Cooking

I wanted to note a few things my grandmother did that were likely typical and may evoke fond memories for others. In the Depression false apple pie was sometimes made with Ritz crackers when apples were scarce. When there was no butter, a person might make sponge cake. When there were lemons, fresh squeezed lemonade was a wonderful refresher but fresh fruit was unheard of in winter so lemonade was actually a luxury.

It is possible to make a cake with tea from tea bags and vinegar. It is possible to make a cake with applesauce when you have no eggs. They knew that when bread was lacking, crackers or corn flakes might work in the recipe. When there were no eggs they could use flour and baking powder, or cornstarch and water. If the recipe called for butter milk they might use milk with a bit of vinegar.

My grandma made a lot of bread and buns, from scratch, with yeast and letting it rise, punching it down, letting it rise again. She was from Scottish roots and made scones a lot. A person adept at that can throw them together and bake them so they are ready to eat in under half an hour. There were luxuries like candy but my grandma made some of these also from scratch. Home made fudge was a common recipe. Spices like ginger could make desserts interesting- ginger cookies fresh from the oven as Heritage Park often used to make in nostalgia settings. Gingerbread was more work but a fun project and shortbread was of course a mainstay.

My grandmother had on hand a mix for pie crusts, and it consisted of flour and lard, mixed into fine blend and then stored in a cold place. When a pie was needed, she need only take a cup or so of the blend, add water and make a paste, shape it into a pie shell and there it was. Done so fast. My grandmother was known for her pies and we called them Nanny’s pastry because the pastry shell was very moist and light. It is funny how what you experience as a child becomes what you assume is normal and ideal. Forever after when I am given an apple pie to eat it may be lovely but if the crust is heavy and thick it just is not the way it should be in my child’s mind.

Our grandmas put a lot of vegetables away for the winter. Pickling was common and making jams and jellies took hours and weeks but what a joy it must have been to have those foods all winter. When I ‘met’ my grandma in 1949 however she was already 53, and no longer living rurally. She was also by that point widowed so she lived in a little house in Edmonton with a big garden. She did not do canning any more as far as I know. But my mother had some of the recipes -apple jelly, dill pickles, marmalade, mustard relish, cucumber relish.

My grandma of course made turkey dressing from scratch. We had big family dinners at her tiny house most of my childhood. We would drive up from Calgary to Edmonton and all my cousins, aunts and uncles were there, poured over all the sofas and chairs, in the living room, kitchen, sitting on the beds and overflowing into the half finished basement. The meal was always wonderful and huge. Turkey dressing was made from cubes of bread, eggs, butter, with parsley, celery and spices and was in copious amounts, cooked right in the turkey for hours. The gravy was also homemade. It only matters to recall it because I think that on special occasions each generation tries to hearken back to our traditions and often a few are to go back to what our grandmas did, for that day only.

Once jelly powder was invented my grandmother and my aunts did make amazing creations with shaped jelly tins. My aunt liked to make tomato aspic which was tomato juice, jelly powder, Tabasco Sauce and Worcestershire sauce left to set. We also had amazing creations of jellied salads with baby oranges pieces put in them, cherries, marshmallows, carrot slivers, sometimes even walnuts.

Each generation seems to feel that they are living in the best of times for creative options. Though the world’s fair displayed a stovetop pressure cooker in 1939, these did not become immediately available. But the technology was astounding to speed up cooking and my grandmother who was 43 at the time, eventually got one. She swore by it. Even in her seventies whenever one of the grandchildren got married she made sure to buy them as a wedding gift, a pressure cooker.

My grandma made hearty breakfasts with thick bacon that we called it ‘Nanny’s bacon’. She made homemade buttermilk biscuits. When I was little though we did not go to that much trouble often. Toast and cereal were the norm and even ‘instant breakfast’ powder to just drink.

In the 1950s the day to day food did not take the hours of preparation our grandmothers put in, but our mothers did create meals that took some time.

Sugar was no longer rationed and there was a joy now in serving food that contained it. Sugar cereals became popular and sugar was in candy, bubble gum and ice cream.

