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Case in point:
yeah, depression / ration era cooking for anyone not of reasonable wealth was pretty bad, and they stuff they dreamed up on the far side where they were no longer rationed.
My grandmother took a pack of 15 bean soup, added butter beans and lima beans, the broth was basically butter with a touch of milk/cream and a touch of salt. Then a dish of Mrs Weiss kluski noodles also served in butter occasionally with a little chicken. My father always raved about it.
Funny part, she always complained about how long it took her to make the noodles, told us all they were hand made. After going up there for over a decade, one day she left the bag in the sink. That dinner was a HOOT
Meanwhile my sister and I have frantically searched for our großoma’s recipes and are trying to figure them out. Nobody else in the family had recipes worth passing down other than my mom’s specific vibe for chex mix, which I maintain. Any niblings will get a copy of my recipes upon request.
And yeah my grandma that’s better at cooking doesn’t use salt and hasn’t cooked a meal my wife and I both can eat since we got together.
My Irish American grandma on my dad’s side had two recipes. 'Roast Butt ', some pale greasy meat that was boiled until it was falling apart, yet still resisted cutting and chewing once it cursed your plate: the left overs of this were tossed into a pot with a can of La Choy ‘Oriental Style Vegetables’ and a bottle of some sweet sauce and dubbed ‘Chop Suey’, which was probably from a recipe she got out of an ad in the back of a TV guide in the 60s.
The woman could boil a mean potato, though.
My Oklahoma dust bowl era meemaw never really cooked anything that didn’t come from a can, but she baked bread and ‘English Muffins’ from scratch that held up well when frozen.
The bread was really dry and tasteless unless you really slathered on condiments. The ‘muffins’ were flattened little lumps of dough that were as dense as a dying star, not a single nook or cranny in sight, with a chewy raw consistency not unlike chewing gum.
I actually liked those a lot, and was disappointed later in life when I had store bought English Muffins, which were more like a mutant crumpet than anything else.
My mom and sister have the recipes, but neither have attempted making them. I’m afraid to read them because they’ll probably just say:
One box Jiffy baking mix, water, salt. Bake until done.
My grandparents ate boiled potatoes with boiled vegetables and watery meat. When I lived at my parents we often at the same. Thank god that we’ve adapted the cuisine from countries that actually discovered that food can have taste
What is it with americans putting everything in jello? That’s just gross. And then they make jokes about fries with vinegar (which is just ketchup without tomato (edit: and sugar)).
Jello was a big thing in the 1960s and 70s. But now it’s pretty much a regional thing. Oh sure you see it occasionally, but it’s far from the dessert staple it once was in the US.
Your Great Grandmother was all in on it, but your Grandmother not as much. And the odds are good that your mother would need to watch a YouTube video or something to make anything even close.
My 2 Grandmothers were wildly different in their cooking skills. And they both grew up thought the Depression years. So you cooked with what you had, because that’s all that you had.
One could make the most incredible sausages-- oatmeal sausages, blood sausages, various summer sausages and canned beef at home and from scratch without any recipe. But beyond that, it took a very good set of teeth to eat at her table. And forget about cookies or any kind of baked goods. Those she bought.
My other Grandmother was a classic little old Norwegian Lady. A 5-Star Michelin Chef should be that good. She made everything from scratch. Often on an old coal-fired cast iron cook stove and oven despite having a perfectly good electric stove. And the breads and pastries and cookies she would make! In a rural farm neighborhood filled with great cooks, she was considered the best baker of them all. And so many recipes. Church cookbooks galore. Carefully handwritten 3x5 cards filled a dozen metal boxes. Clipped newspaper and magazine recipes, each stored in photo books. And I never ever once saw her use any of them. Everything was in her head.
It was truly a travesty that my own Mother never learned how to cook or even cared about cooking. But, she could sew. And made most of our clothes growing up.
On the continent, they called it aspic. It used to be a thing: https://juliachildfans.com/julia-child-aspic-recipe/
Maybe it still is? (vegan alternative): https://www.realfoods.co.uk/recipe/egg-and-green-pea-vegetarian-aspic-agar-agar-jelly
How to starter bit: https://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/food/2010/08/how-do-i-make-lovely-jellies.shtml
Its not an American thing, it’s a Mormon thing. It had a very brief period of popularity outside of those freaks but yeah, I’d wager most Americans have never eaten Jell-O with something other than fruit in it.
