Golden era food.

[Wild Root]

Whenever we would visit my grandmother, who lived in Georgia, she would cook the best meals. Aside from the usual Southern delicacies, she was known for serving sliced cucumbers in a bowl of cider vinegar with pepper. I always liked that, as it was so refreshing on a hot, humid summer day!

She was somewhat innovative in the kitchen and always put a secret ingredient into the apple filling. We never could figure out what made it so good--but guess what she used? Tang!

Tang was the secret ingredient eh? I thought it was going to be Love or something to that effect. Ah, that's a great story!

Funny you should mention cucumbers in vinegar! My Mother used to do that at lunch. I still really enjoy it today! I do like cucumbers of the pickled variety as well.

Root.

 

[Biltmore Bob]

My Granny will be 106 in September...

She used to can whole chickens in Mason jars. She's an Apalachian girl, born in KY, raised in WVA. My father's mother, she out lived 2 husbands, both coalminers. She had 18 children and my father was the baby of her last brood of 11. I will be making my anual pilgrimage to the old home place this September. They did not have an inside toilet till the mid 70s. She has grown and married greatgrandchildren.

 

[Wild Root]

106!

WOW! That's great!!! Wish her a happy birth day for us!

I met a swell couple the other day. This man was 95 and his wife wasn't too far off. They were married in 1940! 65 years of marriage is something to brag about!!! I took my hat to them! We also talked about how they went to their 67th high school reunion! They belonged to the class of 1938 in Alhambra CA. That City was way nicer then I'm sure!

Root

 

[IndianaGuybrush]

Your taste in cheesecake is impeccable. And yes, Peter Luger's is the be-all-end-all of old-time steakhouses. Best steak in the world!
Regarding egg creams, there are very few joints left in the city to get an authentic one. My faves are at Gem Spa at St.Marks Pl and Second Ave, and Ray's on A between Seventh St and St.Marks Pl.
But where is DiFara's?!!

DiFara's is here in Brooklyn on Avenue J and E.15th street. If you're going be prepared to wait, because only Dominic makes the pizzas and he makes 'em fresh one at a time. Well worth it though, oh god I'm getting so hungry!

 

[K.D. Lightner]

Is John's Pizza in Greenwich Village still there? It was one of my favorite pizza houses when I lived in NYC. I liked the pizza in NY and was rather bummed out when I moved here and found pizza in San Diego to be mundane. Not to mention the Chinese food. But at least the sushi and sea food were good.

One thing I will be able to get in Des Moines is good pizza. Some of the best tasting pizza I've ever had was there. Des Moines has a big Italian community, some families came over in the 1890's to work in the strip mines and then there was a big influx in the 30's. I lived in an area of Des Moines known as "Little Italy." Still, I did not taste pizza until well into my teens.

karol

 

[MudInYerEye]

Yeah, John's is still there, but it's really turned into a tourist trap the quality took a dive, and unfortunately Lombardi's has expanded and withered too. But there's still the old Patsy's up in East Harlem. Hot dog, is that an old-timey joint!

 

[K.D. Lightner]

Yes, there were lovely places in NY that I still miss. Eating stuffed cabbage at Odessa in the East Village (I think it was on Avenue A), the macrobiotic restaurant on the upper west side and, before I moved, in the Village. I can't recall the name of it but it had really good vegetarian food. Junior's in Brooklyn, a place called Quantum Leap in Queens (also veggie), plus all the bagel places, chocolate egg creams, Nathan's hot dogs and, of course, Long Island clams on the half shell.

One of the nicer upscale Italian restaurants was in Astoria, where I lived, and was called The Bank. I asked why an Italian restaurant would be named that and learned that, at one time, in old Astoria, there was a bank there. When it left, and a restaurant came in, people still referred to it as The Bank and the name stuck.

The Greek food in Astoria was some of the best I have had -- we had Greek delis there with a large variety of feta cheese and olives. I hadn't realize there were so many types of feta cheese from so many different places. You could buy a chunk of feta cheese, a 1/2 pint of marinated olives and a piece of bread and have a nice lunch.

Now, I've made myself hungry and all I have is a sandwich from 7/11. Oh, well....

karol

 

[Michaelson]

My Mom was born and raised in North Carolina. The favorite on the table during the Depression? "Pot Licker". This was made from the drained leavings after cooking up a pot of turnips. You took the liquid while it was still hot, then mixed in corn meal, stirring to the thickness of wall paste. Eaten hot for a meal, or cold for breakfast. I've had it a couple of times, and it's an acquired taste....but back then, it was your meal for the day.
Regards! Michaelson

 

[The Wolf]

My wife's family does the "pot licquor" from cooking greens.

