Miracle Whip, RB and the Cow

It was an epiphany, really, a sea change in the way I viewed food (or at least sandwiches), the first time I had mayonnaise. May have been in a college cafeteria. I’ll tell you what, I couldn’t believe how good it tasted! See, I came from a household that used Miracle Whip instead of mayo. And my dad still does; if you look in his refrigerator, you’ll see a large jar of Miracle Whip, and no mayo, unless it’s a jar I have brought on one of my visits.

I can’t tell you what’s in Miracle Whip, or how it’s made (and I can’t tell you what Cool Whip is, either. Miracle Whip, Miracle-Gro, Cool Whip…are they all related?). When I teach my middle school kids about chemistry, I stress the physical and chemical properties of a substance. Like mayo, Miracle Whip falls somewhere between a liquid and a solid; it’s a colloid, an emulsion. Mayo has vinegar and oil, which normally would separate, but don’t, because they’re held in suspension by egg yolk. But what about Miracle Whip? I have no idea what it is, or how it stays in suspension. What are its chemical properties? Is it flammable? Reactive? Is it like slime, a non-Newtonian substance? I don’t know. All I can tell you is that once I tasted real mayonnaise, I was never going back.

Now, why did my parents use Miracle Whip? Perhaps it was borne of frugality. That generation had been through World War II, when certain things were just not available. Rubber, for tires, was scarce, most of it going to the war effort. In fact my grandfather, in Illinois, put his car up on blocks for the duration of the war, and walked everywhere. Victory gardens proliferated, and there generally was no butter – people ate “oleo” (margarine) instead.

This habit may have become ingrained, and perhaps explains why we did not use butter, at least not every day, in our family. We used margarine. Probable Fleishmann’s. Butter – and we kids called it real butter (or RB for short) - was reserved for special occasions, such as holiday dinners. I distinctly remember the real butter, on a china butter plate, and it was cold, having been kept in the refrigerator. So cold that in order to spread it on your Parker House roll, you had to smush it first, so it wouldn’t tear the soft bread. And it was delicious! It’s no wonder that butter dominates French cooking; the French know what they’re doing. I loved it so much that at the pancake house, where they put a dollop of whipped butter on your stack of pancakes, I’d just eat the dollop of butter by itself.

Certainly our family was on a budget, our parents trying to raise six kids on, for a long time, one salary (albeit a decent one, my dad being an engineer for Chevron). Like every other family of that era, we kids drank milk – whole milk – as a beverage with every meal, and poured it over our Wheaties and Cheerios (along with a spoonful of sugar – those were the days! Sugar on grapefruit halves as well, along with a Maraschino cherry). We went through so much milk, which was not cheap, that my parents started mixing the real milk with milk mixed from powder (Borden’s) and water. We kids were NOT fans of powdered milk. My parents also bought real milk in very large containers, waxed cardboard cartons that sat on the refrigerator shelf and had a spout, a spigot, on the bottom. We called it the Cow. Now THAT was kind of fun – getting up from the table and going to the fridge to pour yourself another glass of milk from the Cow. Sort of like serving yourself from a keg.

To further economize, my parents started shopping at the Costco of that time and place: Steg’s Restaurant Supply. They would return with massive bags of flour and pancake mix and multipak loves of bread, some of which would go in the freezer. By this time their six kids included three teenage boys (having just girls myself, I can’t imagine watching all the food you just bought being shoveled into the mouths of teenage boys, trying to bulk up for high school football).

My parents were married in the 1950s, and Mom’s cooking was very much influenced by her Midwestern roots and that era’s popular cookbooks, those by Betty Crocker and Better Homes and Gardens (the latter: what a laudable goal, but why limit “bettering” to just homes and gardens?). You could call that time the Era of Casseroles, and there were plenty at our house. Tamale pie, with pieces of Hormel canned tamales baked into the egg and corn mixture. Tuna noodle casserole, a staple for us on Fridays in Lent. “American lasagna”, featuring Swiss cheese and cottage cheese instead of mozzarella and ricotta (were the latter not available in American grocery stores?). Our Christmas Eve standard, crab casserole. Spanish rice. Hamburger a la supreme. This was comfort food of the highest order.

Other dishes relied on canned or packaged staples. Special breakfasts would feature an egg baked in a little nest of corned beef hash (again, from Hormel), or chipped beef (and what the hell is that? Pieces of beef chipped off a rib using a hammer and chisel?) on toast, made with the ever-present and versatile can of Campbell’s mushroom soup. Seriously – did any of these recipes NOT rely on Campbell’s mushroom soup? We would occasionally have baked beans, from B&M (now incredibly hard to find), served with B&M brown bread, a moist rye and molasses bread that came in a can, and retained the cylindrical shape of the can, complete with rings, when pushed out (not unlike cranberry jelly does).

I still make some of Mom’s recipes. Her oven-fried chicken was one of my favorites, and I’d often request that for my birthday dinner. I introduced it to my girls and they loved it, too; it made the regular rotation. I still make it for my dad, when I go down and cook for him. It’s a comfort food, a true family recipe, that reminds us both of Sunday dinners and my mom.

Of course, my diet, like that of most folks, has changed over the years, as we have learned more about health, nutrition and the sources of foods. My daughter Carrie is a vegan (mostly), and has even introduced me to tofu (a medium in which I don’t work), and these days I eat a lot more vegetables, a lot less meat, and if I favor any diet, it’s the Mediterranean. Olive oil-based. I love the concept of healthy fats. But occasionally, I go back. To that comfort food. I made baked beans the other day, and wanted some brown bread to go with it. No problem. Amazon delivered it the next day. Granted, I have absolutely no idea how old that can of brown bread was. Maybe it was from the 60s or 70s. Like my memories. Doesn’t matter, does it? I mean, it’s in a CAN. Like memories, probably lasts forever.

My dad has discovered Amazon, too; he has ordered B&M baked beans and Snow’s clam chowder, which of course, get delivered by the case. I’ve now got an urge to make that tamale pie, and I’ve checked: you can get Hormel beef tamales on Amazon. Hopefully I don’t have to order a full case. Tamale pie is in my immediate future.

But I’m not going back to Miracle Whip.