Things Consumed

 

Unlike Mom Used To Make, Part VI: My Mom!!

A serious misconception about this series, shared by one potential contributor, is a fear that the people writing here don’t eat exactly what their parents made for them when they were kids because their parents were either terrible cooks or bad people, and that this entire series is somehow anti-parent.

The easiest way to refute this, is to publish the BIG list, which is the list of items my mother ate as a child, showing that she has also made her own food traditions, rather than directly mimicking her own childhood experiences. I am happy to provide a report from my extensive telephone interview with my mother on this subject.

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I would like to provide some quick background about my mother’s childhood, to set the scene. My mother grew up in relatively rural 1940s Connecticut, and spoke Polish exclusively until she was 4. While her father was away in W.W.II, she and my grandmother lived on my great-grandmother’s farm, where they ate farm-fresh foods greatgrandma grew, and, in the case of animal foods, raised and slaughtered right there. The family was relatively food-independent from the supermarket lifestyle known today; and my entrepreneurial great-grandma sold her surplus to others from a stand. They purchased a few food items, such as grain for bread or exotic spaghetti sauce that came in jars.

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=Crops=
-apples
-berries (as a dessert)
-cherries
-corn
-peaches
-pears
-peas
-plums
-rhubarb
-sweet peppers
-walnuts

My mom was surprised to remember that young tomato and pepper plants came from Gus Lober’s nursery. She notes that lots of things could be grown in Connecticut, and that cold frames (box-greenhouses used to start seeds) were used to get a head start on spring.

=Animals & Animal Products Therefrom=
-bees (yes, greatgrandma was a beekeeper) - honey
-chickens for eggs and meat (after seeing a beheaded chickens running, my mother refused to eat chicken for a long time)
-cows for milk and butter (yes, they churned their own butter!)
-pigs for meat. My greatgrandparents had their own smokehouse, and made their own kielbasa. The sights and smells of buckets of pig entrails has kept my mother away from most pork to this day - although, ironically, the only pork she eats now is kielbasa.

=Items they caught or gathered=
-berries
-clams
-dandelions (before they bloom, gather, wash, and cook with water, olive oil, and vinegar)
-eels (see alarming preparation notes in dinner section)
-endives
-fish
-spinach

=Items they home-canned: =
-gooseberries (jam/jelly)
-grapes (jam/jelly)
-green tomatoes (pickled, with onions),
-peaches
-pears
-quince (!) (jam/jelly)
-strawberries (jam/jelly)

=Items they bought:=
-“Ragu” spaghetti sauce
-canned pineapple
-cider (rare)
-coffee
-dates & figs
-ice cream (from the ice cream shop - rare)
-lox & bagels (Greatgrandma was a seamstress with wealthy Jewish clients, and was introduced to Jewish foods through them)
-olive oil
-pickled herring & matzos
-pumpernickel bread (which Mom says the kids wouldn’t eat)
-rye bread
-sugar
-tea

=dinner dishes=
-baked ham with pineapple and brown sugar
-barley soup with meat
-beet soup
-bread with butter or honey (“It’s not a meal without bread and butter”)
-carrots
-chicken soup with homemade noodles
-clams (when the water was clean enough for clamming)
-cold cuts/sandwiches (Sunday meal, when you weren’t supposed to cook)
-corn
-creamed mushrooms
-creamed onions
-eels (eel lore: they would catch an eel, nail its head to a board, skin it, dip it in egg batter, and fry it but it would wiggle while being cooked. When it stopped wiggling, you knew it was done.) (Omigod, I’m going to have nightmares.)
-fish (from fishing), often fried
-fried sweet peppers and onions
-green beans
-hot dogs with potato salad or cole slaw
-kielbasa and other sausages
-meatloaf with baked or mashed potatoes
-peas
-pickles (homemade)(of course!)
-pierogies with homemade chili sauce. The dough was cut using a special tool, similar to a ravioli cutter. (How is it that’ I’ve never seen a pierogie cutter?) These were filled with cheese or meat, and eaten with sour cream. I don’t know where the chilies came from.
-pork chops with gravy and “peezewee” (piezewe? a type of potato dumpling)
-red cabbage sauerkraut
-roasted chicken
-salad (even in winter): homegrown lettuce, cucumbers, and tomatoes
-spaghetti with Ragu (purchased) sauce
-stews

=baked goods=
-bread with citrated fruit
-cookies
-Easter specialty breads with walnuts, cinnamon, and yeast
-pies

[My mother notes that the oven leaned, and so all cakes baked in it were lopsided. This caused some embarrassment at school fundraisers, where they sometimes bought back their own, delicious-yet-leaning cakes.]

=beverages=
-beer (homemade)
-coffee (purchased)
-liquor (various bootleg sorts, made by families since Prohibition)
-milk
-rye & ginger ale (equivalent of whiskey & soda?)
-tea (purchased leaves)
-wine (homemade)

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My mother is now a devoted advocate of packaged food, as my 2004 inventory of her pantry and refrigerators demonstrated. She still eats a variety of healthy foods, and makes soups from scratch, but when I visit prefers fast-food sandwiches and pizza to cooking, and store-bought desserts over making them by hand.

She’s not taking a rebellious stand against against her mother’s cooking, or her grandmother’s cooking: rather, she’s just semi-retired from cooking, after decades of doing that for her OWN nuclear family. And the family dinners she made in my childhood (from my own list, right below Steven’s), differs dramatically from the list you see here. That’s not rebellion or rejection: it’s just doing your own thing at different times with different available foods.

Quite a list, isn’t it? You know what happens next, of course. I’m sending this list to my grandmother and asking what SHE had as a kid!

In the meantime, I need to harass my local friends again for their lists...
posted by Arlene (Beth)9:56 PM