When I went back to North Carolina some decades ago every relative told me "You might think you southern fried chicken but I'm gonna make you REAL southern fried chicken." Needless to say each one was different.

Sincerely,
The Wolf

 

[Michaelson]

The same with their bar-be-que....I was a teenager before I found out that there was a version that wasn't a vinegar based sause.
Regards! Michaelson

 

[scotrace]

Real Golden Era Food

People have always eaten whatever was available at the market or from their own garden/farm, but I think that when we talk about food in the Golden Era, we're talking then-modern canned goods and processed foods. Look through any old magazine and you'll see dozens of ads for Campbell's Soups, canned hams, canned vegetables, etc. The focus was on easy and quick for the modern, busy family. Just as the new man-made fabrics were thought smart and up-to-date while we find them hot and poorly made, newly available, out-of-season produce in the form of canned goods was thought quite modern, sanitary and a smart time saver. We think of these items as... well, what you buy to give to the canned goods food drive!
I was born in the early '60's. My mother rarely served fresh vegetables, and her mother, oddly hating to cook given her time and place of birth, did the same. Always casseroles, or frozen thus & such. There were a few scratch-made family recipes (which I make now - ham potpie!) but mainly convenience foods, as mom and grandma had jobs outside the home.
My wife's grandmother, who was a Nebraska famer with plenty of fresh stuff available, felt herself the absolute height of luxurious modern shopping when she went into town to the market to buy a frozen, sliced roast or some canned cauliflower.
As women were free to get out of the kitchen and first, do more things socially and in volunteer work and later, hold jobs of their own, ready-made or easy to prepare foods were the norm for decades.
The re-emphasis on fresh local ingredients and scratch cooking we see now is fairly recent, with a big nod to Julia Child.
As a side note, I'm the fulltime cook at my house. I LOVE to cook and wouldn't think of opening a can of peas or other such horror.

 

[Mr. Jason]

Food

My grandfather used to say the first time he saw meat he didn't know what to do with it. He grew up during the depression and his family always bought fat not meat. Also being from South Carolina he always ate pork and chicken. I didn't have a real steak, non-hambuger, until I was 15.

My wife is pregnant and was having trouble taking the prenatal vitamans, apparently they are pretty heavy on the vitamins and make many women sick. The midwife said that the big prenatal vitaman push was back in the "old days" when you couldn't get fresh fruit and vegtables year round. Just found that intresting and a good reason to be stuck in the 00's.

If you want a taste of the "good old days" raize some chickens. They are not much trouble and don't take too much space. If you're willing do a google search for "chicken tractor" and go to town. I raize broilers, hens, and turkeys. The broiler chickens taste and look like real meat.
The eggs are a wonderful bright yellow.

 

[Big Man]

The other white meat ...

... Also being from South Carolina he always ate pork and chicken...

Is it true that Sunday dinner in South Carolina isn't complete without "white-line possum" as the main course?

 

[Angelicious]

If you want a taste of the "good old days" raize some chickens. ... The eggs are a wonderful bright yellow.

Yes, that was one thing I found odd living in North America a few years back... The eggs looked anaemic! Such a pale, pale yellow... They looked nothing like the bright golden-to-orange I was used to at home - even the farm-raised eggs I eventually saw seemed pale to me. I'm told it has something to do with what the chickens are fed? [huh]

 

[Nathan Flowers]

Is it true that Sunday dinner in South Carolina isn't complete without "white-line possum" as the main course?

Haha, I can't speak for Jason, but the family I'm from stays away from possum. It's just too greasy

 

[HistWardrobe]

1950s foodways

I was born in the early 50's but grew up in a slightly older "food culture" in that my mother (b. 1933), my grandmother (b. 1910) and great-grandmother (b. 1889) were all in the same wonderful, old-fashioned extended family household and all were great cooks, as was my grandfather (b. 1906).

One of the main differences with food back then vs food nowadays is that people tended to stick to their own regional cuisines. Our family was sort of unusual in that regard in that my grandmother, a Maryland / DC gal, had married a fella from Louisiana, so we had the benefit of both Chesapeake bay area cuisine as well as both Cajun and traditional deep South cookery.
Also, our family had travelled more than most, as my grandfather was a Naval officer. My grandmother was very interested in food, and was one of the first subscribers to Gourmet magazine when it started in the late 40s.

