As you may have figured out by now I’ve been pretty hard on my mother’s cooking skill, or lack thereof. It has been an issue for my culinary views and tastes since I have been a toddler. Hopefully my mom didn’t try her hand at baby food. Or did her ineptness actually start in the womb? She will never let that cat out of the bag. On a recent trip to Ohio, I had the opportunity to consult my sisters. I say consult with reservation. I should say asked my sisters about any memories from their past that I may have missed or was not around to taste. Nothing came to their minds…really, nothing more to add? This got me thinking. What am I missing? Did she only try to poison me, her only begotten son? My head is spinning with doubt, confusion and contemplation. Aha! I am beginning to remember now. My second eldest sister, Jo, must have figured this bad meal thing out early. My oldest sister, Tami, I’m not sure about her palate just yet. But Jo, she had it figured out early. Memories of Jo eating meals lent me to this one conclusion: My mom’s meals must have really sucked or I just didn’t have the nerve to pull the condiment thing off like my sister. Quite possibly there is one sibling in every family who gets it. The “it” I am speaking of, is covering up the bad taste with condiments. I use the term condiment loosely. Condiments in our house were very conventional, only the basics: mustard, mayo, extra salt, maybe some leftover relish from a past hot dog night. Not sure why we had mayo, oh yes the tuna salad. Yuck, it’s still haunting. Hot sauce you may ask; are you kidding? I didn’t even know they made hot sauce until I was about fourteen. That would have given me cause to experiment, maybe even make Marie’s cooking tolerable, but back to my sister and her masterful preparation of choking down meals prepped by America’s worst cook. She never let on to her secret, not even to this day. Maybe she doesn’t even know she has a secret. But I’m on to her. It went like this: scrambled eggs w/ketchup, meatloaf w/ketchup, pot roast w/ketchup, hash browns w/ketchup, fried chicken w/ketchup, scalloped potatoes w/ketchup, tuna salad w/ketchup: you’re starting to get the picture now. It has become very clear to me that Jo wasn’t even trying to hide the fact my mom’s cooking sucked. Or I was too naive to see. She put ketchup on everything! What the hell could I have been doing? I surely wasn’t paying attention. The answer was there and Jo had it all the time. Could it be possible my other sister Tami was sneaking hot sauce? Son of a bitch, the pure neglect and abuse I have been put through just keeps coming. Ketchup on everything was the answer to my mom’s cooking all along. Nice going Jo. You went through your childhood knowing Marie had zero culinary ability. Damn it, how could I be so blind? Lucky for your taste buds, mom kept you in supply. I guess you deserve the ketchup; I still got the Hi-C Grape juice. By the way, Tami, if you read this and you come clean with the hot sauce, I will know it was a conspiracy against me. Jo with her ketchup and you with the hot sauce, always against the younger brother: I see how it works. I think Jo has outgrown her ketchup thing but if you happen to get an invite to Marie’s for dinner, there will ketchup in the fridge for sure. Enjoy!
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