Red Meat and gin

An interviewer once asked Julia Childs, the great gourmet cook, "To what do you attribute your longevity?"  She replied, "Red meat and gin."  It was a comforting answer in this world of South Beach diets and carb counters.  I attribute many of the joys of my childhood to the "comfort food" now so reviled and condemned.       Since my blogger will not allow paragraphs, long dashes will indicate where paragraphs should be.-----I remember waking up in my bedroom off the kitchen to the smell of homemade cinnamon rolls for breakfast.  Because my mother was the cook and I was the helper, I stirred many batches of vanilla pudding to be mixed with bananas and wafers or to be used in coconut cream pies in which we first baked the crust, covered it with coconut, poured in the pudding and slavered that with meringue (what a hard word to spell!) and sprinkled coconut on top of that before it was cooked in the oven.----Sundays after church always brought a falling-apart, gravy-covered pot roast surrounded by potatoes and carrots served with tomato and lettuce salad mixed with Miracle Whip (no fancy dressings or mayo for us).----Holidays brought groaning tables filled with chicken and dressing, giblet gravy, my grandmother's Coke Salad (a congealed salad containing CocoCola), fresh coconut cake (I got to break the coconut, pour out the milk, and peel off the tough skin), creamed potatoes, macaroni and cheese, and pecan pralines.-----When Sam and I married, we melded his upbringing on the coast and with mine and added fried catfish, shrimp (sometimes), red beans and rice and mahogany cake to our menu.-----Brandon would write that a special meal is not special unless it contains orange delight salad, hash brown casserole and fresh corn cut off the cob. -----Ecc. 9:  Seize life!  Eat bread with gusto, Drink wine with a robust heart.  Oh, yes,--God takes pleasure in your pleasure....Each day is God's gift.  (The Message)