Of tomato juice and dinner rolls...

I've recently added tomato juice (well V-8) to my daily regimen of food. Okay, that sounds too high-falutin'. Let's just say I've made an effort to drink a glass of it a day because of it's "2 servings of vegetables per 8 oz. glass" claim. This was something I wasn't quite able to do in recent years because of recurring heartburn, but that's a problem I solved with over-the-counter Prilosec™. Seriously, the stuff works...well, it did for me, at least.

But I sometimes think I could subsist on tomato juice and dinner rolls. Family legend has it that I ruined more than one fancy-schmancy dinner by doing so as a kid. I remember one such event, an after-funeral dinner for a distant relative. This occurred when I was 5 or so. The story goes that I downed so many glasses of tomato juice and ate so many buttered dinner rolls that when the actual entrees came I refused to eat anything else, much to the chagrin of my mother. We were at one of my hometown's fanciest eating emporiums, the Beacon Diner, and I'm guessing the funeral spread cost a pretty penny, maybe three bucks a head at the time. All for poor Uncle Carl, whoever the hell he was (jeez...they saved 3 bucks on him alone).

I somehow equate the whole tomato juice/dinner roll scenario more so with Thanksgiving though. We weren't big on appetizers in my house, either when we ate out or at home, so a thin glass of tomato juice before dinner was a rare treat indeed. And the dinner rolls were always on the table at these holiday fetes. To this day I like my Thanksgiving and Christmas dinners to start with a glass of tomato juice. So I guess what I'm saying is that I'd actually be fine with a bread and liquid diet, providing it was dinner rolls and tomato juice.

Which strange combo of food and drink brings back memories for you?

Comments

[Pam]

Mine was milk-cafe with zwieback, when I put the bisquit into the coffee, that was only allowed at my grandmothers home!

[Sheldon Sturges]

Mine was dinner rolls and plums.