And now a few words about the comfort food of youth | Mark Hinson

When I was a kid growing up in Marianna, I loved spending time and eating lunch at the Harrison house.

Cresh Harrison, the only boy in the family of four children, was my classmate and close friend. He had three sisters, so it was always a breather to get away from my three older, testosterone-prone brothers.

At my male-dominated house, you never knew when you might get pegged with a flying boot, flung into furniture, or be the guest of honor at a headfirst swirlie party in the commode. Life was downright civilized by comparison at the Harrison place. I especially liked their food selection.

The Harrison siblings dined on stuff every kid growing up in the 1970s wanted to eat. Spray cheese dispensed by an aerosol can on Ritz Crackers. Yes, please.

Chef Boyardee Beef Ravioli heated up fresh from a tin can. Yum. More Campbell’s SpaghettiOs? You bet. Franco-American Macaroni & Cheese that also came from a tin can and had pale yellow noodles as long as red wriggler worms. Is there anything better? Purple Kool-Aid poured from a pitcher shaped to look like the wall-smashing Kool-Aid Man. Oh, yeah.

Back at my house, my outdoorsman father fried fresh-water fish, cooked that afternoon’s newly shot dove or quail, served up venison stew or grilled steaks on an open flame. Blech. That’s not kid chow. My Norwegian-blooded mother, whom I loved, could bake some red snapper in the oven or make a mean tuna salad, but that’s about it. French chef Julia Child she was not.

When you are a 12-year-old boy, your taste buds are also 12. They haven’t developed yet.  You want easily digested grub advertised on TV, not fine cuisine. Pass the Pringles and hold the pompano, please.

'Kung Fu'-you

At my family’s dinner table, you ate whatever was being served or you went hungry. The only exception arrived every week when my mother prepared rutabagas. No one cared for that bitter root vegetable, and the whole house smelled like burning hair when my mother cooked the foul things on the stove top.

Also at 12, I became a fan of the TV show “Kung Fu.” The story followed peace-loving martial-arts expert Kwai Chang Caine around the Wild West as he kept getting into fights. Kwai Chang was a vegetarian, so I became one, too. I gave the “no meat for as long as I live” speech at dinner on Monday night one week.

“OK,” my father said. “Have it your way.”

Every night, my father intentionally grilled steaks. Porterhouses, one dinner. T-Bones, the next. Delmonico strips sizzled to perfection. He always made sure the plate of beef was set in front of me so I could be tortured by the fragrance. To make matters worse, he narrated each lingering bite of steak.  “Little tastes of heaven.” “Steak this good should be against the law.” “This’ll make you bow to the cow.”

By Friday evening, I cracked and grabbed a Rib Eye. As Master Po might say, “It will be time to be a failed vegetarian when you can snatch the steak off the plate, Grasshopper.”

It’s getting better all the time

The grocery store and menu choices got better as the taste buds matured starting in the ‘80s. Who knew there was such a thing as fresh asparagus, not the gelatinous, limp ooze that slid from a Green Giant metal cylinder?

You mean uncooked spinach is more edible as a raw salad than the pre-cooked, oversalted slime Popeye the Sailor inhaled? (During the ‘70s, salad used to come one way: iceberg lettuce with French dressing.) Who could have guessed sushi was not disgusting but sublime?

So that is how you peel and eat a steamed artichoke. Like everything else in life, food choices only require an open mind and the willingness to try something new.

That said, I have been served some salads that appear to be yard trimmings. Has anyone ever had a craving for kale? Oh kale, do human beings really need to run to the bathroom five minutes after eating a kale salad? Can we all agree that mac-and-cheese cauliflower mash tastes like a sad clown’s tears?

Some people find the herb cilantro repellent. I think the ginger shavings served as a palate cleanser with sushi tastes just like the Dial soap bars put in my mouth to stop me from cursing as a kid. I am still waiting for the day when I “get” the draw of olives, but it hasn’t happened yet. For now, I put baby onions in my martinis.

You don’t have to like everything. But you’ll never know unless you try it.

Last dinner with Cresh

On Christmas Eve, my wife and I were having a shrimp appetizer followed by a seafood stew with focaccia bread for a holiday dinner with wine. Merry Christmas from Florida. Texts from Marianna friends and my brothers began flooding my phone before we were finished eating. Cresh was dead. A massive heart attack had dropped him and killed him. I sat in stunned silence at the dinner table.

Isn’t it funny where your mind first goes when you find out a lifelong friend has died? I could have considered how Cresh attended my first birthday. Or our trench-digging obsession in grade school (I wouldn’t join the dirt clod war until I finished another chapter of “Charlotte’s Web,” which drove Cresh crazy.)

Then there were all the summer weeks I spent at the Harrison cottage in Panama City Beach. How about the high school days when we necked with our dates in his family’s basement rec room?

No, my mind went to Chef Boyardee and SpaghettiOs. I was back at the Harrison household, sitting around the kitchen table, slurping down kid cuisine and trying to make Cresh laugh. Horrible jokes. Terrible impressions. Anything. God, he had a great laugh.

Sometimes you just need comfort food.

Mark Hinson is a former senior reporter at The Tallahassee Democrat. He can be reached at mark.hinson59@gmail.com

This article originally appeared on Tallahassee Democrat: Comfort food of youth brings back poignant memories of friend