Sally Breslin: My Life

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Tuesday, March 19, 2024

JUST MENTION "CORNED BEEF" TO ME AND I'LL TURN A LOVELY SHADE OF GREEN ON SAINT PAT'S DAY

I was reading the school-lunch menus in the newspaper the other day and I couldn’t help but envy the kids of today.

Listed were such delicacies as pepperoni pizza, chicken nuggets, barbecued ribs, Tater Tots ® and French fries. They sure sounded a heck of lot better than the stuff I was forced to eat back when I was in grammar school.

Back then, the cafeteria routine was much different. We kids would enter at lunchtime and immediately sit at our assigned tables, which already were set with plates, napkins and silverware. Also on the table was a stack of bread and butter “sandwiches,” each made from half a slice of white bread and half a slice of wheat bread stuck together with butter. The corners of the bread usually were curled up by the time we arrived.

Our desserts, in tiny white bowls, also sat next to our plates. These desserts always consisted of either pudding (butterscotch or chocolate), Jell-O, a square of cake, or canned fruit in syrup.

As soon as we were seated, six to a table, the cafeteria workers would load a cart with casseroles and bowls of vegetables and then come around and plunk down the food on each table. Everyone ate the same thing. There were no choices to make. And we never carried food or trays anywhere. We sat and stayed sitting. There was a lot less to clean up that way, both on the floor and on ourselves.

At the head of each table sat an upperclassman, usually a seventh or eighth grader, who acted as the server. The responsibility of these servers was to dish out equal portions of food to each of us so there would be no fighting or hair pulling (not that any of us actually WANTED a larger helping of most of the food anyway). They also acted as pseudo mothers and made certain we were nutritionally fulfilled. This usually was accomplished by yelling at us to eat our vegetables and not touch our desserts until we did.

All I can say is that my parents wasted a lot of money paying for my hot lunches because I hardly ever ate them. That’s because some of the meals the school served back then probably would constitute a criminal offense nowadays…endangering the digestive tract of a child.

One of my least favorites was what the cafeteria ladies affectionately called Welsh Rabbit. A large square of four saltine crackers sat on our plates, over which the servers poured thick, lumpy melted cheese. And next to it, as a finishing touch, they added a big plop of stewed tomatoes.

The end result was something that looked so disgusting, just the mere sight of it made me want to upchuck. Even scarier was the fact I was convinced that the concoction really did contain “rabbit” somewhere in the depths of all that cheese...and I wasn’t about to eat the Easter Bunny.

And then there was the canned Chinese chop suey sitting on top of some kind of crunchy noodles that looked like bird’s-nest material. I didn’t even recognize half of the ingredients in the chop suey because everything was the same color...gray. It smelled even worse than it looked.

There were a couple dishes that I didn’t mind too much. The macaroni and cheese was pretty good, and the American chop suey wasn’t bad, as long as I ate around the rubbery hamburger. Ditto for the shepherd’s pie.

The boss of the cafeteria, Mrs. Ludwig, didn’t take kindly to kids who didn’t eat her gourmet fare. As we sat there eating, she would walk around carrying a huge spoon and checking everyone’s progress, or lack thereof. If she caught us picking at our food or trying to bury it in our napkins, she would bang the spoon on our table and shout, “Eat up!” in a voice that invited no argument.

I was terrified of Mrs. Ludwig. Every time I’d see her approaching my table, I’d shove a big spoonful of food into my mouth, even if I hated the stuff, and pretend to be happily chewing when she passed by. Then I’d spit everything into my napkin as soon as she turned her back.

Using what I thought were deviously clever means, I managed to escape the wrath of both Mrs. Ludwig and my server for quite a while. Then came the fateful day in fifth grade that still gives me nightmares.

All morning, I’d had a nagging stomachache, and on top of that, the orange juice I’d guzzled during morning recess had given me a bad case of heartburn. By the time I entered the cafeteria at lunchtime, food was the last thing I wanted.

There, plopped down in front of me was a big plate of canned corned-beef hash surrounded by hot beets, complete with the beet juice soaking into the hash. Just one whiff of it made me want to crawl underneath the table and die.

I didn’t touch my food. I didn’t even fake that I was eating it. In fact, I pushed my plate away so I wouldn’t have to look at it...or smell it.

That’s when I heard Mrs. Ludwig’s voice behind me. “Eat your hash!” she said. “Your parents paid good money for that meal.”

“NO!” I blurted out, surprising everyone at my table, but most especially myself. My eyes widened and I bit at my bottom lip. I pretty much figured that my life, as I’d known it, was over.

