Breakfast for my wife and me at the local coffee shop came to a pricey $30.
Plus tip.
The cost of eggs at the supermarket is about 25 cents apiece.
It means we could have had a nice breakfast at home for under $2 (including toast and coffee).
And no gratuity.
A recent lunch at the mall came to over $50.
So we decided it would be prudent to try to avoid such extravagance.
After all, my wife’s an awesome cook, and I learned my culinary skills from my mother.
And Julia Child.
I had viewed many of Julia’s cooking shows on TV, read her cookbooks, and even took her class at UC San Diego many years ago.
I had never worked at a restaurant, but I once brought cheesecake samples to the manager at San Diego’s Star of the Sea, the celebrated restaurant on the bay for over 60 years.
I wound up with a contract.
For roughly two years, if you had cheesecake there, it was mine.
I didn’t make a profit because I never took into travel costs and added supplies, but I have no regrets because just to be able to tell folks “That’s my cheesecake,” made it worthwhile.
It’s the reason cooking is just a hobby and not an occupation.
But that adventure stirred further interest in gastronomic pursuits.
Like homemade bagels, pizza, Chinese dumplings, and pastries.
Together with the help of my brother, we made the wedding cake for my son and his bride.
Mainly, I wanted to be able to reproduce the many culinary treasures my mother created.
A native of Hungary, she prepared fabulous dinners plus magnificent desserts like palascinta (crepes filled with apricot jam and ground walnuts) and “szilvas gomboc” (plums stuffed with cinnamon and sugar, wrapped inside a layer of dough made with potatoes, flour and eggs). The dumplings were gently simmered in water and finally covered with browned breadcrumbs or freshly ground walnuts before being generously sprinkled with powdered sugar.
She prepared chicken dozens of ways, each more delicious than the next.
Back then, the price of a chicken was about $2 and came with surprises inside including livers, necks, gizzards and eggs.
Yes, eggs!
They weren’t fully developed and had no shells.
Nothing inside that chicken was discarded, but rather turned into added succulence.
My favorite chicken dinner among her many variations, was the “paprikas” version.
It was prepared in a luscious sauce she made by sautéing onions, garlic, fresh bell peppers, imported Hungarian paprika and cream. Homemade tiny dumplings, called “galuska,” were served with the chicken and liberally cloaked with the same sauce.
I learned how to prepare most of those wonderful recipes and eventually married an Italian princess, so while I prepare the goulash and galuska, she forges the fettuccine.
And eggplant parmigiana, chicken Marsala, pasta pomodoro, lasagna, ravioli, shrimp scampi, baked ziti, gnocchi and risotto.
We go to the gym each morning, targeting the number of calories we’d need to lose before dinner is served.
Erdos is a freelance humor columnist. him at [email protected].
