March 10, 2025
Greetings from the reluctant gourmand,
We called it the ‘breakfast room’ but we ate all of our meals there. The room was nested at the back of the house, part of the kitchen really, and was lined with windows looking into our little back yard.
The table was big for the room, but we needed the space. Counting my parents there were seven of us jammed around it at Sunday dinner, sometimes more depending on which relatives showed up. The table was used for homework, for sewing projects, for making ground bologna, for wrapping presents and parties and card games. And Sunday dinner.
Throughout the week our mother fed us from a scattershot menu at dinner. There was mac and cheese, fish sticks, Salisbury steak, spaghetti, and of course leftovers from Sunday dinner.
On Sunday our mom would pull out all the stops. Staples like roast beef, meatloaf, mashed potatoes, chicken in various forms, Yorkshire pudding, which was not what we thought. These were adorned with peas and carrots or lima beans or some other inedible things like beets.
And there were rolls. I don’t know the culinary label for these, we all just called them Hard Rolls. Because they were hard. Very hard. Later my mom would sell her patented recipe for Hard Rolls to Kevlar so they could make more effective bulletproof vests. That hard.
There is a tradition that has largely been lost in history, one that was originally created during the Spanish inquisition, and probably discontinued after the Geneva convention was established. This rule was: you don’t get down from the table until you finish your meal.
This rule was rigidly enforced in our family, despite the legal and biblical wrangling we all employed. All of the children were given portions of everything on the table, our plates loaded down with enough food to feed several other families. No matter what faces we made, or how we objected, we got mounds of every category with firm direction that we would clean our plate.
There were no negotiations. No “Just taste it.” or “Try it and if you don’t like it…” There was one edict, usually delivered from my Dad. “Your mom worked hard to make this meal and you are going to eat it.”
In spite of this guilt laden command, I resisted. There was a period of time when I would ask to be excused from the table to use the bathroom. I would surreptitiously hide peas or scraps of roll in my napkin and take with me to the half bath and flush it down the toilet. This ploy worked a few times before the authorities caught on, I think due to plumbing problems.
I ate the things that I liked and then, in a pattern that I would follow for decades after, I would procrastinate with the things I resented. I would shape my mashed potatoes into small volcanoes. If there was gravy, there would be lakes and rivers added to the white topography. Armies of peas would line the ridges, firing into valleys of unsuspecting enemy carrots. All of this accompanied by military narration and appropriate sound effects. I can still feel my parents rolling their eyes as the food slowly cooled and congealed.
I would spread the meal around on the plate, so it looked like I might have eaten enough of it. I would try smiling, offering compliments to the chef on another excellent meal. This strategy never worked in spite of years of refinement. I mention this as a public service courtesy for all the generations of children still attempting it.
My siblings finished their meals and were released from the table. My parents cleared away the rest of the dishes, packed up the leftovers and did the dishes, all while I sat at the table staring at my coagulating meal. I would eat a mouthful of cold potatoes, now the consistency of drywall compound and gag loudly. My mom, usually drying the dishes by then, would say, exasperated, “Honestly. David, just eat your dinner.”
Finally, the sky dark, the room empty, I would force down enough of the meal to possibly warrant an early parole. “Just finish your roll,” my mom would say. The Hard Roll.
From the front of the house, I could hear the TV being turned on, the theme song to Bonanza teasing me, bringing me to a new pout level. And then the opening music to a Sunday night favorite, ‘The Wonderful World of Disney’. If there was a Richter scale for heartbreak, scientists would still be studying my output from our breakfast room.
Around the perimeter of the breakfast room was baseboard heating, miniature radiators inside metal housings maybe nine inches tall. At the top of the metal housing was an opening for the heat to flow, maybe a few inches. Just big enough to inspire a little boy’s imagination.
I worked up the strength to tear my hard roll into strips of stuffable size, and then when I was sure my mother was otherwise occupied, I would crush the bits of roll into the baseboard heaters, sweeping any traitorous crumbs under the metal apron.
“I’m all done!” I would shout, victoriously, and once my plate was inspected by my parents’ weary eyes, I would be freed to join my sisters and brother in front of whatever Walt Disney had concocted for that week.
This strategy worked for months. Occasionally I would sneak a few carrots onto my brother’s plate, and refined the method of smearing the potato paste into a nearly invisible scrim, even putting some under the edges of the good Sunday dishes. And of course sending the Hard Roll into the limbo of the baseboard heaters. It was an escape plan worthy of a Steve McQueen movie.
Until one day my Dad noticed that the breakfast room was colder than it should be. He ran his hands along the baseboards and feeling no output, pulled the metal apron off the front. There he saw the calcified evidence clogging the fins of the radiator, dozens of fossilized Hard Rolls lining the inside of the heat run. In the history of archaeologic discoveries, this ranked as more of a surprise than Australopithecus afarensis.
There was a period of investigation which, in spite of vehement denials and tear-streaked pleading, eventually led to a conviction. And thereafter I was forced to ingest the Hard Rolls with an adult witness.
In the years since then I’ve come to a fuller appreciation of food, and the effort that went into preparing it for an ungrateful audience. I have many memories from that breakfast room, elbow to elbow with my sisters and brother, and everyone else who showed up for meals. And late night studying and early morning bowls of Life cereal, and countless hours listening to the record player and talking on the wall phone. But none of those memories stand clearer than the sight of those Hard Roll skeletons accusing me from their makeshift coffin.
I like to think I learned an important lesson. It’s not true, but I like to think it.
Hope this finds you cleaning your plate,
David
Copyright © 2025 David Smith
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