When I was about 9 or so, my stepfather decided that TV was ridiculous, so he unplugged our set and put it in the corner. We didn’t watch TV for a few years. At around the same time, my mother got really into reading the Foxfire books and she bought a small flock of chickens. I know what you’re thinking – “Wow, what an idyllic childhood!” Ha! What it meant was that later in life, when I wouldn’t understand references to The Dukes of Hazzard, my friends would accuse me of being raised in North Korea.
Along with the no TV and chicken-raising thing, my mother became virulently anti-normal food. I mean, not only did we not eat Velveeta, but we also never had American cheese slices around. I took havarti sandwiches with grainy mustard for lunch to the fourth grade. No Steakums in our house, No spaghetti. No meatloaf. No casserole. It was homemade palaak paneer, brown rice, hummus, quiche… Alas, such deprivation!
Of course, now all that stuff I was so embarrassed by as a kid (humiliation is when your friends think your mustard contains birdseed) seems pretty normal. But I have to admit, I have a deep-seated love for all things seemingly American and seemingly Normal. Like anything made with cream of mushroom soup. And green beans in a can.
So when I found this at an estate sale,
(it's an old recipe file box! Filled with recipes!)
I was really excited. Not only was it a mere 25 cents, but it also contained all kinds of really Normal American recipes, circa 1950-something. The first one I tried was the recipe for tamale pie.
You know Edna Brown's family was eating pretty well. Ripe olives! Yee haw!
What could be more stereotypical Normal American!? Well, maybe meatloaf, but I looove tamales, and this seemed like an easy way to get a tamale fix without all the labor of making real tamales.
The only problem was that the recipe wasn’t exactly what I wanted it to be. I mean, Worcestershire sauce? In tamales? What? Also, it’s green chile season here in Colorado, so freshly roasted New Mexico Hatch green chiles can be bought on every other street corner. I had some in the fridge that I was dying to use. I also had a little leftover ground beef, an ear of Olathe corn, and some jalapenos and tomatoes from my garden. So I used what I had and didn’t follow the recipe exactly. But it still worked, and it worked pretty well.
Sandwich Hoss 