Eating in the 50's

[ovrszd]

Our water came from a pitcher pump in the kitchen.

We milked cows, so no oleo in our house!

Yep.....

 

[two_bit_score]

It sounds like my eating in the 1970s! Pizza was a special treat, had my first chicken wing in college (1982), and never had shrimp, lobster, etc. until the mid 1990's.

Will

In Maine, lobster was so plentiful that they were food for prisoners and kids didn't want to take it to school because they would be considered poor.


Now it's a premium delicacy.


TBS

 

[oldballs]

You Country Kids had it made.:licking:

How about school lunch???. .... wrapped in newspaper with string....a peanut butter sandwich and maybe something else...and maybe 5 cents for s small milk carton.... but that's going back to the 30-40s.

Cheers,
Mike

 

[dmccarty]

Funny that this thread popped up because last night my parents and I were trying to remember when we first started eating pizza. :shocked::laughing::laughing::laughing:

It would have been in the 70's not 50's though. My parents can't remember but I think it was a Pizza Inn in LA. I think. I don't think it was when we lived in GA though I find it hard to believe we did not eat pizza while living there. I remember how excited we where when the McD's got a drive through window. Anyone remember Arthur Treachers Seafood? Can't say it was very :licking: but I remember them.

Later,
Dan

 

[ovrszd]

You Country Kids had it made.:licking:

Mike, we never had any money. But we always ate good. As a kid I had no understanding of hunger.

 

[oldballs]

"Arthur Treachers"???....heck we thought fish was Bullheads or Carp.

 

[Kentuckyfarmer]

Mike, we never had any money. But we always ate good. As a kid I had no understanding of hunger.

Raised on a dairy farm and we always had food to eat. Very little was bought from town and trips were far and few. We canned food from the garden had hogs, chickens and beef at the liking. We hunted, fished to have a variety. The majority of people in this country wouldn't know what to do if the grocery store shelves became empty. The most important thing in their mind is how many channels they get and not miss an episode of honey bo bo or something they call a reality show. Most important thing is cars, boats, motorcycles, tv's and some sort of material things. Be real hard to digest that stuff when this shelves are empty and the belly gets empty. I grew up in the 50's and early 60's. Respect, consideration, and appreciation is what was required from us and in turn you would receive the same. Not any more it's how much you can get away with and be as foul acting as can be. I truly miss those growing up days. I miss the food my grandmother cooked, the milk I drank, the butter I spread on bread, and the quiteness of the farm.

 

[TomSeller]

Mike, I have two siblings. All five of us sat at the table to eat. Mom started the bowls around the table and they got to Dad last. He dumped the bowl on his plate and ate it, regardless of what it was. He tolerated no pickiness from us. When I think of childhood I often think of those meals.

I had two sisters and 6 brothers and each of my two sisters had 7 brothers. Whatever Mom made to eat was set in the center of the table and only after prayer we could reach to the closest dish and then everything went clockwise around the table. A rule was that you had to leave enough in each dish to get around the table. We were all thin but healthly.

 

[Looking4new]

Breakfast was a meal of pan cakes made from flour milled at grain mill 4 miles away small town away bring in a sack of wheat put in mill and get a sack of flour. same with sack of corn. grown in field .
the eggs from chicken house and the milk from cow in barn yard.
the bacon and grease to cook with from hog grown for purpose of providing the hams and meat needed .
the yeast spices baking soda came from a trader that stopped monthly to sell item to the lady of the house hold.
Yearly we would raise sorghum for cooking into molasses at another neighbor that had the mill and copper pan for cooking. also a load of pine stumps for the rich pine to heat the fluid. helped to pay for the cost of cooking and filling gallon jugs for storage.

then picking the berries and making into jelly canning and stored in the storm cellar to keep cool.
Daily a pan of dried beans was put on stove to soak and then cooked in the evening for meal the next day,
Hominy made in barrel soaked with wood ashes from heating to soften the kernels.
Garden produce dried or canned to go with the meals.
Then the Coop came with power in the 50's the wood stove tossed out to use elec. for cooking to"save time"
clothes washing purchased washing machine and driers to "save time"
Air Conditioning and Heating all the labor saving devises installed .
Used to know every neighbor with in 5 mile radius of the place now don't know neighbor because they have a No Trespassing sign stuck gate post. Drives in and parks goes to house and doesn't reappear until next day. jumps in car and is gone .
The good old days were not that bad.

The 'good old days' were great in my eyes!

This is the most interesting read and explains a lot of my confusion at restaurants and grocery stores and at the table with the grandkids....especially the wasted food, the hats, no shirt, phones and picky eaters.

Picky eaters in my house went to bed without. They ate it in the morning, cold. I was only picky once.

Ken, I'm fortunate to not having many of those neighbors around. I still know all my neighbors within 5 miles and we wave at each other every time we pass on the road. Can hardly get my roadbanks mowed for waving at each vehicle that goes by. Wouldn't have it any other way.

I can't get any snow removed for my neighbours getting in the way with their cars on the road. (When they come along the road I dive into a driveway so as to give them the whole 18' road to play with.)

When margarine came out, it was called "Oleo Margarine". It came in a plastic bag at first, with a capsule of coloring that you had to break and then knead the bag until it was all colored. I hated having to do this. I believe the dairy industry had enough political pull to keep it this way for a while because it was in competition with butter. It wasn't long before it came out in 1/4 pound sticks already colored.


