I insist on the family dinner - it really is the only time of day when everyone is together and chats about their day!
When I was a kid fast food was coming in the back door and grabbing a leftover biscuit and piece of bacon before running back out to play.
Well, just yesterday, I had some time to kill and spent more time in the supermarket than i usually do. I checked the jam section. I wanted to get some strawberry jam but when I read the label "30 gr. of fruit used for 100 gr product" or something like that, and the ingredients list had more vowels than I cared for (lots of "E"s) I just put the jar back and thought "I'll get some from my mom when I go visit her"
OK, my memories of eating with my family as a kid in 1957 go like this. Dinner was fried meat, loaf of white bread and a lot of gravy. (My dad didn't eat potatoes, but our friends and neighbors did. Said he'd done too many potatoes on KP in the marines). Our dinner was supplemented with boiled canned green beans or canned boiled spinach. I try to forget the canned boiled ochra, but it wasn't too bad fried in cornmeal. You could also throw in a gallon of milk. I lived in three different states in the western U.S. and our neighbors all ate the same kinds of foods. Fresh veggies didn't happen out of season even if you had a garden, of which none of our neighbors, relatives or friends had. A salad was iceberg lettuce. No way I want to eat like 1957 ever again. Breakfast was a daily serving of two eggs, cold or hot cereal, toasted white bread with margerine and lots of milk. Only rich people or cousins living in California got orange juice. Today's farmer markets, organic section of the grocery store, labeled foods and variety of food choices is awesome. No way I want to go back. I live in luxury of fresh veggies and fruits year round with a variety of foods not imagined in 1957. Fast food chains may be the norm now, but manufacturers have to tell us what's in the food they sell us not just the chemicals both at the fast food joint and on food packaging. They have to nclude gluten, nuts, eggs, etc. They didn't used to have to put everything on the labels. Heck, they had a huge list of things they didn't have to put on labels that they commonly added even after they first started labeling and giving us some information as to what was in that can/jar/box. Yeh! For labeling! The whole farmer thing and big business/government is a whole other topic much too big for me to get my tiny brain around. Marrying into a ranching/farmer family in the 1970's our transition from family farms to cooperate farms is a huge complex change. Bless the small farmers that help supply our foods.
Jewell, this sounds like my dad. He won't touch carrots. "I had enough of those in the Navy that I never want to even see another one". I made chicken noodle soup one day and he said.."next time don't put any carrots in it for me" I haven't invited him back for soup.
I grew up in the 50's and early 60's, on a farm. A typical meal for a family of 5 was as follows. Home grown beef or pork. Home grown potatoes,corn or beans or some other homegrown veggie. Cold raw milk just hours from the cow. The only thing that came in a can was something that Mom couldn't or wouldn't grow in her garden. "Canned things were canned in jars, or was frozen fresh. Some of the best food I ever ate! In 2011 we bought a fresh turkey from Wal Mart, except it wasn't fresh, it had been frozen and then allowed to thaw part way, there was still ice in the middle of it. The bird had no taste to it at all. I could have chewed on a piece of rubber and gotten the same affect. They have bred these birds to grow so fast and be disease resistance that they have bred the taste right out of it. No more turkey for me! This past Thanksgiving and Christmas, we had rotisserie chicken instead!
Just got out a couple of ham steaks.Farmer friend raises them Brown eggs another friend we buy from.Had chili last night made out of deer meat.Tomato and peppers from garden. Last of the onion. But I also grew up on farm.But Father owned a cafe so did eat out a lot.But all of his things was from scratch.know for his baked beans.And potato salad .
In defense of Twinkies, originally they were delicious. Not filled with chemicals and fake fats as they are today and they had to be eaten in less than a week after buying or they would be stale just like bread. They were made from a real sponge cake recipe and since the filling was made with real cream and vanilla we kept them in the fridge. The vanilla replaced real banana bits during WWII because of a banana shortage. Speaking of bread in the 1950's era....mostly white bread made with bleached flour. No taste or health benefits, people wanted white bread because they thought it must be better than the old fashioned homemade whole wheat bread they grew up eating in the 1920's and 1930's. You couldn't find a loaf of whole wheat and certainly not whole grain bread. In 1957 I was 11 yrs old so I really didn't care where our food came from. Mom bought it and cooked it and except for the pot roast she would cook until it was as chewy as boot leather, everything tasted good to me. I lived in the city and I don't remember ever seeing a veggie being grown in anyone's yard. Food was eaten in season when available at the grocery store, i.e. corn on the cob and cantaloupe in summer.. or bought in a can. The freezer at the top of our refrigerator was used for meat and Mellorine or Ice milk (very low cost alternative to ice cream, extremely tasteless and very bad for you) so there were no frozen veggies in our house and they cost way more than canned anyway. The fresh fruit and veggies that made it to the stores was very expensive and a very limited variety and since no one grew organically, they usually were sprayed with all sorts of bug preventing chemicals which we were told were totally safe to eat but be sure to wash the produce before cooking or eating. Remember the DuPont Chemical Company motto of the time period "Better Things for Better Living... Through Chemistry" The store bought canned veggies had also been sprayed but they cooked it in such high heat they figured that would kill the chemicals. And preservatives and hard to pronounce additives were being added to food, they just weren't required to tell the consumer it was there. Boric Acid was used as a preservative off and on from 1870 to WWI, then brought back into use after WWII then finally outlawed in food in the 1950's. People have been fighting the use of questionable preservatives in foods since the late 1800's. Even smaller farms that sold at roadside stands (no farmers market in small towns) were most likely not organic so you had to wash them well before eating...no eating straight off the vine that's for sure. The only food I would go back to the 1950's for are soft drinks...specifically Dr. Pepper made with Pure Cane Sugar instead of high fructose corn syrup....but then I can buy those at the grocery store again so I guess I don't have to go back in time afterall.
i was eight in 1957, and two years before we had moved from Alaska to Maine. we llived on a quarter of an acre on the bay. it waas an old tree farm with many trees removed. my folks had a big garden and we ate from there during all seasons. mom canned and froze veggies, and made homemade jams. she was always baking breads and rolls. we also fished and dug clams in our backyard. we bartered alot with the local lobsterman too. i remember going to a girl scout event one summer whereee we camped out over night. i was given a box of instant cake mix and told to make dessert. i was stymied cause i only knew how to make cakes from scratch! this is the first year we bought a grass fed turkey. it was quite spendy, but a treat, and we were very very pleased with the flavor, and the amount of meat on the bird.
