Pineapple and Mayonnaise Sandwich

We went out to eat tonight with some friends at Salt Grass Steak House.  I had a T-bone steak and baked potato in his honor.   I think that a T-Bone, salad and baked potato were components of his favorite luxury meal.

Dad was one of those guys who liked to grill meat. He liked to grill steak, chicken, pork chops and sometimes pork ribs.  I learned how to preseason the meat the way that he liked it. For steak he liked Worcestershire Sauce and garlic salt. For chicken, ribs, and pork chops he liked to grill it with a wet bar-b-que sauce made from Kraft bar-b-que sauce with a splash of Tabasco sauce.  I learned how to de-skin pieces of chicken.

I came to live with him in Houston in early 1977, around the time of Mom’s death.  On the weekends, he loved to go out to eat at Steak and Ale restaurant.  The salad bar was big treat and I learned the hard way that those green pickles were actually jalapeno peppers. One time at Steak and Ale, during rodeo week, I found a wad of cash under my chair that turned out to be two twenties. With that money I bought my first camera, a 126 Instamatic camera, from Ritz Camera on Stella Link just east of the West Loop.

He would sometimes bake cornbread (no sugar!) and cook up some black-eyed peas and butter beans.  He liked to break up the corn bread into chunks and stuff them into a glass and then fill the glass with milk. He would then eat the soggy corn bread with a spoon or fork. 

In a recent conversation about grits, he says that had never eaten or even seen them until he joined the Air Force. 

He hated smoked Texas brisket, but loved pulled pork and pork ribs.

 

When I was a kid in Florida in about the seventh grade, he taught me about the wonderful pineapple and mayonnaise sandwich.  In later years when I mentioned them in conversation, he said he didn’t remember anything about them. 

I still like black-eyed peas, butter beans, and corn bread.  But I’m not a fan of steak or pork chops.  

The last couple of years I know that his overall nutrition was getting worse.  I bought him some strawberry flavored Ensure hoping to help, but he complained that it was too sweet.  I’m really confused by that because when I cleaned out his kitchen this week, there were a lot of Blue Bell ice cream cartons and the meat drawer in the fridge was full of Little Debbie snacks.