“Well, I am going to stand here until you eat,” Mrs. Ludwig said, folding her arms and still gripping the ever-present giant spoon. “So if you want to hold up everyone else and keep them from going out for recess, then so be it.”

As dozens of beady little eyes glared at me, I knew I had no choice. I choked down a good portion of the hash, and even a couple of the beets.

MY "YUMMY-LOOKING" REASONABLE
FACSIMILE OF THE
HASH AND BEETS

And then I went outside for recess and threw it all up. In fact, I spent the next three days throwing up. My parents told me they’d never seen a greener-looking kid.

But let's face it, the hash pretty much resembled vomit to begin with.

From then on, I brought my own lunch to school and never bought another hot lunch.

And to this day, if you want to torture me into telling you some deep, dark secret, all you have to do is open a can of corned-beef hash and I’ll spill my guts (literally!).

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Monday, March 11, 2024

INSOMNIACS, REPEAT AFTER ME..."I'M ASLEEP...I'M ASLEEP."

I’ve had a lot on my mind lately, so for the first time in ages I've been having trouble falling asleep. Usually I'm in dreamland five minutes after my head hits the pillow, but the past week or so has been torture. An hour goes by and I’m still wide awake. Two hours later, the same.

Because I can’t fall asleep, things that never bothered me before are bothering me now. For one, there’s my clock on the nightstand. It ticks. So as I’m lying there, all I hear is, “tick…tick...tick.” And it seems to get louder with every tick. I like the clock and don’t want to get rid of it because it has a really loud alarm, like a school bell (which I need) and great big numbers on the face (which I also need).

So I tried earplugs. They successfully tuned out the ticking, but because they also blocked every other exterior sound, they seemed to amplify the interior ones – mainly the ones inside my body.

There was my heartbeat, which suddenly sounded like a bass drum: “tha-thump, tha-thump, thumpa-thumpa” (I probably should see a doctor about that last one) and drove me crazy. Then there was my stomach, “grrrrowwwl, grrrrowwwl,” in stereo. I finally couldn’t stand the torture any longer and took out the earplugs, figuring the clock’s ticking was the least annoying of the bunch.

Because the cell-phone reception in my area is so bad I practically have to shimmy up a tree and swing by my feet from a branch to get a signal, I still have an old-fashioned landline and an answering machine, also on my nightstand. Even though I always shut off the ringer and turn off the volume when I go to bed, the machine still makes a single “beep” sound whenever someone leaves a message.

Three mornings in a row last week at exactly the same time, the answering machine beeped. And every time, the message was nothing but a dial tone. The machine identified the daily caller as a satellite-TV company. Lack of sleep caused me to become irritated, mainly because that dumb beep was jolting me wide awake bright and early every morning, after I'd tossed and turned all night.

So on the fourth day, I was ready and waiting for the annoying satellite-TV call.

“Hello?” I practically growled into the receiver when the phone rang.

“Hi there! How are you this morning?” the cheerful male voice responded. “I have a gift for you! Free HBO for a month! How does that sound?”

Let’s just say my response pretty much guaranteed he won't ever be making my machine beep again while I’m trying to sleep.

It wasn't until nearly sunrise the other morning when I finally managed to nod off. Up until that point, I’d pounded my pillow into submission, added a blanket to the bed because I was cold, then removed it because I was too hot; and adjusted my pajamas a dozen times because they either were bunching up, sliding down, twisting or trying to cut off my circulation. I also got up twice to go to the bathroom. After that, I finally fell asleep, probably due to sheer exhaustion.

“Aroooh! Aroooh!” came from outside my bedroom door. It was one of my dogs.

“Go to sleep!” I muttered and pulled the blankets over my head.

“Aroooh! Aroooh!” she continued.

I ignored her. I wasn’t about to get out of bed and risk becoming so wide awake, I'd have to struggle for another two hours to fall back to sleep again.

When I finally crawled out of bed four hours later, I discovered a surprise my dog had left on the rug for me, as if to say, “That’ll teach you to ignore me when I cry to go outside, you old hag! Take that!”

Last night, as I once again was lying in bed and dealing with insomnia, I decided to try the age-old remedy of counting sheep jumping one by one over a fence. By the time I counted sheep number 53, I was picturing it surrounded by tomato chunks, onions and green peppers, all grilling on a shish-kebab skewer.

“Grrrrowwwl,” said my stomach.

As luck would have it, there was a doctor on TV this morning who was talking about insomnia. He said if you lie in bed, close your eyes and silently keep imagining the words "I'm asleep" over and over again, it will trick your brain into believing you actually are, so it then will command your pineal gland to release extra melatonin to make sure you stay asleep. He said it usually works like a sleeping pill within five minutes.

