food that built America

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Bulletbob

Verified User
As I have said several times here I grew up on a farm, we were poor but never lacked food.
I grew up on the food that built America, much of it today would be called soul food.


Vinegar and oil were a fixture at every table ,. condiments mainly to be used on salads and greens . All kinds of greens from polk to spinich etc seems we ate greens more then anything.

Good old green beans we canned hundreds of quart jars of them along with sour kraut green tomatoes . The Potato o my it was common fre for all 3 meals.


Why a meal of fried potatoes with some fat back on the side with greens and oil and vinegar .

goulash American style . Basically mama would gfix hamburger with a tomato sauce lots of onions and diced tomatoes bell peppers garlic and what ever elese she had to throw in.

Foods tht built america are often the rich food of the poor , who mad do with wht they had to make a good tasteful meal
 
we made our own butter cheese ice cream milks raised most all of the meat we ate except for some fish and lunch meats we made our own breads and bisuits


Farming is fast becoming a lost art and become a commercial endever
 
Making your own pickles, for example, is pretty easy. You can buy gherkins or cucumbers for this. The pickling material is pickling spice, garlic cloves, sliced carrot, dill, vinegar (rice vinegar is an interesting variant), distilled water, and a little salt. Just put the jar in the fridge and wait 90 + days. The results are better than anything you buy at the store.

Growing your own herbs and vegies is pretty simple too even if you don't make enough to cover everything you need for the year. Stew, goulash, curry, cacciatore or the like are all stews using what's available in various combinations. Those are good in volume and low in cost.
 
T. A. Gardner said:
Making your own pickles, for example, is pretty easy. You can buy gherkins or cucumbers for this. The pickling material is pickling spice, garlic cloves, sliced carrot, dill, vinegar (rice vinegar is an interesting variant), distilled water, and a little salt. Just put the jar in the fridge and wait 90 + days. The results are better than anything you buy at the store.

Growing your own herbs and vegies is pretty simple too even if you don't make enough to cover everything you need for the year. Stew, goulash, curry, cacciatore or the like are all stews using what's available in various combinations. Those are good in volume and low in cost.
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We grow more veggies during the summer than we can eat the whole year. We always have to throw some out. Plus we catch salmon in the creek behind our house. So many that we always give about half away.
 
Bulletbob said:
As I have said several times here I grew up on a farm, we were poor but never lacked food.
I grew up on the food that built America, much of it today would be called soul food.


Vinegar and oil were a fixture at every table ,. condiments mainly to be used on salads and greens . All kinds of greens from polk to spinich etc seems we ate greens more then anything.

Good old green beans we canned hundreds of quart jars of them along with sour kraut green tomatoes . The Potato o my it was common fre for all 3 meals.


Why a meal of fried potatoes with some fat back on the side with greens and oil and vinegar .

goulash American style . Basically mama would gfix hamburger with a tomato sauce lots of onions and diced tomatoes bell peppers garlic and what ever elese she had to throw in.

Foods tht built america are often the rich food of the poor , who mad do with wht they had to make a good tasteful meal
Click to expand...

Its was more than porage that save the invaders of Europe to parish as a result of famine, European type viruses and diseases, filth and insanity in the so-called new land of America:

Native Americans played crucial role in settlers' survival
Most Americans have been taught that American Indians attended a harvest feast the Pilgrims held in 1621 at Plymouth Plantation, Mass.

But they may not be aware of the leading role the Indians played in the settlers' survival in the new land, said Edwin Schupman, of the National Museum of the American Indian in Washington, D.C.

Not only did Native Americans bring deer, corn and perhaps freshly caught fowl to the feast, they also ensured the Puritan settlers would survive through the first year in America by acclimating them to a habitat they had lived in for thousands of years.

"It's well documented that the first Europeans who settled in the New World could not have made it through the first few winters without the assistance and knowledge of American Indians," said Dick Ropp, of Edinboro, chairman of the French Creek Living History Association, a group formed in 2003 to research and disseminate information about the French and American Indian presence in Western Pennsylvania."

https://www.post-gazette.com/local/...ole-in-settlers-survival/stories/201011240253
 
Rooftop gardens have been around for a long time, so some city kids grew up playing in the dirt too. All the moms would spend an entire week filling large mason jars. My dad made kraut by the barrel, and ground, stuffed, and hung sausage to dry. He would buy a side of beef or whole pig and have it butchered. They rented freezer drawers big enough to store a steer. My job was to turn the hand crank on the grinder for 25 lbs of meat.
 
A combination of hillbilly/sharecropper/farmer side and Native American side, both sides of my family subsisted similarly with gardening, canning, hunting, foraging and gathering. Both sides raised gardens and preserved what they raised. Both sides went to the woods at particular times of the year to gather huckleberries, blackberries, pawpaws, polk, persimmons, muscadines, possum grapes and such. Both sides raised chickens and pigs. The difference is that my Native American side of the family bought and owned land while my hillbilly side rented or sharecropped. My dad (hillbilly side) broke the mold and paid for my grandparents a place. He did that raising 5 kids of his own on a US Army enlistee’s salary.

Dad is 90 now and still raises a garden on his place where he lives with my sister and her husband. I hunt, fish, raise a garden and forage for those things that I like as you can’t recreate some of those tastes from my childhood going to the local grocery store. I rarely buy meat from the market other than a few pork chops and a few chickens. I have learned to grill my deer rather than fry it though sometimes I have to have a mess of fried game (squirrel, deer or rabbit) with fried potatoes, biscuits and gravy to remind me where I came from.
 
T. A. Gardner said:
Making your own pickles, for example, is pretty easy. You can buy gherkins or cucumbers for this. The pickling material is pickling spice, garlic cloves, sliced carrot, dill, vinegar (rice vinegar is an interesting variant), distilled water, and a little salt. Just put the jar in the fridge and wait 90 + days. The results are better than anything you buy at the store.

Growing your own herbs and vegies is pretty simple too even if you don't make enough to cover everything you need for the year. Stew, goulash, curry, cacciatore or the like are all stews using what's available in various combinations. Those are good in volume and low in cost.
Click to expand...

Yes we grew a couple varietys of cucumbers just for pickles.but we canned them 8n a cooker the way you are talking about keeps them crisp
 
In Boston, we just went to the supermarket.
Or we ate out.

We missed out on the glamorous flyover country experience that BB Brain so kindly shares with us in his post.

Our loss, I guess.
 
anonymoose said:
We grow more veggies during the summer than we can eat the whole year. We always have to throw some out. Plus we catch salmon in the creek behind our house. So many that we always give about half away.
Click to expand...

Why, if you were so poor growing up, do you throw vegetables away today?

Aren't there any poor people in your area who could put them to good use?

A community food bank, maybe?
 
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