As for green tea, I knew one family that used it in the mid 50's, but I did not like it at all. It was a rare commodity.

The list is pretty much right on. Times were pretty tough where I came from, but they were tough for everyone...except maybe the very few prosperous farmers or the local pharmacist. We were all in the same boat, though, pretty much; I wouldn't trade growing up in the 50's for any time in human history. Us country folks ate pretty much what we could grow, kill, and catch.

I hated coloured margarine, but loved going to grandparents place. They only used butter. I shot rabbits for the table.

The old wood stove fuelled with dry wood would probably outshine the electric stove for cooking.

As for home produce picking up potatoes in late fall was not high on my enjoyable list. Next came cleaning the hen house and butchering poultry.

You can pick the potatoes, I will clean the hen house instead.

Our water came from a pitcher pump in the kitchen.

We milked cows, so no oleo in our house!

Our hand pump was right beside the kitchen taps. You should see the look on city folks faces when they go for a glass of well water and turn on the tap.

"Arthur Treachers"???....heck we thought fish was Bullheads or Carp.

Spring time brought us smelts and suckers. We were eating 'high on the hog' if we managed to grab a pike. The heads and guts went into Dads rose garden.

 

[reb]

...

Old cookbooks also had more recipes using what is now less desirable thing; brain, tongue, squirrel etc.

Old cookbook recipes did not include store-bought prepared food as ingredients.

 

[/pine]

...We milked cows, so no oleo in our house!

I wonder the average age of people today that have never had popcorn (the original snack food) made with real butter...!

 

[fried1765]

The old wood stove fuelled with dry wood would probably outshine the electric stove for cooking.

As for home produce picking up potatoes in late fall was not high on my enjoyable list. Next came cleaning the hen house and butchering poultry.

Cleaning the hen house was at the TOP of my list!
I shall NEVER forget it!
Awful...... gagging stink!

 

[fried1765]

You Country Kids had it made.:licking:

How about school lunch???. .... wrapped in newspaper with string....a peanut butter sandwich and maybe something else...and maybe 5 cents for s small milk carton.... but that's going back to the 30-40s.

Cheers,
Mike

Yup....in the 40's
School milk came in a small glass bottle (1/2 pint?) with a paper cap, and one milk was included in the 20 cent lunch price.
An extra milk was 2 cents.

 

[bigtiller]

In 1965 pizza came to our house from Chef Boyardee in a DIY box. Mix and roll out the dough, poor on a can of red stuff and sprinkle on a package of yellow stuff, bake for 20 minutes and eat.

When did we discover buffalo wings?

 

[grnspot110]

And you popped the corn (after shelling it) on top of the LP gas stove. We were up town, had one of those poppers with the crank on top that burnt your wrist.

Also had an LP gas refrigerator, meat was kept in tow 5 miles away in the "locker", since we didn't have a freezer. Dad butchered his own hogs, brother & I ground the sausage, Mom half fried it, stacked the patties in stone jars & poured lard over them. When it was time to eat them, you dug out what you needed, finished frying them & had breakfast!

 

[Egon]

Anybody make sauerkraut by the wooden barrel?

 

[fried1765]

And you popped the corn (after shelling it) on top of the LP gas stove. We were up town, had one of those poppers with the crank on top that burnt your wrist.

Also had an LP gas refrigerator, meat was kept in tow 5 miles away in the "locker", since we didn't have a freezer. Dad butchered his own hogs, brother & I ground the sausage, Mom half fried it, stacked the patties in stone jars & poured lard over them. When it was time to eat them, you dug out what you needed, finished frying them & had breakfast!

We had a kerosene refrigerator!
Probably no one here has ever heard of that.

 

[/pine]

When we first got established here many locals still salt cured their hogs...

 

[Bird]

Funny that this thread popped up because last night my parents and I were trying to remember when we first started eating pizza.

I know for sure when I had my first pizza. Summer of 1956, I had just gotten my first drivers license and went to Oklahoma City to visit my grandparents. A cousin, a couple of years older than I was, had a date that night so his date got me a blind date to go eat "pizza pie" which I had never heard of. Now my cousin ordered for himself and his date; just a plain cheese pizza, I think, so I asked my date if that was OK with her, she said it was, so I told the waiter, "We'll have 2 of those" and my cousin and the girls quickly started explaining that you only need one and you share it.

 

[Bird]

I, too, grew up with little money, but plenty to eat. We had chickens, hogs, milk cow so calves to butcher, garden, fruit and pecan trees, etc. And Dad & I both liked to hunt squirrels and rabbits. I had a .22 rifle from the time I was 10 years old. From the time I was 10 until I was 14 years old, milking that cow twice a day was one of my jobs. And of course I remember when my grandparents first started using the margarine with the red pill you broke to massage it in to get the "butter" color.

When I started to school, we carried our own lunch to school. Mine was usually a biscuit or two with either sausage, bacon, or egg, along with a pint jar of milk. Since there was no refrigerator at school, sometimes the milk soured before lunch. I never could drink soured milk, but I could shake that jar on the way home that afternoon, and have some butter churned by the time I got home.