My mother attended a Catholic girls’ school during the Depression, and the nuns emphasized the importance of frugality. These early lessons made an impression on Mom, and until the end of her days she always loved a bargain. She clipped coupons and waited for sales and read the Sunday newspaper looking for specials.
Mom was obsessed with saving money on groceries, so when I was a kid she avoided the pristine aisles of Publix (“You pay dearly for that cleanliness!”) and she would not dream of paying an extra five cents per pound to buy her ground meat from Winn Dixie, “The Beef People. “A penny saved is a penny earned!” she would say, echoing the nuns, and she’d drive to Pantry Pride.
The Pantry Pride near our house was the world’s filthiest grocery store. For some reason, the air conditioning never worked, so they propped open the automatic doors with concrete blocks to bring in the hot, humid South Florida air and the occasional stray dog. High school friends employed there as stock boys told horror stories of rodents setting up housekeeping in boxes of cereal, exploding cans of tuna fish and flour infested with weevils. The linoleum floor was so stained that it resembled an immense Rorschach test and the cashiers, universally grim and gray, were all missing at least one vital body part: a finger, an eye, a leg.
This is where my mother bought the food to sustain her family.
One of the things Mom loved best about Pantry Pride was its “Sale” table for meat. The meat in question would be displayed on a folding table near the entrance. The meat was not refrigerated and often had no identifying labels. “What a bargain!” Mom would crow. “Meat for only 39 cents a pound!”
Often, we would sit down to dinner and not be able to identify the main course. “What is it?” I would ask my brother, squeamishly sticking it with my fork. He would shake his head adamantly. “I think it’s liver,” he would say, pushing his plate away. We would look to Dad for deliverance, but he was also a child of the Depression. “Just eat it,” he would say. “Mother hasn’t killed anyone yet.”
With that tacit endorsement Mom would push the plate right back to my brother. “It’s ham!” she’d say brightly, setting down a bottle of maple syrup. For my entire childhood whenever my brother and I claimed not to like the main course she told us it was ham and covered it with maple syrup. For my entire childhood this worked.
Along with our Mystery Meat Mom would serve mashed vegetables. This was because Pantry Pride’s produce was in such an advanced state of decay that she had to boil it and mash it in order to serve it. This was fine if she was serving potatoes or even squash, but mashed green beans is a side dish you will never see on “Top Chef.”
“Ten pounds of carrots for under a dollar,” she would say, cutting away the rotten parts. “How do they do it?”
For dessert she would serve what my brother called “compost.” I firmly believe that late at night the Pantry Pride manager would scour the dumpsters at Publix and spirit away the rotten fruit so they could sell it cheaply to my mother. Then Mom would boil it, mash it and serve it. “Just eat it,” Mom would say, “you’ve never heard of a fruit compote?”
I wandered into the kitchen one day while she was boiling spaghetti for dinner. I peered into the pot and saw many black specs floating on the water. Mom read my mind. “It’s a new recipe,” she said, “You put pepper in the water while you boil the pasta.”
I looked back in the pot. “Mom,” I said, “the pepper has legs.”
Busted, Mom shrugged, got the strainer and began to skim spice bugs off the surface of the water. “Don’t worry,” she said, always the good Catholic. “It’s not Friday.”