My mother would throw hunks of roast beef in the new-fangled pressure cooker and let the cap rock back and forth until the meat was pale and stringy. She would fry liver to leather, and produce slabs of round steak that required zealous chewing. We had frozen peas, frozen mixed vegetables, plain as God made them.Sometimes my father would get a bug for cooking, always in an effort to save money. He bought cow’s tongue because it was cheap, and, not knowing what else to do with it or caring about anything other than getting it cooked, he threw it in the pressure cooker. The result was a rough, slightly curled tongue lying on the plate looking as if it had just been severed from the cow’s mouth. My sister and I were each required to eat a chunk. It tasted like cardboard, but it was the little bumps on the surface that made me gag. Another time he cooked the boysenberries he picked from the bushes out front. Jam, I guess it was, a little thick and not enough sugar, as I remember. He would fly into a rage if we complained that something didn’t “look good.” The idea was to eat it, not look at it.Food comes to stand for either home or not-home, I guess. Home cooking can have various flavors, is what I mean. This is another sample of the collection of essays Sydney Lea and I are writing together. We pick a topic and hold forth on how it was for us. We’re working on illness now, what it was like to be sick, when we were young, or younger. I’m not fair to my mother. She made great fried chicken, mashed potatoes, and meat loaf. She whipped the potatoes with the Sunbeam mixer and put tons of butter and salt on them. She ground together beef and sausage to make very good meatloaf, using the hand-cranked grinder we still have in the basement. As did apparently everyone else in the 50s, she mixed various kinds of canned fruit into Jello and called it salad—although we did have real salads. 
She loved to make cakes and occasional pies. Sometimes I’d come home from school and there’d be a grand cake, all frosted, and she’d be a proud as a kid. Plain food. The photo is not a picture of my mother's cake. This is a fake cake. Her cakes were a bit messy around the edges, and the kitchen a lot messy. But there was always decent food and always on the table, served on indestructible Melmac dishes, at dinner time. Indestructible dishes because first of all, my mother dropped and broke every dish or glass that would break. Second, my retarded brother would wave his hands around, hitting dishes, and his grand mal seizures could come at any time. We ate on Melmac, we drank out of aluminum tumblers. (Plastic was in its infancy). And there was an indestructable “dinette set,” table and chairs with metal legs slanted space-age-y outward, the table-top a vinyl fake wood grain.
About the food, I have no reason to complain. At a time when most were eating Wonder Bread, we ate Roman Meal. Mostly because my father came from a family that cared a lot about nutrition, we didn’t eat things that were bad for us. Very few Cokes or candy bars, no potato chips except for very special occasions. My mother would walk across the street on very hot days and get an 8 oz. Pepsi from Mr. Mack's store, a real treat. Because it was “Junk." We called it that, and I knew it was.
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Food brings its implications from childhood: for me, a combination of love and dread in it, the gathering at the table itself an opportunity both for warmth and for misery. Food prepared because it must be, not because it will be raved over, or the effort appreciated. But it is appreciated. Now I appreciate it. Did I say that then? What did I say when I pushed my metal chair back from the table? Did I say “Thank you for this food, for this life?” I’ll say it now.