What I Ate: Corn Flake Chicken

It’s strange, but now that we are six weeks into this project I was reviewing the meals I intend to share as we move forward and discovered that there are actually very few are from my childhood. Like, the years my age was in the single digits.

So much of what I have written down and plan to share is from high school, college, my twenties and as I grew into motherhood, and from my relationship with my friends right now and with Adam. After reflection, I think it makes a little sense. Once I was a certain age, I was the one who was exploring food, thinking about as a career and more, and also more so just choosing what I ate. Another piece of it is also that once I was a certain age, my thoughts, feelings and connections were deeper and more diverse thus making the things I ate while experiencing all of that more memorable.

My family makes fun of me for it, but I have a very good memory. I think it because I have this thing when I know something is a “memory” when I am in it. (Which only sort of sounds cool– it leads to a lot of sad Christmas Days because it feels “over,” when I know I should just be present.)

I was and still am a documenter– always taking pictures. I think this nature leads to keeping an eye open for moments and memories and when you take a picture it also does something to your brain to lock it in a bit more. Because of this, and my parents keeping a really great record of things, I also have the gift of a lot of evidence. I love to go back and look at albums, photos, saved old letters, journals, and even old planners.

But, for some reason, food memories pre age 15ish didn’t come to me quickly when I mapped this out this summer. I hardly had any in my first plan of this.

This week I wanted to change that and, despite what I believe to be a good memory, to recall noteworthy things I ate as a kid has required a bit of thought.

I had a really good childhood– the only really “hard,” unusual thing being a lot of moving. I spent third, fourth, and fifth grade Christmas all in different homes. (Something that might also contribute to the melancholic feelings I get at Christmas…) There is a video from one of those Christmases where the cheery voice of my dad behind the camera says, “The first Christmas in our new house!” as he pans to a shot of the living room and me by the tree. To which, a nine year old me responds with what I believe to be excellent budding dark humor: “Who knows where we will be next year…”

Told ya. I couldn’t just be in the moment.

As for the things that I ate, they were pretty normal for a white girl in the midwest. “Pretty normal” because my mom would be classified by today’s standards as a “schunchy” mom. She made a good amount of things from scratch and we only ate out on occasion. My sister and I joke that we had weird food at our house (I would have a few friends agree with this). Our snacks were things like blue corn chips and homemade salsa, microwave popcorn or nuts.

We were what the internet has dubbed “an ingredient house.” A house where there were the ingredients available to make things versus containing “ready to eat” meal items. This made us covet some of the 90s kid classics like Dunkaroos and Chef Boyardee. (And, honestly probably contributed to us becoming confident cooks today because if you wanted a snack the kitchen was essentially the set of Chopped and we had to get creative.)

But mom was “scrunchy,” meaning only sort of “crunchy” or “from scratch.” So despite plenty of ingredients, we also had many of the classic kid staples. Think: Frozen Chicken Nuggets, grilled cheese, and rectangle pizza at lunch.

Many of the foods I write about in this have roots to my childhood despite a more impactful story about them later in life. For example, I ate a lot of caesar salad with friends in high school and beyond; but, I first had a caesar salad the summer I turned ten. That summer, my Dad started a job in Columbus, Ohio, but we had trouble finding a house. I also think my mom didn’t want to move us from our friends and experience a totally boring, friendless summer. So we stayed in Chicago while Dad was in an apartment in Ohio and we visited a handful of times to look at houses. We ate quite a bit of fast food traveling back and forth from Chicago to Columbus and when bouncing around all of the Columbus suburbs with a realtor.

Being ten, I decided I had outgrown a kids meal. Underwhelmed by a small toy, unless it was a Teeny Beanie, I explored what else McDonalds and Wendy’s menu had to offer. Wendy’s had a side caesar that I learned to make a full meal with a side of fries. The irony of all of this is that this meal– fries and a caesar (and a really good glass of rose)– may be makings of my “last meal” meal today. To think the roots of it are in the back of a minivan in the late days of summer 1997 when Princess Diana had just died, I had a Tamagotchi to care for, and was experimenting with glitter gel from Limited Too on my eyes all while my parents tried to navigate the Columbus suburbs is kind of special.

