Final Word: Kids' meal of choice? A Swanson TV dinner
- Grandma's fudge recipe never existed for columnist Craig Wilson
- His best memory is a TV dinner
- Julia Child spoiled it all, of course
I'm not quite sure what I was doing when I was 8. I do know I was not winning cooking contests using my great-grandmother's fudge recipe.
I'm not sure my great-grandmother even had a fudge recipe. I don't think the Wilsons were fudge people. Fudge is a bit too decadent for Methodists, I suspect.
But Grace LaFountain, an 8-year-old from New Hartford, N.Y., recently won the Loukoumi's Celebrity Cookbook "Favorite Childhood Recipe" contest. Good for her.
This week, she will make her "Great-Grandma Hutchins' Fudge" with celebrity chef Cat Cora at Cora's restaurant Kouzzina on the Boardwalk at Walt Disney World. It's all part of the Epcot Food and Wine Festival.
The contest invited children ages 4 to 12 to submit their favorite childhood recipes and to complete a statement: "(Recipe name) is my favorite childhood recipe because ... (in 10 words or less)."
Once again, I feel out of the loop. I don't have a favorite childhood recipe. Am I supposed to?
Not that I didn't eat well. Growing up on a farm, I had a life was filled with apples from the orchards and vegetables from the garden. My grandmother even made to-die-for chocolate chip cookies.
But a favorite childhood recipe? No.
I do have a favorite childhood meal, though. Life did not get any better than an evening spent with a Swanson TV dinner.
It was Saturday night, Mom and Dad were heading out to card club, the babysitter had just arrived, and in the oven was a fried chicken dinner warming in an aluminum tray all its own. Perfection.
Something else that made the meal so perfect was the fact that the foods did not touch, no doubt an early sign of my need for order. Everything was in its proper place.
The chicken was showcased right up front, as it should have been. After all, it was the entree. To the top right was the medley of peas and carrots, to the left in their triangle were the mashed potatoes, and anchoring it all, in a little square of its own, was the apple cake cobbler.
I now know nothing that good could last forever.
Julia Child came along shortly after and ruined it all, introducing the idea of fresh ingredients into the American kitchen.
Bon appetit! never rang so hollow.
E-mail cwilson@usatoday.com