So tonight I'm going to try it.

And if I do succeed in tricking my brain into believing I'm asleep and it helps me to doze right off, then tomorrow night, I'm going to replace the "I'm asleep" phrase with "I'm slim and 25."

I'll let you know if it works.

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Sunday, March 3, 2024

REMEMBER WHEN REFRIGERATOR FREEZERS HAD TO MANUALLY BE DEFROSTED?

I was browsing through some of my old newspaper columns a few days ago and came across this one I originally wrote over 25 years ago about the dreaded chore of defrosting the freezer. It brought back a lot of not-so-pleasant memories that made me laugh. I thought I'd reprint it here for those of you who are old enough to relate!

* * * *

The other night I tackled a chore I hate with such a passion, I can force myself to do it only once every two years: I defrosted my freezer.

I've heard that most refrigerators nowadays come with self-defrosting freezers, but you can’t prove it by me. I mean, a freezer that’s actually capable of melting its own frost while still keeping frozen foods frozen? Sounds like something straight out of a Stephen King novel to me (probably because my refrigerator is so old, it was delivered by horse and buggy).

By the time I get around to defrosting my freezer, it has built up such a thick layer of ice inside, I honestly expect to see the bow of the Titanic poking out of it. I also usually wait until so many stalactites have formed, I can’t wedge anything else in there without the risk of impaling a major artery.

Defrosting my freezer is no small job. In fact, when you do it as infrequently as I do, it can turn into an all-day affair. To begin with, there is the time-consuming process of deciding which frozen foods should be kept and which should be given their last rites.

Unfortunately, my husband is no help.

“What’s that big black lump you’re holding?” he asked me the last time I cleaned out the freezer on defrosting day. “It looks like a meteorite.”

“It used to be a roast,” I answered, frowning, “…before it died a slow and agonizingly painful death from freezer burn.”

“You’re not just going to toss it out, are you?” He gave me his much-too-frequent “are you wasting my hard-earned money again?” look. “Why don’t you at least cook it up for the dogs? I'm sure they’ll eat it.”

The man should be reported to the SPCA.

I used to take everything out of the freezer and put it into Styrofoam coolers, then turn off the refrigerator and patiently wait for the ice inside to melt. Two days later, the food in the coolers would be breeding deadly botulism toxin, and I’d still be waiting. But a few years ago, my mother took pity on me and gave me a gadget called an electric defroster. It looked like a small hot-plate on legs, with a power cord attached. The directions said to set it inside the freezer, close the door and then plug it in and wait.

Although it sounded like the answer to my prayers, I was a little apprehensive about putting an electrical device into a place that soon would cause water to drip directly onto it. Still, I was willing to try anything that would speed up the chore from Hades, even if it meant electrocuting myself and having to sport a Bride of Frankenstein hairstyle for a while.

The gadget ended up cutting down my defrosting time to a mere six hours.

My husband always reasoned that I should defrost the freezer in the middle of the winter, so I could bury the contents of the freezer out in the snow to keep it frozen. I, however, always figured it was better to do the defrosting on the hottest day of the summer so I could keep cool.

That’s why I chose last week for the dreaded task. It was a real scorcher of a day, so the thought of tackling my freezer actually appealed to me. Besides that, I'd just read about a “simple” technique for defrosting freezers and I was eager to try it…especially since it didn’t involve handling any electrical devices covered with water.

The article suggested I soak a towel in hot water, then lay it over the ice. It said as the ice melted, the towel would absorb the water and then easily could be wrung out, eliminating all of the messy dripping and draining in the freezer.

Sounded good to me. So I took a bath towel and soaked it in hot water in the kitchen sink, then applied it to the ice in my freezer. Right away, the ice began to melt…and instantly cooled off the hot towel. Back to the sink for more hot water, then back to the freezer to melt more ice. About 2,245 trips to the sink later, I finally began to see the bare walls of my freezer peeking through.

I soon learned that repeatedly thrusting your hands into steaming hot water and then shoving them into a freezer did something strange to your fingers. Aside from making them steam, it made them feel all numb and tingly, as if they were asleep. It also made them incapable of grasping anything. I dropped the sopping-wet towel on the floor so many times, I think I warped the wood.

Alas, all of the torture was worth it because I now have a nice roomy freezer that contains neatly stacked food… most of which I actually can identify.

But two summers from now, or whenever I get the rare urge to defrost the freezer again, I am going to use an even easier (and much quicker) method than the hot towel: a blowtorch and a chisel.

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