Meatloaf was often a weekly staple in the 50s and at my house we had a lot of wieners and beans. Cream of mushroom soup was one of the varieties that people enjoyed of the canned soup options and some people liked frozen fish sticks.

There was a new celebration of access to wide varieties of food.

In the 1950s cinnamon toast was common. Devilled eggs were popular in the 1960s as were Eggo waffles and pigs in blankets (sausages in pastry)

When parents entertained they might serve cheese balls, even cheese fondue in the 1960s.

Cakes were a new luxury. Pineapple upside down cake became popular even if you made it from scratch. It was common though to use a cake mix as a starting point and then just do creative things with it.

Salads often made use of jello and gelatin options. My aunt served a lot of tomato aspic and many families felt a gelatin salad should appear at any fancy dinner, often with tiny marshmallows mixed in with the fruit.

There were not a lot of open air markets but some of us had the privilege of having a little truck deliver fresh fruit and vegetables every few weeks in the 1960s. It seemed the clever entrepreneurship of one man though, possibly named Tom.

A big meal in the 1950s might included green bean casserole, chicken pot pie. Swedish meatballs became popular and chicken kiev. Some people served shrimp cocktail and perogies, but here your original culture was the determiner.

In the 1960s in my house we ate what our parents had traditionally eaten. Corn casserole, shepherd’ s pie, macaroni salad. Scalloped potatoes were common and a fun snack was cheese straws. My mother would put little almonds on the green beans and my parents liked some horrible toast in hot milk think I still could not believe they liked. Often it seemed that parents claimed to like a food to get the kids to try it. Funeral potatoes were a blend of potatoes and cheese.

Desserts were a big feature in the 1960s with red velvet cake , carrot cake, angel food cake, coconut cake favorites at my house. My dad loved to eat and considered having a big meal a sign of love and generosity. So he would advise us not just what to eat, urging us always to take a little more but also suggested how to eat it. “Put a little butter on it and make it slip”. He thought all meals could be ended with ice cream. Food was a kind of love language.

There are foods that remind us of our parents and when I am feeling sad, even in my seventies, I like to make chicken soup like my mother did. I am reliving the warmth of security of my childhood.

Our parents were using new shortcuts and I have memories of Jello pudding varieties, my favorites being caramel and butterscotch. There were now instant mashed potatoes, and shake n bake to add coating to chicken. Minute Rice was available in the 1960s.
After we became adult, things changed again. The ton in many homes shifted back to natural foods, with granola and bean sprouts, yogurt and tofu. The measuring system shifted to metric in the 1970s, after we were teens, but slowly our world was surrounded by food measurements in grams, distances in kilometres and volumes in litres. I took a long time to think of temperature in Celsius though by our age 70s most of us do. However when the US still broadcasts news to our homes from Seattle and uses Fahrenheit, we also understand that.

I have a theory that our deepest ways of thinking, our predispositions are from our early years. When an adult is angry, they may revert to basic expressions they learned when young. When a person does math, they tend to do it, however bilingual they are, in their first language, by instinct. And I think that the way we think tomato soup should taste, the way we like chicken cooked or the type of dessert we feel most comforted by, are from our childhood -however old we get.

That does mean that my cohort still seems to think of the reported weight of new babies in pounds and ounces even though the metric system was made official here around 50 years ago. We are kind of loyal to our childhood.

When a person speaks of foods of an era, it is easy to misunderstand that the foods kids had as toddlers and preteens were not the foods of their era per se but of that of their parents. They were introduced to what their parents knew. When the Depression hit in 1929, my dad was only 10 and my mother was 7. They did not cook. They ate what their parents provided and their parents were the ones who were super creative in how to cope. My grandparents especially my grandmothers then are the ones I admire when thinking back to how creative people handle scarcity.

In the same way though, the foods I ate as a toddler and young child were not what my cohort created but actually the foods our parents provided. So the food of the 1950s was of the previous generation also. When the war ended in 1945, my mother was 22 and my dad was 26. They had to figure out ways to provide for a family now but were actually still very young. My mother had the recipes and examples of her mother but a few more options given the end of some scarcity and some rations.

