does Food still taste the same as back in 1900 - 1920? or 1930's?

[tonyb]

Anyone else getting hungry?

 

[Foxer55]

HudsonHawk,

Congratulations to you for having the financial resources to be able to do so. But most people are not so fortunate and must rely on what's commercially available.

Because it is no longer produced or available locally. Shortcut growing cycles to increase profitability meaning ungrown products, transit times from abroad or the other end of the country, and preservatives and pesticides have a definite affect on the foods.

 

[Foxer55]

HudsonHawk,

The other side of that coin is that foods last a lot longer now.

If the bugs can't live on it how do you expect humans to live on it?

 

[GHT]

The type of chemicals used changed radically in the late 30's with chlorine-based pesticides and insecticides (chlordane, lindane, endrin, DDT...etc), which were orginally developed for wartime. The 1940's through 1960's became known as the "Golden Age of Pesticides" due to their ubiquitous use. If you ate produce from 1936-1972, you can bet it was loaded with these.

As a small boy, I loved helping out in my grandmother's fish & chip shop. Granny had a hand-cranked potato peeler, she always insisted that I remove all the peel, but to be careful not lose too much fleshbecause that was her profit. My grandmother told me that root vegetables stored impurities in their skins, by peeling them, you removed those impurities, such as pesticides.

She told me that in the early 1950's, do you know I have never challenged granny's wisdom even though there's probably no scientific evidence to it, on the contrary, to this day I always carefully shave off the outer peel of carrots and parsnips. It took me ages to eat small salad potatoes, cooked in their skins.

 

[LizzieMaine]

Best thing in the world to eat is raw carrots, straight out of the dirt. Wipe them off on your sleeve first if you're spleeny.

 

[HudsonHawk]

HudsonHawk,



Because it is no longer produced or available locally. Shortcut growing cycles to increase profitability meaning ungrown products, transit times from abroad or the other end of the country, and preservatives and pesticides have a definite affect on the foods.

Absolutely. But that has nothing to do with the fact that most Americans today simply cannot afford the land and time required to have personal farming and livestock operations.

 

[3fingers]

Part of the reason meat does not taste like it used to is lack of fat. Fat is really the only thing that produces flavor in any meat. When the livestock changed from what was called a lard hog to an extremely lean hog, the flavor went out the window along with a lot of the texture, which is also very important to a good eating experience. The same is true with fat and marbling in beef cattle. When consumers (and packers) started demanding leaner cuts of meat, things got carried away and animals were engineered to produce extremely lean meat. The upshot is that now the product is something that many people no longer want to buy. Here are a couple of examples of animals that do not exist in today's world. But if they did you would love the taste of the meat.

 

[scottyrocks]

Maybe I'm relying on my own memory too much, but I grew up on canned (sometimes frozen) vegetables, soups, etc. No kid is going to eat his vegetables if they are dumped from a can and then cooked to a sludge.

Growing up in the '60s and early '70s, I didn't know vegetables came in any way other than cans full of water. I hated vegetables growing up. When I finally discovered fresh veggies, it was a revelation.

 

[Stanley Doble]

Congratulations to you for having the financial resources to be able to do so. But most people are not so fortunate and must rely on what's commercially available.

I had to laugh when I read this. When I was growing up everybody had a vegetable garden. Housewives made their own jams, pickles, and preserves. Later the deep freeze made storing your garden produce easier. Buying everything from the grocery store was an affectation for the rich.

 

[HudsonHawk]

I had to laugh when I read this. When I was growing up everybody had a vegetable garden. Housewives made their own jams, pickles, and preserves. Later the deep freeze made storing your garden produce easier. Buying everything from the grocery store was an affectation for the rich.

Having a vegetable garden is one thing. Most people I know have one now. But substistence farming and raising and slaughtering your own beef and pork requires resources that most people simply don't have today.

 

[F. J.]

Sounds like something Clark Gable would've said . . .

