Growing Up with a Preacher Man
Rev. William "Lester" Howard (1929-2021)
Mary Eulalie McLean Howard (1933-2021)
Mom's "Red Noodles" and Other Nonsense
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by Carolyn Ann Howard
This post was updated December 31, 2022
My mother hated to cook, and she didn't keep it a secret from anyone, either. For evening dinner, we had a seemingly rotating schedule of Kentucky Fried Chicken, Banquet Entrees, meatloaf, vegetable soup, ham and beans, and pot roast. They were always delicious, even if she did hate making them. Mom also hated Sundays. Everything about Sundays. Is it because she was married to a pastor? I'm not sure what it was about Sunday that she couldn't stand, but, after she started to work at the Monticello Day Care Center, she decided she was never again going to cook a Sunday evening meal. One Sunday evening, however, Mom cooked up a mess of macaroni, to which she added salt, butter and tomato sauce. It was delicious.
I quickly learned how to do this on my own, and I believe that was the final death knell for Sunday evening dinner. I'm not sure when I began doing a lot of my own cooking, but I was 11 years old when I started counting calories. I was an overweight child. My mom made fun of me for it yet continued to buy sugary sweets. We never suffered from not having a doughnut in the house. I started counting calories and working out in 6th grade, and it worked. I lost the weight. But eating right? No, not until much later in life. Mom didn't keep vegetables in the house aside from canned corn, green beans, peas, and carrots.
Funny how things are handed down from mother to daughter when you think about it, especially, I think, after your mom has passed. I made macaroni and tomato sauce for myself many times as a child and as an adult. And then, when my daughter was born, I started making them for her. In fact, it was she who coined the term "red noodles." Why we didn't call it "red macaroni," I don't know, except it doesn't roll off the tongue the way red noodles does. When my daughter was little, mom's red noodle recipe morphed into those little pasta wagon wheels or whatever pasta her granddaughter wanted that day.
Something else I learned, not from my mom but from the day care center cook, was "butter bread." This was two slices of white bread with margarine spread evenly from crust to crust on one of the slices. Then put on the other slice to make a sandwich and cut into quarters. My daughter called it "butter bread," another staple of my childhood and hers. Its okay, though. She has grown up to become a healthy veg-heavy private chef. The butter bread didn't do any lasting damage.
When I was growing up, we didn't have a microwave oven, as they hadn't been invented yet, but I loved TV dinners. The food was contained in an aluminum rectangle with dividers to keep everything separated, wrapped with foil on top. To heat the food, it had to be put into the oven. I eventually learned to make mashed potatoes for myself from a box and Banquet Foods came up with "boiling bags." Their Salisbury steak or turkey with dressing were packaged in plastic bags. The instructions were to drop the bag into boiling water for about 5 minutes. Couple that with boxed mashed potatoes and boom! Instant TV dinner! No vegetables needed! My pocket calorie counting book didn't come with nutrition info, by the way, just calorie information.
Something else I learned to do as a child, and I have no idea how, but perhaps from the Betty Crocker cookbook my mom had. I loved chipped corn beef on toast. And so I would make that for dinner sometimes - or lunch. Both my parents worked and I had to fend for myself quite a lot. After Food Network came onto the scene, I learned that what I was making was a roux. Fancy!
That's the thing about the Betty Crocker cookbook and the cooking shows on TV in the 1960s. They assumed you had already learned the basics of cooking from your mother. I hadn't. That I learned to make a roux as a child still boggles my mind to this day. I have also learned from that basic roux, I can make gravy and bechamel for mac-n-cheese!
When I married my first husband, I decided I was going to cook every meal every day. As an example of my poor cooking, I would put pork chops covered in flour into cold oil. Then I would put a lid on the pan and slowly heat everything up until the "juices ran clear." The flour never stuck to the meat, and I am positive that they were awful. But my husband and I would eat everything I made. Oh, he made fun of me mercilessly in front of his family, but he never complained at home. This was in the 1980s, and we still didn't have Food Network. I didn't realize that I just needed to learn some basics. Now I know how to properly dredge meat and that it needs to be put it into hot oil and no lid!!!
I didn't inherit my mother's gifts for art. She was very good with colors, I'm not. She was so talented in painting things; decorative art is what she called it. I can draw a stick figure pretty good. She knew exactly what items of clothing go together. I'm better at it now. I inherited very few of Mom's good qualities, but my daughter inherited them all. She can paint and draw and do all the things my Mom was talented with doing. She's fabulous with hair and make-up and clothes, just like my mom. She’s also great at sewing, again, just like Mom. But unlike Mom, my daughter loves to cook. She can make the most complicated dishes. She can Guy's Grocery Games anything that's in the kitchen. She can make pasta and biscuits and cornbread from scratch, from memory, and without measuring anything, and they are all to die for. She can get anyone to eat their vegetables. And something else she's good at, too. She can make red noodles.
