Ghost of Elly Future
After today’s reprint in For Better or For Worse, I half-expect the For Better or For Worse website "Coffee Talk with Elly" to feature a casserole recipe like this:
1 cup – gravy, nondescript
1 bowl – custard (sniff for freshness)
1 slice – bologna
1 – green pepper, mushy
Place all the ingredients in a pan. Bake at 350 degrees for 45 minutes. Serve alone or with an expectorant like Ipecac for best effect.
I found Elly’s line about her mother turning all those ingredients into a casserole, amusing not only because it is disgusting to imagine them all together in a casserole; but because Elly turned into her mom by the time the strip ended. This strip from August, 2007; is often cited as the one strip where Elly’s cooking and her delight over it, managed to turn many a reader’s stomach. Lynn Johnston was not shy in showing the grease of those hamburgers literally pouring off the burger as Elly and John got ready to eat them. You have this in addition to Elly’s tuna noodle casserole in a prior panel for great stomach-churning fun. In 1980, Elly blames the food combinations on her mother, but in 2007, the food is all Elly. Lynn Johnston likes that “full circle” thing in her storyline with Mike and Deanna raising their children in the same home Mike grew up in; so I find it amusing that full circle includes cooking to disgust the reader. Elly eventually became her mother and lost her sense of guilt over wasting ingredients.
1 cup – gravy, nondescript
1 bowl – custard (sniff for freshness)
1 slice – bologna
1 – green pepper, mushy
Place all the ingredients in a pan. Bake at 350 degrees for 45 minutes. Serve alone or with an expectorant like Ipecac for best effect.
I found Elly’s line about her mother turning all those ingredients into a casserole, amusing not only because it is disgusting to imagine them all together in a casserole; but because Elly turned into her mom by the time the strip ended. This strip from August, 2007; is often cited as the one strip where Elly’s cooking and her delight over it, managed to turn many a reader’s stomach. Lynn Johnston was not shy in showing the grease of those hamburgers literally pouring off the burger as Elly and John got ready to eat them. You have this in addition to Elly’s tuna noodle casserole in a prior panel for great stomach-churning fun. In 1980, Elly blames the food combinations on her mother, but in 2007, the food is all Elly. Lynn Johnston likes that “full circle” thing in her storyline with Mike and Deanna raising their children in the same home Mike grew up in; so I find it amusing that full circle includes cooking to disgust the reader. Elly eventually became her mother and lost her sense of guilt over wasting ingredients.
posted by howard at 10:10 PM
12 Comments:
This, of course, means that Liz will one day proudly serve Anthony a similarly unpalatable mess which he will in turn wolf down. The cycle of regrettable foods must continue forever, pickyfaces like April not withstanding. Spoiled Martian princesses might balk at eating slop but, since they killed Farley, their opinions don't count. Besides, everyone knows that their toned physiques and perfect health are evil because they want to think they're better than their families.
Elly: Your mother was disgusting. And you're stupid.
Elly eventually became her mother and lost her sense of guilt over wasting ingredients.Only in the sense that she stopped "wasting." (Shades of my "Carrie" parody!)
Lynn really shows how much she hates food any time she writes about it. Here, we have disgusting "leftovers" which Elly's mother supposedly would have cooked into a casserole (yeah right). Later, we'll be shown appalling greaseburgers combined with tuna casserole, along with some really gross table manners to show how eating = gorging. The strip has an obsessive hate/hate relationship with food.
That 2007 strip is very odd. She says she made the meal "from scratch," but it includes cheese, (canned) tuna, sesame buns, strawberry fudge, and ice cream, all of which she presumably purchased ready made. And yet, we are supposed to be agreeing with her statement that her meal made from processed foods isn't junk food because it was made "from scratch."
DreadedCandiru2,
This, of course, means that Liz will one day proudly serve Anthony a similarly unpalatable mess which he will in turn wolf down. This is a regret of not seeing the modern strip progress. There was a subtle story with Elizabeth going on that Lynn Johnston never spelled out explicitly, showing how the woman was maturing to be ready for marriage. Old Elizabeth kept a filthy apartment and had Mac dinner and Oreos for mealtime. This was pointed out several times for comic effect. Ready-for-marriage Elizabeth’s apartment was clean enough for visitors and she was shown making salad a few times. It would have been interesting to see Elizabeth would go through a cooking phase similar to her mother’s.
