Eating Spinach With Popeye

Tweet

When I was a child, like with every child, my mom had problems getting me to eat certain foods. I was a big fan of cartoons, and I accepted the fact that what was happening in the cartoons was how things should be in life. A bit of a small child’s philosophy. The day I actually started eating spinach, my mom was ready to pass out, and my dad, in his usual style, laughed jovially and inquired why I had decided to eat spinach. In all seriousness I explained that if spinach was good enough for Popeye it was good enough for me. One day one of the carrots my mom had cleaned went missing. A curious crunching sound came from the bedroom. When she took a look, there I was, crunching away on a carrot along with Bugs Bunny on the TV screen. I think it was at this point that my mom wished all cartoons had to do with food. Cartoon monkeys got me eating bananas. It was different when it came to Popeye’s pal Wimpy and his craving for hamburgers. There, Mom’s thoughts were that a simple hamburger was not worthy of a meal. We lived in apartments, so there was no possibility of grilling burgers, and it was not Mom’s style to cook plain burgers on the stove. It was also not my parents ‘ choice to take me to fast food places. Instead, my mom made beef cutlets, which in Latvian are called kotletes. It is a simple but delicious creation that should never be called a hamburger. You take fresh ground beef and mix it with some salt, pepper, raw egg, and breadcrumbs, but if there were no breadcrumbs at home, Mom would soak day-old bread in milk and then mash it into the cutlets, then you add a spoonful of sour cream, and I also added minced garlic. Mix it all really well. Heat oil in a pan and make oval-shaped meat patties and cook until brown on both sides and cooked through. I usually flip them several times until done. You can eat them with potatoes of any kind, rice, or noodles, and I usually make a brown sauce. They are really delicious. If you are cooking for family, then you can make a big batch—just increase the ingredients—and when cold, they can be cut in half to put on bread or just eaten cold, plain, or with salad. What foods did you like or dislike as a child?