Cold meatballs

It might have been a sign from God and I ignored it. My late-ex-former husband was never satisfied with my cooking or anything else I did that involved food. I worked on it, honest I did, and it seemed everyone loved my cooking. Everyone but himself. Here’s the sign from God that I missed. Early in our marriage the former husband complained to me that I “never” had anything good in the refrigerator like his mother had. When I asked him for a specific example of something that was in his mother’s refrigerator and never in our refrigerator, his response was “cold meatballs.” Yep, I was making beef stroganoff and he was looking for cold meatballs. Let me point out that these allegedly wonderful meatballs that I could not produce would have been sitting on a plate in his mother’s refrigerator completely unwrapped. Just sitting there like the day they were produced with nothing between them and the cold air circulating in the avocado green Coldspot. They most likely would have been next to a plate of cold unwrapped spareribs, another thing I failed to produce. I should have said, “Well, if cold meatballs is what you want, my darling, then maybe you just need to park yourself in front of your mama’s refrigerator and leave me alone with the vichyssoise.” I can come up with some great comebacks, given 40 years or so to think about it.

There is no implication that his mother was not a good cook. She was a wonderful woman, I loved her probably as much as he did, but she was an Irish woman from Philadelphia who knew how to cook meat and potatoes. Thanksgiving dinner at her house involved the slaughter of a number of animals from someone's farm. It would include: turkey, ham, roast beef, cocktail shrimp, spareribs, mashed white potatoes, sweet potatoes, stuffing with sausage, rolls (always burned), gravy (homemade, of course), and a seasonal Jello mold. Note the absence of a single green vegetable. Nothing. Nada. The Jello might have been green but I recall it was usually red and it might have included canned fruit cocktail and maraschino cherries. Dessert included pumpkin pie, apple pie, banana cream pie, cheesecake, and various flavors of ice cream. Cool-Whip for all.

Okay—it’s less than a week before Thanksgiving and now I’ve done what I needed to do. I have completely lost my appetite for all things Thanksgiving. But I might go look in the refrigerator to see if there are any cold meatballs.