The Great Goulash Gulag
By Joe Acton
Remember Craig Goodrich? I've told you about him before. He's the guy I grew up with that would be walking down the hall with me in high school talking about the up-coming football game until we got right next to Miss Cute Body That I Had The Hots For and then he'd say — just like we'd been talking about it all along — "Oh Gaaawd Acton, it wasn't so bad when you put the boogers in your pockets, but now you eat 'em?" Hey, no problem. She probably wouldn't have gone out with me anyway — and even if she had I'm sure the only thing I'd have gotten out of the deal after Goodrich got through was a hearty handshake at the door with her mittens on.
I actually learned two very important things from Craig that have served me well my entire life and they are, in order: 1) If you ever want to kiss a girl don't let her think you eat boogers. You see, girls have this rule — maybe you've heard it: "lips that touch boogers will never touch mine." Overall not a bad rule I'll grant you (and one I've subsequently adopted) but it is a fatal one if you're on the booger end of that deal because once someone says you eat boogers, even though you don't, you pretty much have to move to another continent if you want to date. Or at least if you want to date mammals. 2) The second thing I learned from Goodrich was how to cook. Actually, what we did to food doesn't really qualify as cooking so about all I can really say is that I learned how to destroy the kitchen.
It all started when Craig's dad dropped us off at their cabin in The Sticks of Alaska. Ostensibly our job was to dig a cellar to store things in during the winter, but I really think what was going on was that our parents got together one night and decided that what the two families really needed was two fewer 15-year old boys for a week.
Craig's dad had been a Marine Grunt in the Pacific Theater during WWII while my dad had been a Destroyer Captain in the same campaigns. Both had seen heavy combat which may have prepared them for long term marriages but gave them few weapons with which to raise teenage boys. But since Marines know all about digging and the Navy knows all about confined spaces, I figure the two of them dreamed this little exercise up as sort of a subtle reminder of who was really in charge.
Anyway the Admiral scrounged up enough "rations" for week so we wouldn't starve and Craig's dad volunteered to drive us out there. When I say "rations" that's no exaggeration. They gave us a week's worth of the old military "C" rations and I'm here to tell you that a week's worth of "C" rations will last you a life time because if you actually eat any of it your life will be shortened in direct proportion to how much of the jam and pilot bread you ate — both of which have a nuclear half-life of somewhere into the next century and have to be the best kept military secret chemical weapon the U.S. has ever come up with.
I suggest that in the next war they either throw open "C" rations at the enemy at dinner time and hope for the best or drop them in a high altitude blanket bombing run on the enemy's mess tent (Which incidentally, is how I figure the 'mess tent' got it's name: serve "C" rations to a bunch of guys carrying guns and guaranteed you're going to have a mess on your hands. I always wondered if the mess tents and the MASH tents were close together.).
Anyhow, the military doesn't give "C" rations to the enemy because they can't always count on being in a war with anyone stupid enough to eat them, and 15-year old boys may be the perfect eating machines, but that doesn't mean they're any dumber than an enemy who won't eat your "C" rations.
Which is why Craig and I walked the three miles to the local general store for some macaroni. Actually we didn't walk three miles for macaroni we just knew that's where the store was. What we were actually counting on was Dr. Pepper, Reese's Peanut Butter Cups and popcorn. But this was The Sticks of Alaska. They didn't have any edible food at the store — just stuff like potatoes, rice, macaroni, like that.
Craig took the lead here because he said he'd actually watched his mom make macaroni and cheese once so we elected him Chef In Charge and me Chef In Training.
Once the store owner realized we were rookie cooks he was very helpful. Told us all about the Macaroni and Spaghetti Trees of the Tuscany District in Italy. That we needed equal parts of macaroni and hamburger — you know, 10 pounds of macaroni and 10 pounds of hamburger. Did I mention the six bottles of Hunts catsup and handwritten instructions on how to turn it into spaghetti sauce? Peach of a guy. Even gave us a ride back to the cabin — after we helped him load up some firewood he had to deliver.
