[Sca-cooks] Re: pantry foods was Cooking Spam

[Morses3 at aol.com]

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In a message dated 11/10/2001 10:24:58 PM Eastern Standard Time,
johnna at sitka.engin.umich.edu writes:


> I didn't mean that they didn't can prior to the
> Depression only that the depression and home ec
> re-enforced the canning aspect of the life on the
> farm or life with the big 5 acre garden that would feed
> 25 easily. That people still continued to can after the
> second world war has something to do with the human psyche.
> Why spend more on sugar to can something at home than what
> it would cost to buy fresh in the winter? Why continue to can
> this year's harvest when there are already 5 years already
> put up???

I remember my grandmother in western Kentucky canning hundreds of jars of
vegetables, jam, etc in blistering heat, all from my grandfather's  5 acre
plus yearly garden just for the two of them, because it was thrifty but also
because after a lifetime of eating that kind of food, it just tasted better
to them. (My grandmother's innate distrust of food handled by other people
probably had something to do with this.....) My grandfather also got teased
regularly by all of us for having five freezers full of food and thinking
about buying a sixth!

My other grandmother on the other hand, from a very proper "Old New England"
family in Massachusetts and who had never in her life until that time cooked
a meal herself, actually sold most of her family jewelry(an important symbol
to her at the time of who she was) to keep the church soup kitchen going for
many years and often brought more food in from home to supplement their
rations, a fact many of us didn't know until after her death and which she
did anonymously at the time.

In our time of relative plenty and ease regarding food choices and abundance,
I think it's hard to realize what the effect of actually not having enough to
eat was on the people who were living with that prospect, or at least
witnessing it happening to others, every day.

After you live with uncertainty, it's easy to just want (maybe NEED is the
right word) to do something to feel like you have more control of the
situation. Surely, the recent events in our country have reminded us of
that....

Perry