Random thoughts while cooking an Easter meal

I like to put sliced black olives in my spaghetti sauce. I recently thought I had bought the pre-sliced olives, only to discover they were whole. No problem, at least they were pitted. I put the remaining olives in a Ziploc bag in the fridge. Mrs. Pessimist saw them the next morning and thought they were blueberries, so she dumped them into her cereal. Boy, was she surprised.

Speaking of cereal, breakfast was a daily ritual in our house that could not be skipped. Often it included fruit, eggs, toast and bacon or ham. If I called in sick from school, however, the menu would become a large shredded wheat biscuit (the large whole biscuit, not the spoon-sized cereal) served with hot, sweetened milk—usually reconstituted evaporated milk, which my Depression era mother thought was both the best value and most nutritious form of milk.

I liked cereal, and I learned to like evaporated milk. Those wheat biscuits were hard to swallow, however.

Okra was a Southern staple when I was young. My parents loved it. Okra was easy to grow and very prolific. What you didn't eat when it was fresh could be canned in Mason jars and served throughout the year. Oh, how I hated okra. Slimy, gooey and truly noxious in every aspect. My parents liked it boiled and extra slimy. I don't know why they didn't add it to stewed tomatoes. I don't know why they didn't deep fry it. Those are the only two ways to make it edible, as far as I can tell.

Once I was an adult and put away childish things (as if anyone ever does that), I discovered that most of the "meat and three" restaurants I enjoyed in the Carolinas offered stewed tomatoes and okra over white rice as a side dish. One of the best growing experiences is when you discover that the things you have avoided throughout your life are the things you now enjoy.

Not all of my most blessed learning experiences involve food, but few provide a longer-lasting joy.