Comments on: Cooking in the good old days

By: Vickie

Vickie — Tue, 16 Oct 2012 17:47:51 +0000

Basically, I’m a self taught cook. We always had a garden when I was growing up, but few things made it past the fresh stage, other than green beans and apples. My mother worked outside the home and didn’t seem to enjoy cooking, even when she had the time. The kids were the ones who did most of the cooking. If Mom did it, she simply opened cans, dumped the contents into pots and heated, no additional seasonings, no draining, nothing. Meats were cooked until they were flavorless and fresh vegetables cooked until they were mush. My family was different from most in the neighborhood because Mom worked and didn’t do “scratch cooking.” Now, I enjoy cooking and “get my ya-ya’s” by making things from scratch. Thanks to Mrs. Rapoport for the recipes!

By: Debbie

Debbie — Mon, 15 Oct 2012 21:28:07 +0000

I think having parents/grandparents who cook from scratch does make a difference. My maternal grandmother was a wonderful cook and my mom is a good cook. Being a housewife starting in the late 50′s, my mom did use a lot of canned vegetables. That, I think was because my dad was in the Army and they didn’t have their own land to garden.

When he retired and they bought their own home my dad had a garden every year. Veggies and fruit were canned or frozen then. My paternal grandmother died before I was born, but my mom and I always figured that she must not have been a very good cook, because my dad liked his meat and vegetables cooked to death.

By: Dave

Dave — Mon, 15 Oct 2012 19:25:59 +0000

Just because I use a crock pot doesn’t mean I don’t do any work. I slice all the vegetables by hand, I make my own chicken stock, I slice all the meat by hand… There’s a middle ground between throwing a box in the microwave and spending the entire day in front of the stove.

By: Lindsey Nair

Lindsey Nair — Mon, 15 Oct 2012 18:57:17 +0000

I’ve been told my maternal grandmother was the type to open a can and dump it in a pot; as a working widow, she took full advantage of all the convenience-food discoveries of the 50s.
My paternal grandmother, on the other hand, knew how to garden, can food and make just about everything from scratch. She’s the one who taught my mother a lot of the cooking skills she passed on to me. My mother also taught herself a lot.

By: Jeff

Jeff — Mon, 15 Oct 2012 17:31:29 +0000

My grandmother cooked on a coal stove, which was also the only source of heat in the house. Yet, she knew how to manage the heat perfectly. Nothing ever burned, nothing was ever undercooked. Her gravies were always perfect.

By: crooked road

crooked road — Mon, 15 Oct 2012 17:04:08 +0000

My hope is that we eventually turn Mary Rapoport’s last line – ‘We made things from scratch to save money, but we made them from scratch because we had had no alternatives.’ – into something more like this – ‘We make things from scratch to save money, but we really make things from scratch because we understand the alternatives.’

The health benefits of canned goods (as in contained in glass, not metal) still are not touted enough for today’s grocery shoppers. Hopefully, that will change soon…

By: tass

tass — Mon, 15 Oct 2012 16:23:22 +0000

I enjoyed reading that but it’s quite a romanticized picture of cooking 40-50-60 years ago. My lack of skill in the kitchen isn’t due to the microwave, it’s a natural result of my mother’s lack of skill in the kitchen, which followed her mother’s lack of skill in the kitchen. I’m the first in my family to grow my own vegetables, and nobody has ever known how to “put up” anything, at least once they got to the U.S. (not sure how they got through the rainy winters in Ireland before that). Boiling the very life out of a can of green beans though … now that is a very clear memory!