Some wistful food memories

[fabulousfrock]

I was just having this conversation on Twitter about food and ethical food and blah blah and was reminded about something that was a HUGE part of my life as a kid that I rarely think about now because it is such a product of a bygone era. Food co-ops

Comments

[libation]

Great memories!

We never did a co-op but we had a good-sized vegetable garden on our farm. Nothing like picking the lettuce and tomatoes for your own salad. My mom did a lot of canning so that is my fond food memory. We had a concessions stand at the ranch and for some reason my mom used the stove in the concessions stand instead of the one in our house for canning--or maybe she had both going at the same time? I remember one time she got started canning and a huge thunderstorm hit. She couldn't stop so she had to run back and forth from the house to the concessions stand in the pouring rain.

I also have fond memories of helping my grandmother and great-grandmother tend their gardens. And also watching my grandmother and great-grandmother kill a chicken that we ate for dinner that night! I think if anything could have turned me insta-vegetarian it would be that, but that chicken was DELICIOUS (sorry chicken!).

[fabulousfrock]

My mom gardened a little too, but...I think that really was just too much work for a mom with little kids and sandy Florida soil. Fresh produce is truly the best, though. My grandma does garden and produces a lot of her own veggies. The food is so good! Even after she freezes her homegrown field peas they taste better than any store equivalent... I love that canning story! That's dedication! I wish I liked to do things like that, canning always sounds like a lovely thing to do but I'd be too lazy to actually do it.

[libation]

It is difficult, for sure. Also, we always wound up with way more food than we could actually use, even from our relatively small garden ...

[fabulousfrock]

Haha! If we had any drama I was too young to be aware of it, but having run other things I can imagine... But yes. People are hugely detached from food nowadays, to where many people don't even cook it anymore, much less grow it, can it, etc. It hugely depresses me!

[sheela_chari]

This is great, Jackie. Hmm...maybe there is a book somewhere here...

You know, I grew up in a very small town in Wa State, and we had a food co-op, too. It was where we got our grains, and the prices were reasonable. The other thing I miss is the farmers market, because we had so many choices. Here in NY, at least where I live, the selection is so poor, and the prices are high.

Something unrelated but similar...i have this memory of an Afghan family moving onto our street the summer before i went off to college. They didn't have room for a garden in their yard, so they rented a patch in the community garden. i went with them one day to pick their vegetables. I remember being given a whole cucumber to myself to eat right there. They had brought a salt shaker, and i sprinkled some on before i ate my cucumber. it was the best thing i ever ate - right off the plant (not even washed, i believe). i have never had such an experience since.

[fabulousfrock]

Well, these things definitely get distributed among many books... But I do hope someday to write an autobiography when I'm older and famouser!

Food right off the plant is the best. I have a few of those memories... When I was really little I remember eating carrots right out of the ground. My friend grew some carrots a couple of years ago and brought some in and I was so happy tasting a fresh carrot again, it had been so many years and they taste sooo good.

[dotificus]

Whoa, what a ton of work for your mom.

A fun post to read. My parents went through a mostly-organic, all whole grains, no junk in the house EVAR, period. Which is probably one reason why I always keep some junky food on hand in my own home, heh.

[fabulousfrock]

We never went entirely without junk food. I ate many normal-ish things, some that I wouldn't even touch nowadays. And holidays were a complete unregulated sugar blitz... But we never ate much meat, which I think is why nowadays I eat meat almost every day, and I feel kinda bad about it, I think it's more than I really should be eating, but I spent the first 18 or so years of my life constantly craving meat, so I've got some to make up for yet, I suppose!

[sheela_chari]

I don't eat meat, and I never did or craved it. But I do remember in college getting these "grease cravings" which could only be satisfied by going to Denny's ( a fast food diner/breakfast kind of place that's open 24 hours). *shudder* truly horrible food, but I really needed that grease.

These days I feel that need less. Maybe my food is greasier? Who knows!

[fabulousfrock]

Maybe you just don't need it as an adult. Maybe you needed the calories when you were young or something? I was just thinking how when I was a kid I loved candy, actually more than chocolate. Jolly Ranchers, Everlasting Gobstoppers, Skittles, Now n' Laters, sodas, you name it, I loved that pure sugary stuff.

Now I can't really stand any of it. I crave a soda on rare occasions, more for the carbonation than the sugar, but I NEVER buy candy and never wish to buy candy either.

[olmue]

I always love your food posts, Jackie! We didn't do the food co-op, not really (although we had a large food storage, so actually maybe we did do some co-opting. Or some kind of thing where you could order food in bulk.) We had a huge garden, though, and canned and froze a lot of stuff. (Well, "we" really means my mom. I am a horrible gardener and don't know how to can.) She'd grow a lot of weird things, too, like this one year when she was teaching US history and wanted to know what it was like for the slaves to cultivate cotton. So she planted it, and guess who got to do the slave labor of harvesting it? Yep. WITHOUT a cotton gin. Another year she was trying to bulk up our family wheat supply, and every time she tried ordering it, the orders would get canceled through whatever organization she tried. Finally she just grew it. It grows fantastically well, and has a lovely slickery sound in the wind... We did peanuts one year, too. The leaves are the most lovely pthalo green, especially when they're all pulled up and strewn across the

[fabulousfrock]

It's kind of sad how people's moms know how to can... Every generation we do a little less, it seems. I can't recall my mom canning but she did do other things I never do like make homemade apple butter. (Understandably I suppose when you're ordering apples by the case...)

Those are some great stories! Good writing experience, perhaps...