[Sca-cooks] Raw veggie platter, was canned gravy??????

[lilinah at earthlink.net]

Adamantius asked about a particular kind of raw vegetable platter...

I'm from the Midwest originally. My dad was born there, and his 
mother before him - her family was there before the Civil War (from 
Baltic regions). His father, my grandfather, came from Russia, long 
before it became the Soviet Union (the Ukraine, actually, from 
Poltava)...

My mother was from Pennsylvania, the western part (Aethelmarc?)... 
Born in Copple, grew up in Beaver Falls, ended up in Pittsburgh - her 
family lived in parts east of Illinois, so we never had meals with 
them.

I am familiar with this vegetable platter - the carrot sticks, the 
celery sticks, the rubbery black olives, the icky pimiento stuffed 
green olives (generally called "Spanish olives" - icky because i 
don't like pimientos), radishes (unpeeled), and sometimes some kind 
of cucumber pickle. And, yes, no dips.

I don't recall this as being served in restaurants - although it 
could well have been in some of them, but those brain cells died long 
ago... my experiences would have been in the 1950s. By the 60s, since 
we children were older and my brother could sit still, the family 
generally ate in French restaurants (Italian was only for Thursday 
nights, when the maid had a day off).

This platter was not served at our nuclear family dinners, but did 
appear at larger family get-togethers. And it was often on a special 
dish with separate segments for each item. I never cared for it - it 
was just another kind of blandness to go along with the generally 
bland Midwestern food the family usually ate. BTW, the family was 
strictly urban , except for those of us who lived the hoity-toity 
suburbs. Absolutely, positively not rural.

Anahita