A Meal to Remember or Rather Forget by Ricky

Sometime in the 70’s, around the same time as the gasoline shortages, there was also a drastic price increase in the price of beef. My spouse, Deborah, decided that we needed to stretch our meat budget by using less meat by adding protein “fillers” to recipes that required meat. She saw a billboard advocating the use of peanut butter as a protein substitute. It sounded reasonable to her so she decided to try it out; on me.

Thus, one day when I returned home from a very hot Arizona day “fighting crime”, she already had dinner prepared. She told me of the billboard and the idea it gave her so I was forewarned about the experimental cuisine, but I was also somewhat excited to try it. After I had taken my place at the table, Deborah brought out our meal. There was salad, vegetable, baked potato, and meatloaf. More accurately, peanut butter meatloaf. Five-star cuisine it was not. In fact, the meatloaf was awful.

Until that evening, neither of us knew just how powerful the peanut oil flavor really is. Two tablespoons of peanut butter added to the meatloaf completely overpowered all the spices added to the hamburger and the flavor of the beef itself. The taste of peanuts combined with the texture of ground beef just did not pass the taste test. It was edible, but not desirable. If we would have had children at that point, I’m sure I would have had to arrest my wife for child abuse. Even if I didn’t, the kids may have gone looking for a foster family.

© 31 March 2014

About the Author

I was born in June of 1948 in Los Angeles, living first in Lawndale and then in Redondo Beach. Just prior to turning 8 years old in 1956, I began living with my grandparents on their farm in Isanti County, Minnesota for two years during which time my parents divorced.

When united with my mother and stepfather two years later in 1958, I lived first at Emerald Bay and then at South Lake Tahoe, California, graduating from South Tahoe High School in 1966. After three tours of duty with the Air Force, I moved to Denver, Colorado where I lived with my wife and four children until her passing away from complications of breast cancer four days after the 9-11 terrorist attack.

I came out as a gay man in the summer of 2010. I find writing these memories to be therapeutic.

My story blog is TheTahoeBoy.Blogspot.com