Independently Speaking By Brent Olson
The views expressed are those of the individual author and not necessarily those of DTN, its management or employees.
Food
“I’ve got butter and coffee on a grocery list,” I said to my wife. “Are there any other essentials we need?”
I’m not stupid. I realize there are other staples in a well-stocked larder. There’s sugar, chocolate, bacon — and there really should be a stash of popcorn and a box of Dots on hand for the nights when no one feels like cooking.
We don’t actually buy a lot of groceries. We have big garden, once a year we buy a quarter of beef from a neighbor, we have chickens that keep us egged up, and a greenhouse that supplies us with lettuce, herbs, and two lemons each year. Other than Sunday dinner, it’s just the two of us eating, so we don’t require a lot of groceries. I’m fairly confident that I consume 75% of the calories eaten in our house.
Maybe 80%.
It’s a little embarrassing to reflect on how many of my memories involve food. I’m not sure why. When I was growing up, other than holidays, food wasn’t a huge priority in our house. My mom was a busy person and cooking wasn’t the top of her list. I was probably 50 years old before I learned that a pan of brownies was supposed to have the same texture all the way through, as opposed to being quasi-burned on the edges and semi-liquid in the center. My dad thought of food the way he’d watch the gas tank on the tractor. “I’m on empty, fill ‘er up.”
However, their attitudes changed as they grew older. My mom developed a fondness for food when she realized she didn’t always have to cook it herself, and my sister remembers my dad’s indignation the first time they visited her in France and she sent him to a bakery for a baguette. He slathered some fresh butter on a chunk and said, “I raise the best wheat in the world, why do I have to travel halfway around the world to find out how bread is supposed to taste?”
It’s even more embarrassing that most of my food memories aren’t about some sort of spectacular meal in a fancy restaurant. No, they’re mostly about the meals I’ll never have again. A bag of Cheesy Poofs packed by my wife, tossed on the floor of the combine cab during corn harvest, and the thigh of my blue jeans fluorescent orange where I wiped off the residue whenever I needed to put my hand on the steering wheel. The oyster stew at the Masonic Lodge Christmas party where a bunch of men wearing aprons cooked for their wives and children. The Thanksgiving dinner when just my son and I shared a Cornish Game hen because my wife spent the day sitting next to a crib in a hospital. The slab of ribs we bought in Hannibal, Missouri, from a guy with six Weber grills in the parking lot of a gas station/liquor store/bait shop. And the fried chicken cooked on a grill made of an old brake drum, set up in the yard behind a Methodist Church in Oracabessa, Jamaica. A vivid memory is the cheeseburger with fried onions at the Big Stone County Fair, purchased from the Methodist Food stand, lovingly and dutifully made by people who are now all dead — every one of them.
I’ve got the grocery list made up. I just wish I could buy everything I want.
Copyright 2025 Brent Olson