beverleysmith-cnjyv

Our parents had been through a war. In 1942 along with all other Canadians they contributed to victory bonds, watched military parades to celebrate soldiers and endured rationing of tea, coffee and sugar. Our parents as teenagers and young adults had had to make food adjustments back home because of the war.  This created a tone for celebration of food, awareness of scarcity , creativity of their parents with how to make do.

This means that my mother did not do a lot of canning but she did have great recipes for homemade jams, pickles and relish.  She did not bake all her bread from scratch but did have great recipes for when she did make bread, tall white bread loaves, very airy.  She also bought hovis bread following the whole grain craze.

My mother  liked daintier food, did make biscuits sometimes but the bacon and sausages were not as lavish.  This may have shown an economic shift too. In the hard times of the early pioneer communities, quantity of food was what mattered.  “Did you get enough?” was the common focus of a meal because labor was physical and a lot of calories were needed.

When my mother cooked in the 1950s, there was less hardship, post war we were not as poor, and she focused not on quantity as much as quality. We had more vegetables, fruits. Some mothers now did focus on granola and healthy options not just making sure the kids did not go to school hungry. But when I think of it, meals that focused on proteins, fillers, bread, pasta, were common themes in  war times and did make it through to our own childhood.

Mothers entertained a lot though and there were trends. I remember dainty egg salad sandwiches, tuna salad sandwiches and what were called pinwheel sandwiches. For those you’d buy a loaf of bread and ask to have it sliced fresh lengthwise. Then you’d put the filling on it and roll it up lengthwise, then cut the roll into little slices. Each one was a cute little pinwheel. It was common to put peanut butter in there, or butter and pickles and pimento.  Some families made ‘ribbon sandwiches’ which had layers of different fillings. A person would take slices of bread, remove the crusts, spread a filling, put on a layer of bread then add a  second filling then a new slice of bread on top. These little dainties could be 2, 3 or 4 layers high and were often cut  in little squares or finger shapes. They got named finger sandwiches, or club sandwiches or tea sandwiches. In some communities the layers could be chutney or spinach or carrot spread or mashed beets. In my house the layers were often ham and pimento or egg filling.

Many of our parents were only one generation from a farm background and eggs were a staple. We had them fried, sunny – side up or over easy, soft and runny or hard,  as a person preferred. We had them poached in one of the little new aluminum pans with sections for eggs and a lid. We had them hard boiled and took them on picnics. And a new development as devilled eggs. They were made at first having the yolk scooped out, mixed with cream and then put back in. Later the mix was with mayonnaise to the yolk.

Health and food

The priorities of cooks changed over time. Most mothers want to make sure their kids eat healthy diets with all the needed food groups offered. However our parents had lived in times of scarcity. During the Depression when they were in their teens, they had years of doing without and with the second world war, rationing too. Our parents had known then a desire to eat healthy food but a lack of options.
Their parents had been creative.  When there was not much butter they used lard. When they had no milk or butter or cream they invented recipes that did not require those.  When sugar was expensive they used molasses, corn syrup or honey. When eggs were rare because feed for chickens was costly on the farm, they made poor man’s cake with vinegar and baking soda for leavening.

But our parents, in 1949 when we came along, had gotten past those times. Now they had greater abundance of options again and clearly they enjoyed those.

It meant that our parents might be said to have spoiled us with what they themselves had not had much.   They wanted us to thrive. Today’s food critics may say that the kids of the 1950s ate too much butter, too many transfats, and may say that the canned condensed soups had too much sodium.   It Is not that our parents did not care about harm done . They just did not know there was any. They felt they were doing the best for their kids.

One of the things my cohort ate was peanut butter which had been created decades earlier. By 1932 there was Skippy peanut butter and in 1958 we had Jif peanut butter. For my cohort the choice was between smooth or crunchy . We ate it in sandwiches with jelly and we ate it in cookies. We ate it as spread on celery sticks. Few of us had developed peanut allergies. Today in our seventies we hear of tragic instances of peanut allergy and peanuts are even banned from most schools. There are alerts if they are offered in restaurants. Why is that?  In the 90s there was a rumor that peanuts were not good for you so parents stopped giving them to little kids and that resulted in the kids not developing any tolerance for them. By 1997 (we were in our late 30s) there was a surge of peanut allergy among kids who had not been introduced to peanut butter earlier. 

It just seems that whatever parents do, they mess up a bit and they succeed a bit. Generationally we use what information we have and we as a group learn, make mistakes, learn again.

Food Costs

In 1955 milk was twenty cents a quart, and in 1960 25cent

In 1955 bread was 18c a loaf and in 1960 twenty cents. It was usually refined white bread

In 1955 eggs were 61 cents a dozen and by 1960 the price had even gone down to 50 cents a dozen;

Lean ground beef in 1955 was 48 cents a pound and in 1960 about 60 cents a pound.

In 1960 butter was 60 cents a pound and flour was 80 cents for ten  pounds

An ad from Safeways in Calgary in 1963 showed these sale prices that week:

Strawberry jam – 69 cents a jar

Spork – 39Cents

Vienna bread – 22 cents a loaf

Coffee – a two pound tin for $1.18

Hot dog buns – 8 for 29cents

Bananas – 2 for 35 cents

Lettuce – 19 cents a head

Margarine – two pounds for 39 cents

Chuck roast – 45 cents a pound

Smoked sausage  – 79 Cents a pound

Pot roast – 59 cents a pound

At cafes costs sound low today but relative to income they were not

In 1955 a drive-in hamburger was 15-25cents.  French fries were a dime and soup and sandwich was a $1.35.  A fine dinner with salad. main course and dessert could be $2.50 to $4.50.