[Sca-cooks] canned gravy??????

[Phil Troy/ G. Tacitus Adamantius]

Also sprach karobert at unm.edu:
>Quoting "Phil Troy/ G. Tacitus Adamantius" <adamantius at verizon.net>:
>
>  > This got me thinking. I realize (or at least have a memory of real or
>>  imagined events) that when I was a child, my mother would set out a
>  > platter of celery and carrot sticks at, it seemed, nearly every
>>  dinner. On holidays it was more elaborate, with olives and little
>>  pickles and such, but it just struck me that it was, as far as I can
>>   recall, almost always there.
>
>exactly... course, in my family (which i cannot call worldly by any
>stretch of the imagination) it was pimento stuffed olives... i don't
>think they knew what a black olive was... and that yellow pickled
>cauliflower (which i loved) and sometimes, o happy day, pickled onions
>(usually yellow too).
>
>christmas and new years mostly, i think, before the major feed.  no dips
>or anything like that... just the veggies, olives and pickles.

I think we may be establishing that this concept is pretty widespread 
in the U.S., but I'm not sure if it's European (or universally so) in 
origin. Whether it has to do with using garden produce as a relish 
(and one reason why it seems a little less common may be that fewer 
people are gardening now) I can't say, but it seems like a pretty 
consistently American concept, with no clear regional predominance. 
It's as evident in the pseudo-holiday meal described in Damon 
Runyon's "A Piece of Pie" (a great food story, that one, and of mixed 
cultural heritage as the author was from Kansas and it's set in New 
York City) as it is in the PA Dutch concept of meals having seven 
sweets and seven sours.

>that, and (for the kids) a glass of diluted mogan david wine... probably
>about a tablespoon per sherry glass.   funny, the family had fancy
>glassware, but never drank any other wine! 
>
>but i think that watered down wine and the cheese glass full of beer at
>crabfeasts de-mystified drinking for us kids, which is a good thing.

I agree, in general. We got kind of a demystifying and unpretentious 
exposure, one designed to make us familiar with the stuff without 
making us... 'ow yoo say... hanker for it in any unnatural way. I 
suppose like some kids are brought up around guns. "This is a useful 
thing. It's no big deal, but it can be dangerous, so be careful. It's 
better to know what you're talking about than to not know." My 
12-year-old has acquired a fairly good taste in beers and some 
surprisingly adult preferences, if not encyclopedic, in wines. It's 
actually kind of interesting to develop a child's palate while it's 
still sensitive, while instilling some sense of responsibility in him 
(schoolwork notwithstanding) at the same time.

Adamantius