When a person does a study then of the food of the 50s there is a bit of a disconnect. Many toddlers did not eat casseroles though our mothers made them. Little kids are picky. In 1960 when my cohort was 11, then we might have been more willing to try new foods. However in 1970 when we were 21, we went into our own homes and sometimes set up our own families, with the recipes of our parents. Generationally then food habits have a delay, or carry over. Most of us had the chance then by our senior years to know from experience the cooking styles of our grandmothers, our mothers and then our own forays into cooking. Many of us have noticed that our own children have yet another generation’s new creations and insights but again with this overlap.

My parents created for my sister and me a celebration of what was now more available.

There was refrigeration much more available and we had a fiesta of milk, dairy and cheese products. Even whip cream, which was quite fattening was still worth having and was a key feature of many desserts- real whip cream, whipped a few minutes before serving.

In Calgary we mostly had cheddar cheese not gouda or soft cheeses or anything exotic. But my mother did fun things with it – cheese fondue, cheese straw cookies, cheese shortbread.

Few of us could afford steak but our mothers sure were creative with the cuts of beef they could afford. Ground beef was made into hamburger patties, what some called gourmet patties even with garlic, cheese, onion. We ate meatballs, sloppy joes in sauce over toast, and of course meat loaf. The cheaper cuts of meat were often tenderized into a stew with potatoes and carrots. Often my mother would put ground beef in with beans to make chili. In my teen years my mother sometimes put ground beef in stuffed peppers.

In the 1960s we had heard a little more of foods that newcomers ate, more exotic dishes to us. Some of our restaurants in Calgary often showed them to us. So my mother might try her hand at making deep fried chicken, sweet and sour sauce to have a Chinese food meal at home. She tried beef stroganoff, and beef or pork goulash. She tried meat pie, tourtière and we had pork chops and sometimes veal as wiener schnitzel.

Though my family were ‘white bread’ people by stereotype and fact, we did over time try out some whole wheat breads, Hovis and oatmeal. What I remember though is that most of the variety was in what we could do with white bread – like adding cinnamon and sugar, or cheese and garlic.

The whole grains were known to be healthy. Some of us did have oatmeal for porridge, in cookies and in bread. My mother made cornmeal muffins quite a bit and the variety of muffins and loaves extended to adding fruit too and nuts. We had cranberry muffins, lemon muffins, lemon pound cake.

Donuts were not part of my childhood. It is likely they were for some people but the ones teens ate were not often homemade.

My mother did however like to home make candy. She made taffy, and would let butterscotch solidify on trays and cut it into cubes. She made a sweet sauce of brown sugar and butter and poured it over fresh popcorn and made us delicious hand rolled popcorn balls.

Breakfast cereals. made into creative desserts like Rice Krispie squares were a mainstay. The fact they called for marshmallows added sweetness and when those marshmallows were colored, added artistry too.

My mother did make butter tarts with or without raisins and brownies. There was a special recipe called Hello Dolly slice which consisted of coconut, condensed milk, chocolate chips and walnuts that was as they say ‘to die for’.
Because we had enough eggs now, they were common at many meals. Pancakes for breakfast were not a daily thing but for special on weekends were common. Again my mother was creative making some very small, dollar pancakes, or some very large, the size of the pan. She tried flavoring additions of blueberry or corn meal with sometimes potatoes or bananas or even oatmeal as a base. Today there are pancake restaurants that still hearken back to those days. A key feature is often chocolate chips.

One celebration of eggs was the meringue, the beaten egg white concoction with sugar. Our parents put it on pies and lemon meringue pie often was celebrated for how high the meringue went. In one BC town they said theirs was ‘mile high’ meringue. Another odd dessert that tasted wonderful was called ‘forgotten dessert’. It was made of stiffly beaten eggs, mixed with sugar, cooked in a pie tin in the oven and then left there over night. They hardened to a very white shell. The next day you filled the shell with whip cream and strawberries and it was wonderful. Another concoction was the foamy sauce, which was put on steamed pudding. This was made of lemon juice, butter, eggs and sugar and then boiled till it was bright yellow and warm. It was lovely and sweet.

