Popeye and Wimpy

Two cartoon characters had a direct influence on my young life. Up until I started watching Popeye mom tried so hard to get me to eat spinach. She and dad were vegetable fans so with all our meat dishes we also had a portion of vegetables. I don’t mean only potatoes but those green leafy kinds of veggies. Mom made spinach soup and she always added a pile of spinach to her liver.

Well, it was hard to stomach all of that. Then one day there was Popeye. Popeye ate spinach right out of the can and it gave him plenty of energy to beat his enemies. Well, It got me thinking that eating spinach out of a can wasn’t as good as eating it the way mom made it. So I tasted the spinach soup and it was great and then from there on, I ate all of my spinach. You can imagine that mom was a Popeye fan too.

With Popeye’s Uncle Wimpy it was different. Wimpy got me to acquire a taste for hamburgers. That guy could just pile them in. Well, mom was not into making hamburgers. Our nationality was Latvian and mom was into home-cooked kind of meals. So I had to settle for having hamburgers whenever I was lucky enough to go out with my parents. Of course, my parents knew that fast food hamburgers weren’t to be encouraged so we would go to a diner.

I think most of us could say that we have had our share of fast food burgers but since they are not very healthy I soon learned to make burgers at home. Even today I make up a burger patty from fresh ground beef, sauté it and eat it between two slices of toasted bread. My choice of toppings usually ketchup, thin onion slice and tomato slices.