So there we are. Standing in front of the stove. Waiting for the Cooking Angel to descend from the heavens and smit us with smarts. She was late and we were hungry so we took matters into our own hands. It was then I learned that Craig hadn't really watched his mom make macaroni and cheese. He'd only been present in the kitchen, standing next to her, trying to borrow the car and money at the same time.
A dangerous and delicate effort such as that on the part of any teenage boy excuses him in the eyes of his peers for not paying attention to something trivial — like cooking.
So we made it up as we went along. First, we figured since there we two of us that meant we had to have equal parts of everything. Unfortunately nobody ever told us that equal parts did not necessarily mean whole parts. And so we started with two pounds of hamburger, two pounds of macaroni and two bottles of catsup.
Oh boy, we're really cooking now. Did you know that back in The Olden Days When I Was A Kid And America Was Strong And We All Hated Commie Sympathizers And Cheerleaders Were Girls And 'New Wave' Meant That The Beach Boys Had A New Album Out that nowhere on the macaroni package did it ever say you were supposed to boil the macaroni before you did anything else with it?
Okay, so after we cleared all of the smoke out of the kitchen from the burning macaroni Goodrich remembers his mom was stirring the macaroni in a pot of boiling water. Not his fault man. The dude had been trying to score the car for a date with Melissa Easley — a girl with the nicest sweaters in school. He's allowed to forget the little things. That's The Code Of The Teenage Mutant Ninja Dater.
So we get it all going again, but two pounds of macaroni in a rolling boil doesn't look like much — looks like one of us could just about eat it all. Maybe we should add some more. How much? A handful? Doesn't sound very scientific to me. Naw. Got to be mathematical about it.
So logic and reason won out. We doubled everything. Now we were up to four pounds of macaroni in a rolling boil and four pounds of hamburger on 'high simmer'. Oh yeah, plus four bottles of catsup.
And that was it. We were all set. For life. We ate goulash every meal, everyday for the next week. We added some vegetables one day, a can of fruit cocktail another — even tossed in some scrambled eggs one morning. But it seemed like everyday we'd open the refrigerator door, there'd be more goulash left to eat than we'd already eaten. We even started feeding it to the dog until he stopped coming in at night.
When Mr. Goodrich showed up the next week he laughed so hard he wet his pants. And since he was sure no one would believe him when he told them how stupid we were, he made us take the goulash home as sort of a badge to the Summer Rights of Passage. And that would have been okay if he hadn't weighed the whole mess: right at 11 pounds left over.
After that it took a long time to get me near a kitchen and then only if well armed with a cook book or accompanied by Mrs. Daniel's son Jack.
But I have my pride. My wife was whining one day that even though we both worked she did most of the cooking. I kept reassuring her that that was a better deal for her than me since I could eat almost anything and she preferred to eat only that which was readily identifiable with no noxious odors — which was all I was really qualified to cook: unidentifiable goo with noxious odors .
Still she persisted saying stuff like that if it weren't for Swanson's Frozen Dinners, cheap beer and bad chips I'd starve to death. So I went on a one man crusade to prove to her that we macho men types don't need her scorn or sympathy in the kitchen. We can make it on our own just fine, thank you. And we can cook things that are delicious and good for you and — and — and — don't even appear in your dumb old cook book that your great grannie gave to your grannie that gave to your mother that gave to you.
And that's when I found myself in the store cruising the aisles looking for something different and unusual to prove my cooking prowess with my wife.
I don't know what possessed me to decide on it. I think it was because I happened to be in front of the liver section when they were closing the meat department. But the only thing I could think of at the time was to pick up the calves liver as the guy was pulling the sheet over the cooler.
Well, no big deal. Real Macho 'Merican Men can make it on their own with what's available. What the heck I thought. Meat is meat. Liver is meat. So how hard can this be? I've got the meat. What else can I cook? Well, I can cook spaghetti. So how hard can liver spaghetti be?
Well, as it turns out the trick is not making the liver spaghetti — that's pretty easy after you get by the light shade of green the meat turns when you're brazing it. No sir, the trick ain't in cooking it.
