Golden Pyrex Moments
(by Sue Lange)
My mother was the oldest of six kids. Because my grandmother was busy having babies all the time, my mom had to do the cooking for the ever-expanding brood. She did not have the good fortune to be born into a family with an ethnic cuisine. She had no aunts who could show her how to make ravioli or kugel. She had to figure out how to make meals on her own (this, during the ‘40s and ‘50s when cooking was done the hard way).
By the time my siblings and I came along, it was the ‘60s, a time of great innovation in American cuisine. Velveeta, Spam, TV dinners, and other fine gastronomical offerings came into their own in this decade. You can imagine how my mother—raising four kids while pursuing a college education via night school—availed herself of Kraft and Swanson. Her meals were simple, quick to fix, and rib-sticking. They were not politically correct in a modern, health-conscious sort of way, but they kept us fed on a tight