I’d guess there’s way more ketchup haters than people who even know the deliciousness of make vinegar, too. And “ketchup” here isn’t just ketchup+vinegar, it’s LOADED with sugar. I’m one of the ketchup haters.
It can’t be overstated how many of those recipes were some con to sell canned shit that Grandma cut out of a magazine. There’s very little “in the old county we cooked like this…” that made it through the Boomer food filter. Best case scenario is it’s Betty fucking Crocker.
All my family recipes come from my male ancestors. Sure it’s also various ways of making canned food work, but it’s also been an evolving process since the 1800s so it’s evolved from somewhat edible to outright good. All of them are trail/camping recipes for context, lots of meat, starche, and grain.
The people who say that about younger women probably had Grandmas who were still in households that could be sustained on a single income.
Not saying it was ideal that their only choice was homemaking, but it stands to reason that a more significant amount of them got good at cooking and baking.
In her defense, we’re quickly approaching the point where the only food we’ll be able to afford is depression era food. Welcome back to splitting one streak between 7 people and water pie.
Using ground meat as a seasoning in your pasta sauce?
Both my grandmothers were great cooks. I guess I had a lucky childhood in that regards.
I grew up in the 70s with casseroles that would make your god cry.
If I’m diagnosed with cancer, I’m blaming old-timey cooking. Some things should be left in the past.
When I was in high school my older brother brought a cookbook with recipes from around the world. I tried to make couple that were fairly easy to make and was amazed by the taste. I couldn’t believe food can have that much flavor. I later realized it’s not that the recipes was so special. My mother’s food was simply very bland. Not bad, but it was just variations of salt and sour. I don’t make or miss any of her recipes. She makes very good deserts tough.
Yeah, even just having more different ingredients and spices available makes those recipes of old somewhat obsolete. But then you also have the internet to tell you all kinds of new recipes, so if the local cuisine isn’t great to begin with, it is easier than ever to not bother with it.
Yeah, 40 years ago was a food desert compared to today just because of the dearth of information. We got our area’s first Greek restaurant 35 years ago. Granted we also have so much more available now (the citrus selection at the SEA market puts whole foods to shame. They have like 5 kinds of kumquats. local whole foods doesn’t even have loquats) so sometimes it’s hard to remember how limited our diets were even two decades ago.
Like, I just started making my own gyro. Grinding my own beef/pork mix (lamb is expensive and my lamb guy got a new job instead of working at the dispo so I need a new lamb guy) and getting some herbs in there. I never thought I could do that. Thank you internet.
I have three sets of grandparents. Only remember one of my granddads cooking, one of my granddads would bake.
Dad and granddad (his step dad) were the consistent, enjoyed cooking and playing with flavours cooks in the family 😅 none of the women in my family, including me, enjoy it other than my sister maybe!
My grandmother would put food in the oven before turning it on. When the timer would go off, she’d be frustrated that the food was dehydrated and undercooked, so she’d try her best to salvage it by starting the timer again for the same amount of time. Then she’d ask “what smells funny?” before pulling the food out from the oven, and complaining that the recipe was bad.
She never cooked before she got married, but she was married for somewhere around 70 years.
70 years.
In 70 years, she was never able to understand the concept of preheating the oven. When I was a child, she’d come over to my parents’ house. If my mom was preparing dinner, and the oven was preheating, my grandmother would turn off the oven and tell my mother that she shouldn’t leave the oven on. My mom tried so many times to explain preheating the oven, but my grandmother insisted that it was a waste of energy.
that’s not a waste of energy, but i bet there was also other habit that is: unless you want to specifically evaporate water, things will get boiled just the same on low or high heat. (heating up to boiling point is most economical using high power) there’s zero reason to keep thing boiling on high heat then add water. also, using hot tap water. water heater is much better at heating water than open gas flame, yet i see people insisting on heating entire pots and kettles of cold tap water
I’ve always heard not to drink hot tap water or cook with it because of the risk of nasty things leaching from the pipes. https://www.abc.net.au/news/2023-09-07/is-it-actually-bad-to-drink-warm-water-from-the-tap/102812252
Legionella specifically. If you’re going to drink hot from the tap, go all the way to boiling first
Sounds like granny was a full blown dumbass.
Or had early onset Alzheimer’s. Or both.