Our mothers made their own salad dressing much of the time. Over the years it was possible to buy store bought dressings but recipes for your own were popular . They often required vinegar, sugar, cornstarch, lemon, egg whites, sometimes mustard.

At our house we also liked frying eggs inside a piece of toast on the fry pan. We called that toad in a hole. My parents liked French toast, which was bread dipped in a sauce of cooked eggs and milk then fried.This would be eaten with jelly and icing powder.

For lunch we often had soup and a sandwich. Tinned soups and packaged puddings were new and easy. But homemade soup was till a favorite and my mother’s specialty was chicken soup or hamburger soup. They were full of healthy vegetables- onions, celery, carrots , spices and the good thing about homemade soups was that there was usually so much left over that you could get meals of them for several days.

Our parents made icing from scratch. The handy containers of prepared icing that came along later were not known to them at the time. Betty Crocker made a commercial version in 1967 and Duncan Hines and Pillsbury made them in the 1970s. But in our time, icing required cream, vanilla, butter and icing sugar, and precise measuring so it would spread and harden not too much just enough. There was also a 7 minute icing which was an absolute celebration of sweetness, cooked egg whites in corn syrup; beaten so hard they peaked and retain the peak.

I guess weight was not a concern then, and maybe that is because the lives of men were often physical labor and the housework of women often also physically demanding. Kids would go outside and play and before TV were also very active and growing so they needed the calories. When cream cheese was available and when sweetened condensed milk was available, we enjoyed them too.

Parents cooked big food, and in quantity. It seems like the goal was to not be afraid to have leftovers because you could certainly use them for another meal. Many of the recipes were about what to do with leftover chicken or beef – to put in soups or casseroles. With bits of uneaten angel food cake you could make a new jellied concoction. Many women of my parents’ generation were averse to ever throwing out anything.

We did not have much seafood. We were on the prairies with little access to fish. This does mean that what my mother served us was often from tins – tinned salmon, tinned tuna or jars of pickled herring. We sure got to have our fair share of tuna casserole, tuna salad sandwiches, salmon patties, salmon casserole and salmon loaf. Often bread crumbs were used to ‘stretch ‘ the meal to serve more people and eggs or cream sauce made it taste pretty good.
The point is that really, when my cohort became adult we had often had an experience of hearty food,, often homemade, stews, soups, breads but when we ourselves embarked on cooking we did not have the same situation. We rarely in our new places had gardens, just had little suites in apartments. When we could afford a home it often was small. When we got our paid jobs we often had much less time to cook from scratch anyway so our meals were vague imitations of our parents’ style with some adaptations. Some of these were seen even as improvements, if we had more fresh vegetables from the stores and wider variety of meat.

But there was a mixed feeling about what we had left behind/ There was a loss of the butter and sugar and real cream focus that we had been experienced. We got less exercise so we likely did not need all those calories anyway but we might have missed the taste. The fads for healthy food evolved yet again and often packaged mixes, cans, fast foods, frozen dinners tried to give us what we missed, but in easy to heat up ways. There was a gain in ease and a bit of a loss in freshness. Often the new products had a lot of additives and preservatives we had not had.

There were diet fads too in our own lifetime. The debate about butter or margarine did its cycle. In my home we used butter but it did become too hard in the fridge so had to be stored in a dish in the cupboard. However it was essential for some great baking like shortbread. Mayonnaise had existed for decades but Miracle Whip had appeared only in my parents’ generation in the 1930s. Chocolate chips were on the scene in 1941 but did not come quickly to our home. But even those products were improved over our childhood. Butter became available in smaller foil wrap containers. Margarine formulas changed. Real chocolate chips were costly and the simulated versions appeared over time. Carob chips were new to us until the 1970s.

