“Shit on a shingle” is the answer my Dad would routinely give to the urgent and pleading question “What’s for dinner?” I dreaded dinner. It was a Nancy Drew mystery I did not want to solve. My mom was a home economics teacher in the 70s so our dinners were often a horrifying parade of odd experiments, at least to an eight-year olds palate.

The Galloping Gourmet inspired Mom to cook an endless array of pseudo-French Anglo dishes. Although my sisters and I found Graham Kerr entertaining to watch, often boozed up or possibly feigning inebriation, I secretly hated him. He looked like a tall gangly kangaroo with long paddle like teeth. Couldn’t we just skip the main course and go straight to dessert? Then dessert, parfaits with fruit cocktail, the brandy soaked fruit marinated in the dark green cut glass jar on the counter. The build-up of gases caused by fermentation occasionally made the lid blow like a projectile across the kitchen. Phew. Didn’t that mean it had been rendered inedible? Never. Never. Never. Always a new jar at the ready. I imagined there were brains in those jars. Squirmy raw human brains. As if cooked would be better. Where were the Twinkies and Hostess cakes all the neighbors ate?

My sisters and I had our techniques to avoid tasting the nightly masterpieces. Maybe it was just me. A simple paper napkin, chew chew chew, wipe your mouth because it is polite and ptooey, spit that meat wad (meat-gum because I had been chewing it forever) into the napkin and tuck between your leg and the seat bottom at the family table. Perhaps try this, store unwanted particles in your cheek and have a sudden urgent need to use the bathroom? “You may be excused”, a quick spit and flush down the toilet. Could get away with that only once during dinner, so packed my mouth like a chipmunk. But not so full that it became obvious.

Only one brilliant scheme remained a secret until I was older and confessed at about the same time I realized the meals were actually masterpieces. Back then my Dad was fond of collecting pottery. He was the Dean at the Rochester Institute of Technology and had a lot of hippie teacher artist acquaintances that were potters and pot-heads. We ate off rustic hand thrown earthenware plates with matching handle-free mug drink cups. It was the 70’s ok? Anyway, the vessels were not transparent. This is the key to my deception AND we drank milk every night. I filled that hippie mug-cup to the brim with milk. When no one was looking I’d drop depth charges of dinner into that mug. They never checked the milk. They never checked the milk! Never ever said, “Did you finish your milk?” My burials at Vitamin D milk sea were never discovered because the cups were not glass, transparent, boring old off the shelf everyday revealing glass. Thank you hippie R.I.T.pottery professors for your thoughtful gifts to my family. Like, hey man, thanks.

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What was an 8 year olds saving grace? Once a week my Dad would make pizza. Now that was an altogether different deal. He would break out the box of Chef Boy-Ar-Dee. It contained all you needed to make a fine family pizza dinner. The mix for dough (Just add water!), a can of tomato sauce and that ubiquitous green can of Kraft parmesan cheese. All pulled off the shelf, not from the fridge. Just how I liked it. I loved that night. I never asked “Whats for dinner?” Dad never answered “Shit on a shingle”. Because when it was pizza night he actually knew what was for dinner because he was making it. The ingredients were conveniently listed on the back of the box. That was the best pizza I ever ate and to this day I can remember the smell wafting to my bedroom. No oniony, garlicky, gingery weirdness. Just tomato sauce and bread.

I never had to be called twice.