A couple of days ago, I called my 97-year-old Grandmother (hereinafter referred to as “Nana”), and, of course, for those who’ve heard a Nana tale or two, she complained to my husband, Charlie, about the food at the nursing home where she now lives.
Ahem, for the 411 on that nightmare (i.e. moving her into a nursing home), check out:
http://tenaciousbitch.com/2013/06/28/still-unhappy-but-there-is-a-dog-named-sue/
“It’s not even American,” she lamented.
I saw Charlie cup his hand over his mouth, and I knew she’d just delivered some sort of verbal insanity.
Let’s see, during the week I was down in Georgia helping Nana get settled in her new digs last summer, she was served:
1) Fried chicken, mashed potatoes and green beans. She hated the beans because they weren’t “seasoned right” – meaning they weren’t simmered for 19 hours in a vat laden with salt and full of onions and bacon – until they resembled a really fine green paste. If one didn’t want fried chicken, they also had chicken marsala on the menu. Therefore, they did sneak a bit of Italian cuisine in there alongside the not-so-American fried chicken…:)
2) Meatloaf with boiled potatoes and a salad, but the alternate choice was sweet and sour chicken, so – yeah there were a few items borrowed from other cultures…BAD COOKS…BAD! :)
3) And one day at lunch, they brought Nana a steak sandwich and French fries. She said the steak was tough, so she wouldn’t touch it, but she ate a few of the fries. I ate the sandwich. I thought the meat was thinly sliced and not at all tough, but my choppers aren’t 90+ years old…:)
4) One morning for breakfast, she told me they brought her scrambled eggs, bacon and a piece of white toast with butter and strawberry jam. Funny, that’s what I’d made for her a couple of days before we made our trek down to the sunny South. Hmmm…
5) The last day I was there, they brought her a ham and cheese sandwich, a bowl of Jell-O for lunch with a cup of vanilla ice cream for dessert.
And I remember all of this because I remember reading the menu beforehand and feeling relieved they always served something I thought she’d eat…but since she’s not picky… she refused to eat it because it wasn’t American…LOL. Oh, wait…that’s her excuse now. At the time, her meals were too spicy, too sweet, too salty, too peppery, and the list goes on – though I found none of the entrees espousing these traits except the fried chicken was a tad bit peppery. Other than that, I thought the food was pretty frickin’ good for a rest home as Nana calls it with disdain.
Just out of curiosity, I looked on the nursing home’s website today where they post the menu for the families of the residents in case they’d like to drop by and share a meal with their loved one. On the dinner menu today, they had:
Beef stew and biscuits or fried pork chops with mashed potatoes and peas, and tomorrow night they’re offering chili (oh, god, you’re right, Nana, that’s TEX-MEX) and barbecued wings or chicken fried steak with French fries and cole slaw. Additionally, you can get cole slaw with your wings and/or chili as well.
That said, I’m not sure why she insists they don’t serve American food – though I figure she’s just run out of ways to complain and decided to utilize more heinous-sounding language than the truth:
She doesn’t want to eat anything except meals cooked at one of her favorite restaurants – or food that she, herself, has prepared, which she, obviously can no longer do…though she loves my potato soup, and she loved my husband’s liver and onions.
She also loved what she called – “my spaghetti”, but the slop she preferred to my actual sauce was merely hamburger slathered in Prego, which is about 30% high fructose corn syrup, and I think it’s nasty. But I let her think it was “my sauce”, so she’d eat it.
In reality, I make my meaty Italian sauce almost from scratch, but the few times she consumed that which my boys and my husband gobble up in the blink of an eye was too tomato-y according to Nana. So, I allegedly tried a “new recipe”, which she’s completely forgotten about since it was almost 3 years ago now comprised of the heretofore mentioned – Prego and ground beef.
But, holy hell, Nana, spaghetti is ITALIAN, why in heaven’s name were you eating that? :)
ANYWHO…the kicker of the conversation was Nana’s follow-up comment after she claimed the nursing home fare isn’t American.
“But you know me, I’m not picky…”
To-wit, Charlie and I let go of some serious belly laughs when he conveyed that comment.
Aside from her current complaints, the morning of her departure to Georgia, Nana complained about her scrambled eggs as such:
“Why are they so big?” Nana grumbled.
“What do you mean?” I asked, rather puzzled after I set her breakfast down in front of her.
“My eggs. Do you put milk in them?”
“Yes, Nana,” I said, rolling my eyes because she’s asked me that no less than 492 times.
She frowned and said, “When I made them, they were much smaller.”
Oh, for the love of chickens…forgive me, Nana, I wanted to say. I let the eggs cook a little too long in the pan before I “scrambled” them up and plopped them on your plate, but even at her age…she can still cut up her own damned eggs, which she began doing the moment I headed for the door.
For other depictions of why Nana “isn’t” picky – check out:
http://tenaciousbitch.com/2012/07/31/post-70-more-baloney-from-ms-cranky-pants/
or
http://tenaciousbitch.com/2012/06/28/post-66-baloney-porn-or-is-it-bologna-porn/
It’s difficult to imagine ever being that unaware of one’s own personality, but it’s not her age, Nana has always been that way…even when I was a kid, but that’s another yarn to unravel another day…:)
Over and out from Crazytown…
~TenaciousBitch and her band of truth-spouting hippies
TB/ks
© Tenacious Bitch 2014