1950 – Corn Pops, Kraft Singles

1951 – Frosted Flakes

1952 – Cheez Whiz

1953 – Eggo, Tater tots

1953 – Swanson introduces TV dinners in divided aluminum trays

1955 – Shreddies, Special K

1956 – Cocoa Puffs

1957 – Sweet ‘n Low

1958 – Alpha Bits, Cocoa Krisps

1958 – Jif peanut butter

1959 – Pam cooking oil

1960 – Haagen Dazs

1961 – Life cereal

1961 – Coffee Mate

1963 – Fruit Loops, Cap’n Crunch

1964 – Lucky Charms

1964 – Nutella

1965 – Apple Jacks, Honeycomb cereal

1965 – Shake ‘n Bake, Spaghettios

1965 – Yoplait

1966 – Cool Whip

1966 – Quaker Instant oatmeal

1966 – Sapporo Ichiban noodles

1969 – Frosted Mini Wheats

1969- Frosty dairy dessert

1970 – Hamburger Helper

Cooking equipment and supplies

In my childhood there were a lot of new electrical appliances. A gas stove was passe now and an electric stove was considered much better. Fast forward to the 1990s and many chefs preferred again the precision of gas.

The toaster oven was invented in 1960 ( my cohort was 11) and the electric can opener was a very big deal. My dad was so happy to demonstrate the electric knife, whirring it through the turkey at Thanksgiving and smiling.

Electric was the new watchword. We had an electric can opener and even an electric coffee grinder. We saw our first nonstick frying pans too. We had tea kettles on the back of the stove and the new thing was a whistling one with an irritating little red top that it was tempting to just remove. The electric kettle had been invented in 1930 but we didn’t get one till I was a teen . Electricity had its challenges like operating even without a person watching. Mercifully the electric kettles eventually were designed with automatic turn off.

Paper towels had been invented in 1907 but we didn’t have them when I was young.

We did have a hand-operated meat grinder which was bulky but fascinating. My mother liked to get meat from the butcher’s and we’d grind it to hamburger consistency. It seemed like magic.

Electric waffle makers had been invented and we got one but the early ones were messy and sticky

We had a nut grinder jar with a lid and little hand operated handle and we had a hand cranked beater we used to whip cream or beat egg whites. Moms got pretty strong arm muscles in that era. My grandmother had a bread recipe that similarly required strength. The recipe even said ‘knead until your arms ache’.

Electric hand-held mixers made mixing batter so much easier and Sunbeam appliances abounded.
The refrigerator had improved on the icebox of earlier generations and the newer fridges even had a freezer section. By the 1960s color also came to the appliances and harvest gold and green were common. Some refrigerators were frost free. I must say that ours was not, I remember a common errand I had was to ‘defrost ‘the fridge. I have memories of turning off the power and hammering away at the collected ice with a hard spoon.

Inventions of some appliances came in the 50s but not yet to my town.. They were novel, costly and in other countries only. The microwave oven may have been invented in 1945 but by 1947 wehn a person could buy one it was bulky and even in 1967 it still cost $495.

Aluminum seemed like such a great invention. We had aluminum ice cube trays in the 1950s and there was even a little lever for triggered release of the cubes. We had flour sifters of aluminum and even jelly molds. To me it seemed so magic to put ingredients, fruits and jelly powder, into a tin and then to put it in the fridge to gel. Turned upside down on a serving plate it was beautiful.

Many moms made home made gravy and then put it in a china container called a gravy separator. The fat separated out.

1951 – ice chests are made portable

1952 – Tupperware polyethylene airtight containers

1953 – food chopper by Zyliss

1953 – Electric frying pan

1954 – electric no- drip coffee maker

1954 – Microwave oven costs $2000

1956 – Frigidaire had automated ingredient dispenser

1957 – bubble wrap

1957 – electric corn popper

1960 – Salton bun warmer and hot tray

1963 – Veg-o-matic

1967 – countertop microwave costs $495

By the 1960s we had stainless steel baking pans and some of the jelly pans were made of copper.
Ovens were not self cleaning. It was real work to remove the grills and soak them in the bathtub and to scrub down the insides. My mother often did this, thank goodness. I often claimed I had homework to do.