As was the time when a friend’s mom purchased a small cake just for me at her own daughter’s birthday party. Heather, my great friend and neighbor when we lived in Cincinnati from ages 5 to 8, picked out a big chocolate cake for her March birthday. I had given up chocolate for Lent and was taking it very seriously. (Like any second grader in pursuit of a first communion dress would.) Even going as far as getting “white milk” in the school lunch line. Talk about dedication to the Big Guy…!

Knowing me, I likely was talking a lot about my sacrifice and how I was still going strong. Heather and her mom took notice and presented me with my own small grocery store cake– white cake with white frosting flowers– at her party. I was little, but knew this level of noticing and care was love. Maybe that’s where my love of plain white cake and white icing started and why it persists as my ultimate favorite cake to this day.

Opening up some of these memories, only brings more. This week in reflecting on meals from my childhood so much has come back and made me smile and laugh. I think I am going to have to do a whole “Left Overs” or even bump something to do another essay on the influence of American Girl food. (Think the cookbooks, the recipes in the magazines, the dolls teeny tiny foods, etc.) I honestly cannot believe I forgot about some of those recipes and meals. But, once I remembered the hold that Pleasant Company had on me, an avalanche of pleasant memories flooded my brain. If you are a peer of mine, I hope some of these silly food stories might do the same for you.

What is also helping me clue into my own old food memories is to pay more attention to life around me. I have two kids who are just that now, kids. No longer babies, but living, breathing, talking, reading kids. Same with so many of my friends.

Just this week, Savannah picked up a Disney Princess baking cookbook at the library making me think about snacks and meals, like the character breakfasts, at Disney World (Land…? Florida.) in my youth. My son is so into Harry Potter– making his way through The Sorcerer’s Stone right now– and I can only think of how my family saw so many installments of the series together in theaters on Thanksgiving Day that the movies on Thanksgiving became a sort of tradition.

And, the simple mention of a friend’s kid reading “Little House on the Prairie” brought back memories of the, I think, universal elementary field trip to cosplay prairie life at some sort of “Pioneer Village.” I remembered my lunch on a trip to Ohio’s pioneer village that delighted me to no end. The trip was with my Girl Scout Troop was *so* authentic thanks to some magic made by my mom.

She was (and still is) crafty and a tad extra if there is a theme. She’d taken the recommendation to pack something “of the times” to heart– so much so, she put it all in a basket that I carried in the crook of my arm, really finishing off the look of my long skirt, apron, and bonnet. Inside the carefully packed basket was cold ham in wax paper, a couple drop biscuits with a dollop of butter in what seemed like a tin cup (very Laura Ingalls…), but I actually think was the jigger of their aluminum cocktail shaker. To top it all off, a real root beer in a glass bottle! Sugary root beer, kind of rare treat in our “scrunchy” home, and doing basic arithmetic on a slate for a day made me think, “Who needs running water, electricity and Nickelodeon?! This is great!” It had to be these trips that lead to droves of millennials coveting nap dresses in 2020… Right?

My mom was highly involved in our childhood– helping at school and making magic like this. When we lived in Cincinnati, alongside a great group of friends she made, they took PTO to another level. The Halloween’s were wild in those years with a huge school fundraiser event. I remember cake walks, bobbing for apples, and an incredibly scary and detailed haunted house that included creepy clowns and–in a weird twist for my brain to understand– my mom as the creative director. The cake walk felt like a better fit for her (it was for me…), but really all of those women were so talented with food, crafts, decor, events, and memory making. They made more magic for our elementary eyes than the best witch could.

Had they had the Internet, these women would have been Mommy Bloggers– sharing tips, holiday decor, crafts, and recipes. They were that good, that creative, and so passionate. But, in the early nineties, they used what they had to share their talents.

One school year, The PTO put together a cookbook and sold it to raise money for the school. The spiral bound book, meant to look like a blue composition book, included food and school themed drawings from students and recipes from PTO members. That blue cookbook lived on our counter and moved with us to Chicago and back to Ohio again. It is now still a part of my mom’s cookbook collection and I would venture to guess she still uses it.