The real trick is eating it. Getting it down as it were. And keeping it down. Yep, that's the trick.
Let's say you want to find out how many bathrooms the average American home has. All you got to do is serve up a nice family size portion of my now world famous liver spaghetti and before you know it, the number of people missing from the table is the exact number of bathrooms in the house — adjusted, of course, for the number of family dogs that usually beg for food under the table and are now puking all over the floor on your kid's gym bag that you told her to put away when she walked in the door but she didn't do it because the phone was ringing and now she won't touch the bag because YOU MADE THE DOG SICK NOT ME SO WHY SHOULD I CLEAN UP A BUNCH OF JUNK THAT'S SO BAD THE DOG CAN'T EVEN KEEP IT DOWN.
Enter genetics. The Kid is now 14-years old. Taking cooking lessons from She Who Must Be Obeyed. Feeding it to He Who Must Obey.
So one night my wife and I get home to discover that The Kid has cooked dinner and had an ugly bout with genetics, all in the same night.
I never told her the Craig Goodrich And The Great Goulash story. She decided all by herself to make tortellini for us. So she started out with equal parts of tortellini: three of us meant three cups of the pasta. Didn't look like enough once it got up on step into a rolling boil.
So she added three more cups. And then the package was almost empty so there was no sense in keeping the two cups left over. Now we're up to 8 cups of tortellini and the largest pot in the house. Actually, as it turned out, she needed the two largest pots in the house after she had The Ugly Boil Over Incident.
And that took away the pot she'd put aside for the three 64 ounce jars of Prego sauce. Which meant, by logical deduction of course, that the next best thing to use would be the three cast-iron high-sided frying pans we use to fry salmon in.
And since we were due home at any minute, everything cooks on 'High'. Or burns on 'High'. Yep. No doubt about it. That's MY girl. Taught her everything I know and she still don't know nothin'.
Sometimes it goes on like this for days and days. And then you learn how to cook. And then you don't. And then you've got enough fishy tortellini in the refrigerator to feed the entire Yupik Eskimo Nation. And then it gets worse.
By Joe Acton
Remember Craig Goodrich? I've told you about him before. He's the guy I grew up with that would be walking down the hall with me in high school talking about the up-coming football game until we got right next to Miss Cute Body That I Had The Hots For and then he'd say — just like we'd been talking about it all along — "Oh Gaaawd Acton, it wasn't so bad when you put the boogers in your pockets, but now you eat 'em?" Hey, no problem. She probably wouldn't have gone out with me anyway — and even if she had I'm sure the only thing I'd have gotten out of the deal after Goodrich got through was a hearty handshake at the door with her mittens on.
I actually learned two very important things from Craig that have served me well my entire life and they are, in order: 1) If you ever want to kiss a girl don't let her think you eat boogers. You see, girls have this rule — maybe you've heard it: "lips that touch boogers will never touch mine." Overall not a bad rule I'll grant you (and one I've subsequently adopted) but it is a fatal one if you're on the booger end of that deal because once someone says you eat boogers, even though you don't, you pretty much have to move to another continent if you want to date. Or at least if you want to date mammals. 2) The second thing I learned from Goodrich was how to cook. Actually, what we did to food doesn't really qualify as cooking so about all I can really say is that I learned how to destroy the kitchen.
It all started when Craig's dad dropped us off at their cabin in The Sticks of Alaska. Ostensibly our job was to dig a cellar to store things in during the winter, but I really think what was going on was that our parents got together one night and decided that what the two families really needed was two fewer 15-year old boys for a week.
Craig's dad had been a Marine Grunt in the Pacific Theater during WWII while my dad had been a Destroyer Captain in the same campaigns. Both had seen heavy combat which may have prepared them for long term marriages but gave them few weapons with which to raise teenage boys. But since Marines know all about digging and the Navy knows all about confined spaces, I figure the two of them dreamed this little exercise up as sort of a subtle reminder of who was really in charge.
