LAND OF FIRE AND FROZEN FOOD By Mary Becelia In June of 1974, when I was eight, my family boarded a plane and left Virginia for the remote and exotic Arctic Circle. We were bound for Reykjavik, Iceland, and a whole new life. But once we arrived, instead of being enthralled by the midnight sun, the puffins, the lunar landscapes, or any other features of this beautiful land, I was instead enraptured by the worst of that era’s American “cuisine.” Prior to our departure for Iceland, what we would eat there wasn’t on my mind. I was more concerned with the basics: shelter and school. My father’s employer, the State Department, provided us with booklets that described our home-to-be. From reading these, and liberal use of my imagination, I came up with some interesting ideas of where and how we would live, complete with snow-covered tundra, large tents made of animal skins, and lots of reindeer. Large sleds were in the picture as well; the reindeer would pull me in a sleigh to a log cabin schoolhouse. In short, I was convinced that my new life was going to be Little House in the Prairie, Gone Arctic. I soon learned better. We landed at the naval base airport in Keflavik on a cold day (the days are always cold in Iceland, even in June), a few short hours after departing a steamy Virginia summer. There was not a reindeer to be seen, nor any log cabins. Instead, an embassy representative, Mary Jane, was there to greet us and drive us in her car to Reykjavik. She was tall and angular, with an outgoing personality, vivid red lipstick and artificially dark hair that belied her 50+ status. She took us to her studio apartment and jollied our jet-lagged selves through the rest of the evening. When it was time to eat, Mary Jane introduced my little sister, Susan, and me to the wonder of TV dinners. “Girls!” she hollered with unnecessary volume from her kitchenette, which was removed from the living area by only a few feet. We scampered to the counter that doubled as a table. “Eat up!” She helped us pull the hot foil off the aluminum trays and handed us each a fork and napkin. Susan and I glanced at each other with barely repressed glee, then at the aluminum trays in front of us. My mouth watered at the sight: two pieces of crispy fried chicken
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FLAR / Spring 2016 / Volume 4, Issue 1
and a serving of creamy mashed potatoes awaiting our forks. This was nothing like the meals our mother generally served. Moving to Iceland was already a great thing! The fact that I had to travel to a new continent to experience the joy of my first TV dinner was a testament to my mother’s fanatical loyalty to that great tradition of the 70s’ dinner table: the casserole. Clearly, there was no need to make cooking easier for yourself or consuming dinner more agreeable for your kids when you had plenty of cream of mushroom soup and cans of tuna fish for the combining and serving. Tuna casserole and its cousins: salmon loaf, hamburger pie, hamburger stroganoff, chicken a la king and chicken broccoli casserole continued to make regular appearances on our dinner table for the next decade or so, but those delicious CTVs (as Susan and I nicknamed them) were allowed a showcase special when our parents went to diplomatic functions and a sitter was left in charge. A few weeks after that dinner at Mary Jane’s apartment, I discovered another rare delicacy that my mother had heretofore kept hidden from me: a brand of freezer treats with the improbable name of Otter Pops. I don’t think I’d ever had a freezer pop prior to this. I’d enjoyed the occasional Popsicle, and was vaguely familiar with the Good Humor Man from the two or three times I was allowed to sample his wares. But Otter Pops were in a new category of frozen yumminess. They came in boxes decorated with whimsical cartoon otters and inside were the actual pops, plastic tubes containing artificially flavored and colored sugar-ice. When I spotted them one day at the naval base commissary, I knew they had to be delish. How I persuaded my mother to purchase them is a good question, but I did and found them to be the perfect finale to a chicken TV dinner. Actually, they made the perfect finale to just about any meal. There were many wonders in Iceland that I still remember and may write about some day: the wooly sheep and Icelandic horses roaming free in the countryside, salmon leaping up waterfalls, geysers, swimming in geothermal pools surrounded by snow, the evil witch Grylla and her elvish sons, the Yule Lads… But the Otter Pops, oh, the Otter Pops !