I remember growing up in the 50s - early 60s, the sorts of things we'd have at our house routinely that all the neighborhood kids in Northern Va thought were sort of weird and foreign, but we take for granted nowadays as standard American food:

-- Artichokes (they'd lived in California in 1939 and knew about good veggies!)
-- Avocados, either plain or as Guacamole
-- Gumbo (or in fact, anything containing okra), Jambalaya, Shrimp Creole
-- Sukiyaki
-- Vichyssoise
-- Gaspacho
-- Anything Italian that WASNT pizza or spaghetti. And leven we hadn't heard of Northern Italian food other than Fettucini Alfredo (which nobody else ate unless they also subscribed to Gourmet)

That's just a couple off the top of my head.

Other modern-day staples that were sort of cultural fringe foods back then:

Yogurt -- Yogurt and wheat germ were "health nut foods". Eating these meant you were either Jack La Laine (hey, it must work, he's still going strong) or some kinda commie nudist or sumthin'

Bagels -- hadn't been mainstreamed yet. You could only find them in the Kosher foods section of the supermarket, and then only if you were in a area where there were likely to be enought Jewish people for there to be sufficient consumer demand for a Kosher foods section. They came in two flavors, plain and onion and that was about it.

When I was ten years old, my grandfather got transferred to Hawaii, so for me sushi and sashimi were pretty much part of "home cooking" as a kid - but our old neighbors back in Virginia would have thought it was something to put on the end of your fishhook!

Cake mixes were still sort of a novelty in the 50s although they'd been around for a good 20 years, and mixing up a Betty Crocker cake was a weekly treat. We looked down our noses at people who ate Sarah Lee as being lazy.

Doorstep milk delivery was a part of life back then (otherwise, where would all those jokes about the Milkman have come from?!) I miss it - back in the 80s-90s I lived in England for 13 years and was delighted to get milk delivery again, in glass bottles with the cream on the top. YUM - tastes way better than boring carton milk.

And whatever DID happen to the Good Humor man! And where can you find blueberry / blue raspberry popsickles nowadays?

Fast food was the latest thing. McDonalds hadn't quite hit our neighborhood yet. We'd go to the long-defunct Topps Drive-in for a Sirloiner or to Hot Shoppes drive-in for a Mighty Mo and an Orange Freeze (other DC people will relate to this!) It somehow tasted better when a carhop brought it to your car. Onion rings were at least as common as french fries. I'd never heard of putting ketchup on fries until I was 9 years old and my grandfather got transferred to Nebraska.

Getting old enough to be in my anec-dotage,

 

[HistWardrobe]

Depression and Pre-Depression Foodways

Thought I'd make this a separate post from my 50's reminiscences...

My grandfather grew up in Louisiana and Mississippi, which hadn't even recovered from Reconstruction when the depression hit, so the boom era was irrelevant to a lot of families.

From what he told me, people ate a LOT more vegetables back then. Everybody, unless they were in a really urban area, had a backyard vegetable garden. The summers were filled with excellent fresh produce and the winters with home-canned vegetables, fruits, pickles, relishes, etc

Other than very wealthy people, folks did NOT get meat with every meal. For my grandfather, breakfast was usually left over cornbread crumbled up into a glass of milk or buttermilk, sometimes with salt & pepper. He enjoyed this oddball concoction throughout his 93 year life and it used to gross me out until he talked me into trying it. Hmm! Don't knock it till you've tried it!

Sunday dinner ("dinner" being a daytime meal eaten after church -- supper was what you had at night) was a big deal because that was the big lavish meat meal of the week - chicken, mostly. Fried, stewed with dumplings, roasted... The leftovers would get turned into another dish and the carcass would get turned into soup - nothing was wasted.

Other meat meals during the week consisted of the aforementioned Sunday dinner leftovers and various iterations of pork products, which had the advantage of keeping well and being inexpensive.

In the South, people ate a lot of pork. Pork products, corn, greens - the "hog and hominy" diet that has sustained Southern America since the 18th century and are still part of the culture (pass the barbecue....)

When my grandparents got married in 1929, my DC-born grandmother had never HEARD of anybody putting gravy on rice, as Louisianans routinely did. Gravy went on mashed potatoes! The way Marylanders / DC people ate rice back then was mostly as rice pudding. The idea of gravy going over all those raisins and cinnamon really grossed my grandmother out until my grandfather explained it to her.