Anyway the Admiral scrounged up enough "rations" for week so we wouldn't starve and Craig's dad volunteered to drive us out there. When I say "rations" that's no exaggeration. They gave us a week's worth of the old military "C" rations and I'm here to tell you that a week's worth of "C" rations will last you a life time because if you actually eat any of it your life will be shortened in direct proportion to how much of the jam and pilot bread you ate — both of which have a nuclear half-life of somewhere into the next century and have to be the best kept military secret chemical weapon the U.S. has ever come up with.
I suggest that in the next war they either throw open "C" rations at the enemy at dinner time and hope for the best or drop them in a high altitude blanket bombing run on the enemy's mess tent (Which incidentally, is how I figure the 'mess tent' got it's name: serve "C" rations to a bunch of guys carrying guns and guaranteed you're going to have a mess on your hands. I always wondered if the mess tents and the MASH tents were close together.).
Anyhow, the military doesn't give "C" rations to the enemy because they can't always count on being in a war with anyone stupid enough to eat them, and 15-year old boys may be the perfect eating machines, but that doesn't mean they're any dumber than an enemy who won't eat your "C" rations.
Which is why Craig and I walked the three miles to the local general store for some macaroni. Actually we didn't walk three miles for macaroni we just knew that's where the store was. What we were actually counting on was Dr. Pepper, Reese's Peanut Butter Cups and popcorn. But this was The Sticks of Alaska. They didn't have any edible food at the store — just stuff like potatoes, rice, macaroni, like that.
Craig took the lead here because he said he'd actually watched his mom make macaroni and cheese once so we elected him Chef In Charge and me Chef In Training.
Once the store owner realized we were rookie cooks he was very helpful. Told us all about the Macaroni and Spaghetti Trees of the Tuscany District in Italy. That we needed equal parts of macaroni and hamburger — you know, 10 pounds of macaroni and 10 pounds of hamburger. Did I mention the six bottles of Hunts catsup and handwritten instructions on how to turn it into spaghetti sauce? Peach of a guy. Even gave us a ride back to the cabin — after we helped him load up some firewood he had to deliver.
So there we are. Standing in front of the stove. Waiting for the Cooking Angel to descend from the heavens and smit us with smarts. She was late and we were hungry so we took matters into our own hands. It was then I learned that Craig hadn't really watched his mom make macaroni and cheese. He'd only been present in the kitchen, standing next to her, trying to borrow the car and money at the same time.
A dangerous and delicate effort such as that on the part of any teenage boy excuses him in the eyes of his peers for not paying attention to something trivial — like cooking.
So we made it up as we went along. First, we figured since there we two of us that meant we had to have equal parts of everything. Unfortunately nobody ever told us that equal parts did not necessarily mean whole parts. And so we started with two pounds of hamburger, two pounds of macaroni and two bottles of catsup.
Oh boy, we're really cooking now. Did you know that back in The Olden Days When I Was A Kid And America Was Strong And We All Hated Commie Sympathizers And Cheerleaders Were Girls And 'New Wave' Meant That The Beach Boys Had A New Album Out that nowhere on the macaroni package did it ever say you were supposed to boil the macaroni before you did anything else with it?
Okay, so after we cleared all of the smoke out of the kitchen from the burning macaroni Goodrich remembers his mom was stirring the macaroni in a pot of boiling water. Not his fault man. The dude had been trying to score the car for a date with Melissa Easley — a girl with the nicest sweaters in school. He's allowed to forget the little things. That's The Code Of The Teenage Mutant Ninja Dater.
So we get it all going again, but two pounds of macaroni in a rolling boil doesn't look like much — looks like one of us could just about eat it all. Maybe we should add some more. How much? A handful? Doesn't sound very scientific to me. Naw. Got to be mathematical about it.
So logic and reason won out. We doubled everything. Now we were up to four pounds of macaroni in a rolling boil and four pounds of hamburger on 'high simmer'. Oh yeah, plus four bottles of catsup.
And that was it. We were all set. For life. We ate goulash every meal, everyday for the next week. We added some vegetables one day, a can of fruit cocktail another — even tossed in some scrambled eggs one morning. But it seemed like everyday we'd open the refrigerator door, there'd be more goulash left to eat than we'd already eaten. We even started feeding it to the dog until he stopped coming in at night.
