper.   It was braised In the red sauce.    I cut it up into bite sized pieces for my son and called him to dinner.  

He sat across the kitchen table from me.   He took one look at it and said...."what's this? "
I paused a minute. The mother in me sitting in my right shoulder was saying, you can't lie to the kid.   The other side of me was saying "but, what if he has heard about liver from his classmates?"

I looked him straight in the eye and said ......"meat" .

He used his toddler fork to stab a piece and proceed to put it in  his mouth and chew it  up.

Then, he put down his fork, looked me straight in the eye, and said.....


"Well, it's not hamburger!  

That was the start of many weeks of liver once a week.   He loved it, it was cheap, and on he 70's it was supposed to be good for you,

Flash forward eighteen years, I had remarried and had another son and daughter.   We were building a sizable addition onto the house when my husband's employer let everybody go.   I, too was out of work.   We had money, but we were reluctant to spend much not knowing how long it was going to be before we saw a paycheck.   The living room was stacked to the ceiling with cabinets, and appliances, waiting for my husband to finish the kitchen.  We were living in 400 square feet of the basement.   My "kitchen " consisted of a one burner hot  plate that I kept on our butcher block cart
and a microwave .  

One Sunday, I got up early and started a soup bone in a stockpot of water on the hot plate.    My youngest was about ten years old .   He opens the lid, amd asked,   "what's this? "
"Soup ". said.   "Well. It doesn't look like soup! ". Was his reply.
" it will by dinner time". Alas, by dinner time I had added tomatoes, cut the ,eat from the bone and added vegetables.

He must have been impressed, because he went to school and told his teacher that him mom had made soup and it wasn't out of a can.    She, bless her heart, told him that homemade soup was the best kind of soup.

Flash forward twenty six years.   We are retired now, and my granddaughter is almost four.   Now, I make soup from scratch and my granddaughter loves it.  

Some things never change.   Time just marches on.    The soups I learned to cook from my mother are still being made for generations.  

Soup is a good, nutritious way to stretch a buck and a hit at our house.   Tonight we had clam chowder.   I had only bought one potato because I didn't want to go to two stores yesterday and the potatoes were too expensive at QFC compared to Winco.    Turns out, the potato that I paid .69 cents for instead of getting five pounds for .99, had a lot of bad spots in it.    I punted and chopped celery to go with the potato, skipped the bacon to appease my vegetarian daughter, and added two cans of clams and their juice.   Salt. Pepper, and onion powder to appease my husband.

And, life goes on..