Rasputina Judge

My mom may be trying to poison me...

As we continue to examine the quirks of my Depression-Era mother—and the comments you’ve been leaving indicate I’m not the only one with a mom who did and does goofy shit—today we’ll talk about food and their weird attitudes based on what they experienced growing up and right now I’m thinking about the time I brought her a cup of white chocolate latte coffee because she’s got a sweet tooth somewhere in those sweet dentures and she took one sip and said:

“This is too good to drink right now.”

And put it in the refrigerator.

Needless self-denial seems to be part of the Depression-Era deal and recently my brother offered to buy her a new TV and she said she wanted to wait “for a better time.” Mom, you’re 100: when do you think that better time is arriving and by the way, your game clock is ticking.

But maybe she’ll let us buy her a TV for her 101st birthday and she can finally drink that cup of white chocolate latte coffee which you know is buried somewhere in the back of her fridge covered with enough mold to make penicillin .

Enjoy today’s repost of the 2019 essay in which I speculated my mom was trying to poison me.

Throughout history there have been men whose acts of bravery will never be forgotten:  Columbus sailing off to the find the new world, Sir Edmund Hillary climbing Mt. Everest, John Glenn orbiting the earth, and today I join those brave souls:

I’m going to let my 93-year-old mother cook for me. 

Sell-By Dates

As I think I’ve already made clear to those of you who have been reading along, my mom does not pay much attention to sell-by dates and I recently discovered she doesn’t think much of refrigeration either.

Walk into her house at any hour you choose and she’ll immediately ask if you’re hungry and no matter what you say she’ll start putting food together.   

Not trusting my mom’s cooking, I make it a policy to bring my own food to her house or eat right before I arrive. That way, when she asks if I’m hungry, I can say I’ve already eaten or brought my own and avoid whatever botulism casserole she’s lovingly prepared for my consumption because she may have lovingly prepared it a month ago.

The other day I walked in and she asked if I wanted a salami and cheese sandwich and when I said no, I’d just eaten, she said:

“But I already made it.”

Here’s the important part: she reached into the non-refrigerated dish cupboard where normal people keep plates and cups and pulled out a sandwich on a dish.

God knows how long that sandwich had been sitting there.

For all I know that sandwich is a family heirloom and has been passed down from generation to generation. Dig through the family photos and there may be a picture of one of my ancestors, fresh off the boat from Ireland, proudly holding that salami and cheese sandwich. Someday that sandwich might take up its rightful place, inside a glass display case at the Smithsonian.

On the other hand…

About a week after turning down that salami and cheese gut torpedo, I walked in my mom’s house and my brother Bob had just finished a lunch my mom prepared:

A sandwich.

Haven’t heard from Bob since.

Dessert

Back to my refusal of that salami and cheese sandwich; after I said no thanks, my mom reached into the same unrefrigerated cupboard and pulled out a bowl of fruit.

“How about some cherries? They’re a delicacy.”

They’re a delicacy if it’s 1932 and you live in Bumfuck, Nebraska and last saw fresh fruit in 1927. I’ve got no idea what happens to cherries if they’ve been aged long enough, but I wasn’t in the mood to play guinea pig and find out.  

Which brings us to another food-related story: my mom offered my brother Danny some prunes and said they were especially good because those particular prunes had been mixed with plums.

Go ahead and take a minute to untangle the logic behind that statement.

Don’t Let The Bedbugs Bite

We now leave the area of unrefrigerated food whose sell-by-dates are receding rapidly in the rearview mirror, but remain in the area of the possible poisoning of family members by disregarding the rules of sane conduct.

My brother Danny and his family are temporarily staying with my mom and they brought along their dog who has a more pleasant personality than most of the humans I’m related to.

(I wrote that paragraph in 2019 and Danny and his family are still there because it became apparent my mom can’t drive or shop or cook for herself and Danny’s wife is keeping my mom alive—Danny seems less motivated—and when my mom complained that it was high time they move out and I pointed out that bit about not being able to drive or shop or cook for herself and asked what she’d do when she had a problem, she said: “Call Danny.”)

Anyway…

Danny woke up one morning with some mysterious bites and wondered if his dog, Mr. Personality, had somehow infested the bed with fleas.

When Danny explained the situation to my mom, she gave him a box of powder and suggested he sprinkle some on his sheets before getting into bed that night.

The label on the box said: “Rat Sheriff.”

That’s right; my mom wanted my brother to spend the night resting on a layer of rat poison. And if that didn’t work, maybe she could offer those fleas a cheese and salami sandwich.

Preventative Medicine

The family members who have survived my mother’s cooking sometimes sit around and wonder how my mom’s Timex is still ticking. With her dubious food-safety record and predilection for keeping a family-sized-all-purpose supply of rat poison on hand, how has she avoided poisoning herself?

But then it dawned on me.

She has poisoned herself, but done it in such small, incremental doses she was now pretty much invulnerable, just like Rasputin.

That’s one of the theories that attempts to explain why Grigori Yefimovich Rasputin was so hard to kill; he knew people were out to get him, so he’d taken small doses of poison to build up his tolerance to any deadly substance.

So when Rasputin’s enemies dosed him with enough poison to knock a Clydesdale sideways, he was ready for another round. And Rasputin was a mystic and spiritual healer—just like my Pentecostal Christian mom.

How had I missed the similarities?

Corn Cakes

Yesterday, my mom said she really wanted to cook for me before my trip was over and suggested I skip my usual non-toxic breakfast so she could make me corn cakes.

Just in case you’ve never been dirt-poor and eaten these things (they’re a delicacy) corn cakes are pancakes with a can of creamed corn mixed in the batter and it was one of mom’s tricks for making food go farther. Plus, you eat one of these fried dough gut bombs and you don’t need to eat again for 48 hours.

I asked what time she wanted to have breakfast and she said, “As late as you can stand it” and suggested noon. I pointed out that technically made breakfast lunch, so we split the difference and now we’re shooting for 11 AM.

I decided to break my rule about eating at my mom’s house for three reasons:

1. I used to love corn cakes and haven’t them since I was a kid.

2. It would make my mom happy.

3. It might be part of her plan to slightly poison me, build up my immunity and help me live as long as she has.

And if the corn cakes don’t do the trick, I can always try a salami and cheese sandwich.