The food she grew up on in the DC area was very regionally influenced as well - fried chicken with cream gravy (a traditional Maryland dish), lots of seafood -- chesapeake bay crabs, oyster stew, scalloped oysters, etc Oysters, while expensive nowadays, were a poor man's food in the 18th - early 20th centuries

OK - there's part of the lowdown on my own family's eating habits in the "golden era" and before/after. What region of the country are your folks from and what did THEY eat in the 1920s-50s?

New to this here place but enjoying it immensely,

 

[Big Man]

Gravy - I'm already getting hungry!

... When my grandparents got married in 1929, my DC-born grandmother had never HEARD of anybody putting gravy on rice ...

Gravy is good on everything! I can't recall a dinner (yes, DINNER is always the mid-day meal) at my Grandmother's that didn't include gravy.

 

[Mr. Rover]

Peter Luger

As far as steaks go, I've yet to eat a steak better than the Dry-Aged porterhouse available at Peter Luger's right here in brooklyn

GREATEST STEAK! PERIOD. I haven't been to the Brooklyn Peter Luger yet, as it is ALWAYS crowded. I'm from Long Island, and my family frequented the Great Neck Peter Luger restaurant. No steak in New York compares to Peter Luger steaks. We love them so much we brought back 3 bottles of their steak sauce with us to Taiwan, where we're living right now. Man...just thinking about that perfect porterhouse is making me drool....

 

[Big Man]

My family story ...

... OK - there's part of the lowdown on my own family's eating habits in the "golden era" and before/after. What region of the country are your folks from and what did THEY eat in the 1920s-50s? ...

I'm from the South. Both sides of my family have lived within about a 20 or 30 mile radius since 1764. There were two exceptions, the Brown's moved from NC to Kansas in 1870 and returned in 1881 and the Dobson's (my Mother's line) moved to Washington state around 1900 and returned in 1920.

My Grandfather Brown (b.1879) was from a family of 14 children, seven boys and seven girls. All the girls married farmers and remained in western NC. Several of the boys moved away: my great uncle Briscoe (who's pictures I've posted on several occasions) moved to Imola, CA and was the superintendent of the farm at the State Hospital there; my great uncle Sank moved to Montana, then to Alaska, and finally settled in Seattle, WA around 1905; and my great uncle John moved to Chattanooga, TN. The rest of the boys remained fairly close to home.

My great Grandparents were married in 1866. Their first child was born in 1868 and the last in 1892, with one set of twins in the middle of the children. Having such a large family spread out over almost 30 years, they were all together at the same time only ONCE. In August, 1928 the Brown family had a reunion (see picture) where Great Grandfather and Great Grandmother Brown, all 14 children and their wives, and all the grandchildren were present. This was the only time they were all together as a family. My Great Grandmother died the following December, and before the end of 1932 four of the children had died. My Great Grandfather died in 1943, just a couple months shy of his 100th birthday.

My Grandfather and Grandmother married in December, 1904. At the time, they were both working at the State Hospital in Morganton, NC (incidentally, this is the same place where I work, and in the same building where my Grandfather worked). After their marriage, they left the hospital and started farming in McDowell County. Their first child was born in November, 1905 (died in 1910). My aunt Hazel (who is alive and well at 97 years of age) was born in March, 1908, followed by my aunt Sara in 1911 (died in 1983). In 1917 they moved from the farm to a house in the little community of Nebo (the house at Nebo has now passed to me, and is essentially unchanged since their earliest days there). My Dad, who came along late in life, was born in September, 1924 and is still living at (soon to be) 81 years of age.

Sometime around 1920 my Grandfather put indoor plumbing (bathroom on the back porch) and running water in the house. This was accomplished by digging out a basement and having a gasoline engine that pumped water up to the second floor to a storage tank. The water was then gravity fed to the rest of the house. They had a "water jacket" on the wood cook stove (that my Grandmother reluctantly gave up in the mid 1950's) that supplied hot water. In 1930, the community of Nebo incorporated and passed a bond to bring electricity to the community. I have a copy of the first power bill, dated May, 1930. Prior to that time lighting in the house was by kerosene lamps (which we still have at the house). They bought their first car in 1922 (I've got the receipt for it) and got a radio in the mid 1930's. Telephone service was not available in Nebo until the mid 1950's, and then it was an 11 party line (I still remember having to pick up the phone and listen to see if anyone else was on the line prior to making a call). They got their first TV in the late 1950's (an old Dumont that is still there, but not working any more). The house is still heated by a fireplace (coal burning).

