November 14, 2006

Cowboy Food.

Filed under: Uncategorized — Jim @ 9:50 pm

I come from working folks. Both my parents worked hard in factories. My father was a maintenance man is a grubby factory that made dye, and my mother worked nights and, later, days in an electronic components factory. As such, we were never long on money. Couple that with their jobs not leaving much time to prepare fancy meals, my mother was extremely creative with chopped meat.

She would fry it up and mix it with various things – sometimes, macaroni and sometimes, potatoes and vegetables – whatever was in the refrigerator. She would dole out the hot mixture of chopped meat and whatever directly from the frying pan onto a plate or into a soup bowl. I loved it.

One night when I was still young enough to think that this slap-together, low-cost meal actually had a name, I asked my mother what the dish was called. As she was scooping it onto my plate, without missing a beat, she said, “It’s what the cowboys eat. It’s cowboy food.”

So, tonight, more than a half a century later, when I came home from work and Mrs. Parkway said, “I ate out with [a friend and a cousin], but there is some cowboy food in the refrigerator,” I knew exactly what she meant.

I still love cowboy food.

10 Comments »

  1. Yep… we didn’t call it cowboy food, but ate a lot of variations of “goulash.” I still love that stuff, too.

    Comment by That 1 Guy — November 14, 2006 @ 9:57 pm

  2. awe. you are going to make me all mushy. Mrs. Parkway takes care of you just like your mom? how sweet.

    my mommy meals of ease have a new western brand, cowboy food it is! yeee haw!

    Comment by shoe — November 14, 2006 @ 10:41 pm

  3. My mother stuffed whatever it was into a hamburger bun and it was a Sloppy Joe. I never knew what the real Sloppy Joe was until I was 20-something. And then I missed Mom’s.

    Comment by Shamrock — November 14, 2006 @ 11:07 pm

  4. it was called “normal” at my house, it didn’t even get a name…

    it was simply my Moms cooking.

    Comment by armywifetoddlermom — November 15, 2006 @ 1:44 am

  5. … I’m hungry now… cowboy food, indeed…

    Comment by Eric — November 15, 2006 @ 10:34 am

  6. Ahhh – cowgirl food, too.

    Comment by moos — November 15, 2006 @ 12:32 pm

  7. I call it Brokeback Hardtack. And, no, I don’t eat it.

    Comment by Velociman — November 15, 2006 @ 5:59 pm

  8. I remember those days myself; Mom always had a way to make it stretch to feed everybody at the table, no matter how many ‘extra’ there were!

    Comment by Michele — November 15, 2006 @ 7:29 pm

  9. She was not far from wrong. During the days of the Longhorn steers the meat had to be cut into small pieces and stewed in order to eat it..damn steer was a tough piece of meat. Adding some chili peppers and fat to it made it taste better..and chili is damn sure cowboy groceries.

    Comment by GUYK — November 16, 2006 @ 12:39 am

  10. It was goulash here too, T1G. My mom could do anything with hamburger…

    Comment by Lisa W. — November 16, 2006 @ 3:24 am

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