As my mom cooks through any cookbook, she takes note in the margin. Simple stuff like, “Very good” or “Needs more salt/cheese/oregano…” The PTO book is full of notes and they pages are crinkled and oil splattered as the recipes became some of our household staples.

My favorite of the whole book was Corn Flake Chicken, a recipe from the mom of my best friend in those years, Denise. It was what I requested for my birthday meal for years. I loved the spicy, herby flavors on the crunchy corn flakes that dusted the chicken’s skin. It felt as close we got to fried chicken in our “weird” food house… and who doesn’t love fried chicken?

And, I loved that it came from my friend’s mom. It was something Denise ate in her kitchen, too.

We were at an age where our imagination still fueled our play. We could be Mary Kate and Ashley on an adventure or the Boxcar Kids, alone in the woods, making a home with whatever they could find. So much of the content we consumed was about siblings or orphans. (The 90s were kind of weird and sad like that…) I know I thought more than once about “wouldn’t it be neat if we were? And somehow we lived together?” Knowing we were eating something that was made in her home was special and felt a bit like living our imaginations.

Or, maybe it was just being a kid who moved away from good friendship, at an age when that was really starting to matter, that really made Corn Flake Chicken matter, too.

Denise’s mom was Bonnie and for as close as Denise and I were, Bonnie and my mom may have been just as tight. They had many similar interests. Food and cooking, obviously. But, also sewing, themed birthday parties, and getting involved with our Girl Scouts Troop. My siblings were even the same ages and genders as Denise’s so we were all good friends… Me and Denise, the oldests. Molly and Kerry, middle girls. Then, both our mom’s were pregnant together and having boys in the summer of 1994.

I don’t know their whole story and I know there is so much more to an adult friendship than a kid can see. But, the morning we moved back to Chicago I got a peek of it. Bonnie and Denise showed up at our house on the cold, winter morning before the sun rose. The goodbye parties had been had– and they were plenty and good. But, they both wanted one last hug.

After they left, I remember sitting on my mom’s lap– maybe one of the last times I did being a third grader and nearly nine. Together, we cried in the dark hallway between our kitchen and dining room at the loss of our really good friends.

Our house empty. The station wagon and Uhaul packed for the trip to a new house, a new school, and new friends.

We sang the Girl Scouts song:

Make new friends

But keep the old

One is silver

And the other’s gold.

A reminder to us both to be strong and keep looking ahead because there was a new house, new school, and new friends. But, to remember this place and our great friends here, too.

For years in that new Chicago house and into the one in Dublin, we kept in touch– visiting Cincinnati when we could and connecting on Facebook ten years later.

We also kept making Corn Flake Chicken, never forgetting where and who it came from.

(And because, let’s be real… Corn Flakes were one of the only cereals mom kept in our “scrunchy,” ingredient house…!)

Corn Flake Chicken

• 3 boneless skinless chicken breasts cut into 6 pieces
• 2 large eggs
• ¼ cup whole milk
• 4 cups cornflakes
• 2 teaspoons paprika
• 1 teaspoon garlic powder
• ½ teaspoon onion powder
• ½ teaspoon oregano
• 1 teaspoon salt
• ½ teaspoon black pepper
• Cooking spray

• Preheat your oven to 400 degrees Fahrenheit and prepare a baking sheet by lining it with parchment paper and placing an oven-safe wire rack over it.
• Prepare your chicken by cutting each breast in half so you have 6 equal pieces, set aside.
• Whisk the eggs and milk in a medium shallow bowl, and set aside.
• In a large plastic bag, add your cornflakes, paprika, garlic, onion, oregano, salt, and pepper.
• Use a rolling pin to crush the cornflakes and shake until everything has come together into a coarse crumb mixture. Pour the cornflake crumbs out into a large plate.
• Dip your chicken into the egg mixture to coat, remove and coat generously in the cornflake crumbs, completely covering the chicken.
• Place the breaded chicken onto the prepared wire rack and pan, repeat with all your chicken cuts.
• Once all the chicken is breaded, spray them each with cooking oil and place in the oven, and bake for 20-25 minutes, flipping halfway through baking.
• Remove from the oven and allow the chicken to cool for a few minutes before enjoying.