My Grandfather and Grandmother lived fairly well into the 1930's. They had indoor plumbing prior to most everyone else in the area (I remember outhouses in Nebo in the early 1960's), they had a cement sidewalk in front of their house (I don't recall any of the other old houses having such), and they even had a dirt tennis court at the house. They took great pains to ensure that their children had a good education, sending both my aunts and my Dad to college. My Grandfather had a good job (he worked for McDowell Hardware), but was not rich by any means. When he died in March, 1932 it was devastating to the family. The family was fortunate that my aunt Hazel was already out of college and was teaching, so she was able to contribute to the family. My aunt Sara was in her final year of college, and my Dad was not even 8 years old yet. My Grandmother cooked for people, took in laundry, raised produce, did sewing, and just about anything else you can think of to keep the family supported. From her I learned a valuable work ethic.

Growing up, I spent a tremendous amount of time at my Grandmother's. She made a very large garden, where we had an abundance of fresh vegetables in season. She canned and dried all kinds of things, so we always had "home grown" food year-round. Up until Mr. Park's grain mill closed in Nebo (about 1960), she even had her own corn ground for meal. I still remember that old mill and all the dust that comes from grinding corn into meal. My Grandmother raised chickens for meat and eggs, had a cow for milk, and raised a hog or two each year for meat (she cured her own bacon, shoulders, and hams on the back porch). One of my fondest "culinary memories" was my Grandmother's homemade blackberry jelly and home-baked bread.

The food we had changed very little from the "early days". Breakfast usually consisted of oatmeal, eggs, bacon, toast and HOT coffee (even at 101 years, my grandmother still liked her HOT coffee). Dinner was meat (beef roast or fried chicken), potatoes (usually mashed) with gravy of course, green beans, homemade yeast rolls, and always desert. Anyone ever had strawberry and rhubarb pie? I cannot remember a mid-day meal not being a full meal - ever. Almost without exception, my Grandmother had milk and cornbread for supper.

Up until the time I was in my mid-teens, we all ate Sunday dinner at my Grandmothers. After dinner, we would (in good weather) sit on the front porch and talk. If it was bad weather, we would go in the "front room". The "front room" was reserved for special occasions, and as a matter of fact the same furniture with the same (original to 1924) upholstery is still there and looks like new. In cold weather we all went to the "back room" that was a bedroom, a "living room" and where the TV was. This room is heated by a coal burning fireplace, and was the only heated room in the house (although the other rooms have fireplaces, this was the only one my Grandmother allowed to be used - she didn't want to "waste" heat). I still recall her telling of the Depression years when times were hard that the men would hide along the railroad tracks and jump the train when it slowed down climbing the grade coming into Nebo. They would then throw coal off the train and jump from the train when it slowed down on the grade several miles up the tracks. They would then walk back down the tracks picking up the coal to have something to burn to stay warm. She related to me that times were often hard, but never "bad", and I do not recall ever hearing her complain about anything.

My Grandmother was blessed with a long and productive life, and was able to work in her garden and provide for the family until she was 99 years old. She suddenly and unexpectedly came down with pneumonia one day after canning 30 or so quarts of beans and baking the weeks supply of bread. To give you an idea of how she thought, as we were putting her in the ambulance that night she told me to "go in the house and get a loaf of bread for these nice men" (the EMS personnel). She was never able to fully recover her strength after being sick, and spent the next three years of her life with my Dad at his home. This was the first time she ever lived in a house that had heat and air conditioning, and it was quite a change for her to have someone cook for her instead of her cooking for them. She died in June, 1983 at the age of 101.

Well, I've rambled on a lot about my experiences of "life in the golden era" and hopefully haven't bored you all too much with my story. I learned a lot from my Grandmother, and I'm sure that is where I developed my love of history. There is something special about being able to sit at the same table with MY grandchildren and enjoy a Sunday dinner (although not as good as "Maw's" cooking), then sitting on the same front porch and watching my grandchildren play in the same yard as did I, and as did my children, and as did my Dad and aunts when they were little. I know that I've been blessed with a good family, and am trying my best to pass that same "way of life" on to the next generation.