Personal
Notes: |
Personal
Notes: When we were young and lived on the farm, one of Mum's responsibilities was to make school lunches for us each day. We stayed at school for lunch hours, while our friends in the Fort got to walk to their homes for their noon meals. I know that I was often very envious of my pals who got to leave the school for this break. So Mum tried each day to make our lunches as appetizing and delicious as possible. Our lunches always included a sandwich, a cookie or square, and a piece of fruit. She rarely gave us drinks, as inevitably, our thermoses would leak and ruin our entire lunch. However, we all loved lining up at the milk machine with our dime to buy ice cold milk in a cardboard carton. Oh the delight, when we would spy a few boxes of chocolate milk in the milk machine to accompany the lunch that Mum sent with us.
Of course the staple in our lunch boxes each day was sandwiches, and Mum had a wide variety of fillings for them. Some of the more common and our best-liked sandwiches included: peanut butter, peanut butter and jam, peanut butter and honey, and the most delectable peanut butter and banana.
Other times, Mum also filled our sandwiches with bologna or Prem and lots of mustard; I loved it when I would open my sandwich to discover ham and mustard. It is a known fact in our family that our mother and father loved mustard. Very often, when either of them was hungry, they would simply take a couple of slices of bread and slather them with lots of mustard....hence mustard sandwiches!
Mum also made fresh vegetable sandwiches for us.....lettuce or cucumber with lots of butter and Miracle Whip...oh so delicious when freshly made. Mum quickly discovered that perhaps these were not such great choices as fillings for our school lunches, as the moisture of the vegetables would make the bread very soggy by lunch time. But what a treat it was for us when we would come in after play or doing homework to find that Mum had made one of these delicious, fresh sandwiches for us.
Some of Mum's most creative ideas for sandwiches were not always the success she was hoping for when she packed our lunches. I remember one day, opening my lunch to discover a Cheese Whiz and Walnut sandwich! I was horrified and refused to even taste it. When I went home to voice my displeasure, Mum did not seem phased in the slightest, as she had just learned that cheese and walnut sandwiches had recently been served at a High Tea at the Hotel MacDonald, and she wanted to allow her children to eat like high society citizens. If my memory serves me correctly, "Prince Kenneth" loved his Cheese Whiz and Walnut sandwiches.
Speaking of Ken, like Mum did, he finds ways to be creative in the kitchen with easily-found ingredients.. Recently, he told me about a sandwich filling that they discovered together while browsing through Mum's copy of the "Women of Unifarm Cookbook." It is called "Beauty Sandwich Filling," a spin-off of Mum's Grated Carrot Salad. When he described it to me, I could not imagine liking such a combination of ingredients, especially in a sandwich: raisins (soaked in boiling water for 5 minutes and then chopped finely,) combined with a cup of grated carrots, 3/4 cup sweet pickled relish, Miracle Whip, salt and pepper. This mixture, put between two slices of buttered brown toast made a sandwich which Ken and Mum loved, and often shared together. He made one for me, and they were right! This is an amazing sandwich!
Mum, Mum, Mum.....there is absolutely no getting out of this one! One day, we had all slept in. Mum woke us up and told us to get dressed quickly and grab some toast for breakfast while she made our lunches. She looked in the fridge...no fillings. She looked in the cupboard....nothing to make sandwiches with. You see, this was the day for her shopping expedition at Lupul's Grocery to restock her kitchen. Unfortunately that was going to be too late for her children's lunches. But Aha!! There was indeed, one final filling that she could incorporate into our lunch boxes. So she did. And she sent us scurrying off just in time to catch the bus which was rolling slowly away from the gate.
Lunch time came....I opened my lunch box to find a tired looking apple. But oh well....I still had my sandwich....at least I so thought. As I pulled apart the two slices of bread, I discovered that Mum had made for me a Chocolate Sauce sandwich!!! I could not eat this ice cream topping sandwich. It was at that moment when my friends did something I simply comprehend. They begged me to trade lunches with them, and I most happily accommodated them.
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This recipe for Mum's Creative Sandwiches is from