When Mr. Goodrich showed up the next week he laughed so hard he wet his pants. And since he was sure no one would believe him when he told them how stupid we were, he made us take the goulash home as sort of a badge to the Summer Rights of Passage. And that would have been okay if he hadn't weighed the whole mess: right at 11 pounds left over.
After that it took a long time to get me near a kitchen and then only if well armed with a cook book or accompanied by Mrs. Daniel's son Jack.
But I have my pride. My wife was whining one day that even though we both worked she did most of the cooking. I kept reassuring her that that was a better deal for her than me since I could eat almost anything and she preferred to eat only that which was readily identifiable with no noxious odors — which was all I was really qualified to cook: unidentifiable goo with noxious odors .
Still she persisted saying stuff like that if it weren't for Swanson's Frozen Dinners, cheap beer and bad chips I'd starve to death. So I went on a one man crusade to prove to her that we macho men types don't need her scorn or sympathy in the kitchen. We can make it on our own just fine, thank you. And we can cook things that are delicious and good for you and — and — and — don't even appear in your dumb old cook book that your great grannie gave to your grannie that gave to your mother that gave to you.
And that's when I found myself in the store cruising the aisles looking for something different and unusual to prove my cooking prowess with my wife.
I don't know what possessed me to decide on it. I think it was because I happened to be in front of the liver section when they were closing the meat department. But the only thing I could think of at the time was to pick up the calves liver as the guy was pulling the sheet over the cooler.
Well, no big deal. Real Macho 'Merican Men can make it on their own with what's available. What the heck I thought. Meat is meat. Liver is meat. So how hard can this be? I've got the meat. What else can I cook? Well, I can cook spaghetti. So how hard can liver spaghetti be?
Well, as it turns out the trick is not making the liver spaghetti — that's pretty easy after you get by the light shade of green the meat turns when you're brazing it. No sir, the trick ain't in cooking it.
The real trick is eating it. Getting it down as it were. And keeping it down. Yep, that's the trick.
Let's say you want to find out how many bathrooms the average American home has. All you got to do is serve up a nice family size portion of my now world famous liver spaghetti and before you know it, the number of people missing from the table is the exact number of bathrooms in the house — adjusted, of course, for the number of family dogs that usually beg for food under the table and are now puking all over the floor on your kid's gym bag that you told her to put away when she walked in the door but she didn't do it because the phone was ringing and now she won't touch the bag because YOU MADE THE DOG SICK NOT ME SO WHY SHOULD I CLEAN UP A BUNCH OF JUNK THAT'S SO BAD THE DOG CAN'T EVEN KEEP IT DOWN.
Enter genetics. The Kid is now 14-years old. Taking cooking lessons from She Who Must Be Obeyed. Feeding it to He Who Must Obey.
So one night my wife and I get home to discover that The Kid has cooked dinner and had an ugly bout with genetics, all in the same night.
I never told her the Craig Goodrich And The Great Goulash story. She decided all by herself to make tortellini for us. So she started out with equal parts of tortellini: three of us meant three cups of the pasta. Didn't look like enough once it got up on step into a rolling boil.
So she added three more cups. And then the package was almost empty so there was no sense in keeping the two cups left over. Now we're up to 8 cups of tortellini and the largest pot in the house. Actually, as it turned out, she needed the two largest pots in the house after she had The Ugly Boil Over Incident.
And that took away the pot she'd put aside for the three 64 ounce jars of Prego sauce. Which meant, by logical deduction of course, that the next best thing to use would be the three cast-iron high-sided frying pans we use to fry salmon in.
And since we were due home at any minute, everything cooks on 'High'. Or burns on 'High'. Yep. No doubt about it. That's MY girl. Taught her everything I know and she still don't know nothin'.
Sometimes it goes on like this for days and days. And then you learn how to cook. And then you don't. And then you've got enough fishy tortellini in the refrigerator to feed the entire Yupik Eskimo Nation. And then it gets worse.