Best thing in the world to eat is raw carrots, straight out of the dirt. Wipe them off on your sleeve first if you're spleeny.

That reminds me of It Happened One Night . . .
The scene I am referring to begins at 1:03.
[video=youtube;L0zj9IfYQ0M]http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=L0zj9IfYQ0M#t=63[/video]

 

[LizzieMaine]

I had to laugh when I read this. When I was growing up everybody had a vegetable garden. Housewives made their own jams, pickles, and preserves. Later the deep freeze made storing your garden produce easier. Buying everything from the grocery store was an affectation for the rich.

We tried to grow vegetables, but our soil was soil in name only -- most of our neighborhood was built on landfill, and the topsoil was a thin skin covering ashes, clinkers, slag, and rocks. Even weeds had a tough time growing in that mess.

It's the same thing in the neighborhood where I live now -- a thin layer of dirt, and about five inches of ashes. At least here there's actually chunks of coal mixed in with the ashes, but that hasn't helped my feeble efforts at growing vegetables. The last time I tried I got two carrots and a sad-looking tomato about the size of a ping-pong ball.

We bought a lot of vegetables from farm stands, in season, but the only thing we ever ate that grew on our own land was dandelion greens. Which, to this day, I hate. Otherwise, the only vegetables we got were Stokley's Finest.

 

[Stanley Doble]

Having a vegetable garden is one thing. Most people I know have one now. But substistence farming and raising and slaughtering your own beef and pork requires resources that most people simply don't have today.

You can cut the cost of meat by half or more, by buying beef and pork by the side or quarter at the abatoir or slaughterhouse. Some of the neighbors would club together and buy a critter from a farm or auction barn and save even more.

The meat comes cut and wrapped in brown paper. Even before the home deep freeze was invented there were frozen food lockers down town. A big refrigerated building, you could rent a locker to store your frozen garden produce and meat, and go in whenever you wanted something. Visiting the frozen food locker was part of the weekly shopping expedition.

Buying in bulk was a savings for large families but would not make much sense for the average person or couple today. But I still like to take advantage of sales to stock up.

 

[Huertecilla]

Congratulations to you for having the financial resources to be able to do so. But most people are not so fortunate and must rely on what's commercially available.

Do you see the contradiction here in your jump to unfounded conclusions?

A veggie plot need not be large, most people have a garden several times oversize.
The rest is for free, contrary to commercial products.
Why grow a lawn or flowers when you can grow good food?!

Lastly the ´luck´ thing is about choices.

Today we are having réal pizza with the slow roasted cherry tomatoes, caramelised with honey from our neighbour.

We have lóts of fresh green asperges too. We get them for free fom a neighbour because my gf helps him sell. He has a small ecological olive grove and has asperges in between. He cuts them fresh daily.
My gf is this very morning having her hair cut in our kitchen in exchange for some produce.

Here is me coming back from a neighbour with eco meat which we make last and a lót cheaper than the commercially available hormone stuff in cellofane;

It is all about choíses and neither luck nor money.

 

[Tomasso]

Do you see the contradiction here in your jump to unfounded conclusions?

Hey, lay off, that's his modus operandi you're talking about!

 

[Huertecilla]

Hey, lay off, that's his modus operandi you're talking about!

 

[Foxer55]

It seems the best you can do is to try to find real truck farms or farmers in your local area. Many large cities also have central locations of naturally grown foods, Baltimore, Chicago, San Francisco, etc. There is even a very interesting PBS film called To Market to Market to Buy a Fat Pig which can be had for a few bucks and is worth it. While some stores like Whole Foods are providing better products, other stores haven't gotten the message.

 

[Feraud]

It is all about choíses and neither luck nor money.

Lucky guys with money always say that.
Here is my neighborhood.. maybe we can dig up the streets to grow corn and let cattle graze up Broadway..

 

[LizzieMaine]

I once tried to grow corn in a window box. Didn't work.

 

[Feraud]

Obviously you're making the wrong choices..