If you have ever attended a Toastmasters meeting, you know what Table Topics are: impromptu opportunities to speak for two minutes on a surprise topic. Because, among other things, April is “grilled cheese sandwich” month, the top topic at this week’s meeting of the Los Gatos Silver-Tongued Cats toastmasters club was–tah dah–how to make the best grilled cheese sandwich. I wasn’t called on to speak, but the topic sent me into the nostalgia zone. It was a special day when my mother made grilled cheese sandwiches for lunch. These she often served with condensed canned tomato soup to which she added milk instead of water. This was my favorite lunch and, to this day, I resort to a grilled cheese sandwich and tomato soup as comfort food to warm me on a cold wet day or console me when I’m blue.
My husband also remembers grilled cheese and tomato soup as the signature lunch of childhood. It could be the sandwich that nourished an entire generation of American kids. The cheese, of course, was American cheese. It melted flawlessly and oozed out between the slices of white bread browned with margarine. Today, I make grilled cheese with the luxuries of real butter, sourdough french bread, and sharp cheddar cheese,which doesn’t melt as silkily as American cheese but has a more robust flavor.
Other foods of fond childhood memory include pigs in a blanket, pork and beans on toast, chipped beef on noodles,and peanut butter and banana sandwiches. When I made lunches for my own kids, I tried new delights such as honey-roasted turkey wraps or cream cheese and ham on banana bread. But my kids, too, only remember the grilled cheese sandwiches.
What food from childhood do you remember best?
My grandparents were hardworking people who saved money and spent frugally. I remember when grandma would give me a particularly generous gift, she would ask me not to tell grandpa about it. For his part, grandpa was a savvy guy who I believe always knew and went along with her deception. I also remember a great grandfather who chewed tobacco and whom I rarely saw when I was a child, but when I did he always gave me a silver dollar. The aversion of the tobacco juice and the attraction of the shiny dollar are inextricably linked.
Did you talk about money in your family—the value of it and the earning, saving, and spending of it? We didn’t in mine. Money was a taboo subject. Did you get an allowance as a kid? How much was it and what did you do with the money? Did you have a piggy bank? Mine was actually a deer. I once shook my deer bank upside down and wiggled a table knife in the slot to get out nickel for a pack of chewing gum that I bought at the gas station on the corner. I felt so bad I went home and confessed. When did you get your first bank account? What does money mean to you? Freedom? Security? The means to do good? What’s the best investment you ever made—and the worst? Your children and theirs will be fascinated with the answers.
“We can tell our values by looking at our checkbook stubs.” Gloria Steinem
“Money is power, freedom, a cushion, the root of all evil, the sum of blessings.” Carl Sandburg
A chrysanthemum similar to the one linking the generations
I ran across this family tradition today in the online TimesRecordNews of Wichita Falls, Texas. Since 1850, in the Dryden family, mothers have passed down chrysanthemum cuttings to daughters when they start their own homes. What a great idea: the family roots, literally and metaphorically, go everywhere. Does your family have a unique tradition it passes down through the generations?
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