There were quite a few strips in the early days complaining about Elly’s cooking. In the last few years of the strip, her cooking was proclaimed as second best only to Anne Nichols’, the professional chef. This was because Anne could make prime rib, while Elly was making burgers. We will never know if Elizabeth would have gone the same way.
aprilp_katje,
Only in the sense that she stopped "wasting." (Shades of my "Carrie" parody!)There’s a blast from the past. How long have we been doing this snarking now?
clio-1,
Later, we'll be shown appalling greaseburgers combined with tuna casserole, along with some really gross table manners to show how eating = gorging. The strip has an obsessive hate/hate relationship with food.Lynn has certainly not been shy showing the Pattersons with gross table manners, even from the very beginning of the strip. Clearly she thinks people eating with food flying out of their mouths is the height of hilarity, it comes up so often.
I don’t know if you have seen the Healthy Choice commercials with Julia Louis-Dreyfus eating like a slob. Jane Lynch watches her eat and compares her to a dog eating peanut butter. The first thought that popped into my mind was, “She eats like a Patterson.”
Anonymous,
And yet, we are supposed to be agreeing with her statement that her meal made from processed foods isn't junk food because it was made "from scratch."It’s hard to tell sometimes if Lynn Johnston is poking fun at the Pattersons for their eating, or if she personally agrees with them. In this strip, Elly’s definition of “from scratch” is so far off and the eating is so disgusting, I am inclined to think that she trying to get a laugh out of it. In this strip, the Pattersons’ food obsession sets them against someone doing a prayer on Christmas Day, and given that the person praying is Mira Sobinski, I think Lynn favours the Pattersons’ opinion on eating.
I think we're supposed to agree with Elly in the 2007 "from scratch" strip. It's so smug: I made my own burgers so they're *healthy*by*definition* instead of those nasty ones brought home in a bag.
I do think that (some things like breadmakers aside) society has gotten really far from true 'from scratch' that almost anything where you put serious work into prepping rather than opening a takeout bag counts as from scratch. It's not healthy stuff, but making your own burger patties counts in the range I think society would call "from scratch".
Good grief, this could get ridiculous - you have to make your own _cheese_ to count? How about ketchup (from fresh tomatoes, so make your *own* concentrated paste), and don't forget to whip up prepared mustard from powder. Heck, if you cut potatoes up for fries, is it only "from scratch" if you press your own veggie oil from the canola in your backyard? ;-)
Making bread at home, rather than buying it at the baker's every day, is a relatively new development historically, among European and North American populations -- I think it's late 19th and early twentieth century, actually. Bakers were really important people for a reason. People certainly didn't butcher and grind up animals on their own for the table on a regular basis :P. Or churn their own butter or, especially, make their own cheese, for that matter. The idea of a (wealthy) family farm where everything was made right there is both relatively recent historically (18th century North America, really) and could be fulfilled only by a pretty small population.
Being out in Arizona where there are large parts of the state no where near anybody, the idea of a family farm that is almost completely self-sufficient to survive is not that uncommon, even today. Even so, clio-1 is right that even in those situations, a number of stable items like mustard, for example, would have to be purchased. In populations where a baker was easily accessible, most families would probably take advantage of a baker, if they could.
The big difference to compare is that the items considered to be the standard for a burger, make the burger a meal that almost no 19th century family would have. After all, we live in a world where having sliced bread was considered to be novelty less than 100 years ago.
I agree with InsertMonikerHere, that Elly probably considered her burger to be made from scratch, but I am not so sure about Lynn Johnston. The grease, drawn to be oozing off those burgers, is excessive.
The size of the buns are even more excessive! I swear those things are bigger than both John and Elly's respective heads. Note John is preparing to unhinge his jaw in order to eat.
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