Margaret Pilgrim

Was your experience high tea or actually afternoon tea. High tea has traditionally been a simpler evening family meal. Not fancy but substantial enough to be what we call supper or dinner.

At my age, there aren’t many “popular” foods I haven’t tried. None, that I can think of. But an awful lot that I’ve tasted once and never again. KFC and Popeye’s; peanut butter anything; maple syrup on most anything; sweet barbecue; sagey breakfast sausage; anchovy pizza...and for starters.

Is it possible to ever totally remove that anchovy oil from shirt, pants and shoes? My heart is with you.

I really prefer plastic lidded glass containers but weight become a problem when packing a cooler. In fact, cooler weight is a problem. We bought a great cooler to carry stuff from city to country, only to find that when it was full it was almost too heavy for one of us to carry. So we offed it and bought two small coolers which work well as long as we use plastic containers. Three, say, two or three quart glass quart containers start adding substantially to total weight.

You have to allow for weight of contents also. Like a pound or so of lasagne or stew or leftover turkey...

Palmiers.

Very astute. The minefields we create for others and ourselves. I often recall the story about two Southern ladies catting, "You know, Mary Lou is SO TACKY. She's so tacky she puts dark dark meat in her chicken sandwiches."

Freak weather sent temps down 20 degrees, so a warming plate of Swedish meatballs.

I only use buttermilk for breakfast breads (biscuits, pancakes or waffles) and find that setting the milk/lemon juice to molder overnight results in a thick product in the morning.

Agree with lemniscate. A charity dining room will accept your stash gratefully. We have offed good but not to our taste product to St. Anthony's Dining Room here in SF. A win-win solution.

Hm...I get whey when making ricotta but none with yogurt. eta...aha...you are making Greek yogurt by straining yogurt? We have just enjoyed it simply chilled and thickened to custard consistency., therefore no whey.

You certainly can. Just to be safe, I usually pick up a small fresh organic yogurt to use as starter. Paranoid, and not traditional.

In an ongoing program of showing our grandkids that much of what you buy in packages and jars can be made at home, often better, we made yogurt without the aid of an appliance, the ancient descending heat method: Boil water in a heavy lidded pot, like enameled cast iron or similar. Bring milk to a simmer. Let cool until you can keep your (clean) finger in it 10 seconds. Add a spoonful of commercial yogurt to the milk and mix well. Empty water from pot and place small jars in it. Fill jars with the heated milk. Replace pot lid. Place pot on a folded blanket and wrap snugly. Leave until it has cooled to room temp. Better, leave it overnight. The yogurt will be somewhat creamy but will set up more as it cools more in the refrigerator. I used whole organic milk (1 qt) and organic plain yogurt (1 teaspoon). DELICIOUS product. Stupid easy. The hardest part is folding up and putting away the blanket 1

it is indeed tragic that many traditional products have been dumbed down in an effort to cater to mass taste. But economics drives us all to some extent and at some point. How many "remember that..." memories we each harbor.

Not at all "uncomfortable" but sad that the suggestions showed so little insight into traditional American food. There was daily fare for 200 years before McDo et Cie.

It's hard for me to understand the concept of "influencer". Do they really influence? How many real ;people actually do what they suggest? To what extent do the people who follow reflect our national demographic? Sorry I asked.

Apparently, "bulgar" and "cracked wheat" are often used interchangeably, but are two distinct products. Bulgar is indeed precooked and need only be soaked, while cracked wheat is raw and can/should be used in cooked dishes.

In school we were issued a half pint of WHOLE milk, 2 Wheat Thin crackers and 2 dried prunes. I thought it was heaven since we only had skim milk at home*, never snack crackers. And I kinda liked prunes since they were sweet. *mother made butter from the cream.

San Francisco's "Joe's Special" -> ground beef, eggs, spinach + obligatory catsup + your rice .

We were not a "sweets" household, never dessert after a meal. So as the saying goes, you can't MISS what you never had. As I wrote, we grew veg, had an apple tree and lived in California's fruit belt. My mother saved all sugar allotments for canning fruit. The main rationing conversation in our household was meat. And shoes. You took care of your shoes because new ones were way out there in time. But cod liver oil!!!! Was the meagerness of our diets that convinced parents that cod liver oil was mandatory? My father's potion, administered daily, was called Stewart's Formula and was a concoction of cod liver oil and blackstrap molasses. To this day, I can't eat oily fish (salmon, mackerel, sablefish) or anything with noticeable molasses flavor.

While what you describe is largely true, we in the US and elsewhere lived with rationing. Yes, every member of the household had a ration book, coupons and tokens. Red tokens for meat, blue for non-meat. Odd-bits required fewer tokens, maybe were not rationed. We ate things like beef heart, tongue. Steak maybe a couple of times a year, like a family birthday party. We dug up lawn and planted victory gardens, grew stuff on windowsills. My mother saved "top milk", cream from unhomogenized milk, and churned small quantities of butter. Other than that, there was margarine which was not colored but white like Crisco. Country and small town people fared better than city folks. In Coastal California, we still had good if rationed produce. But we did have tomatoes and onions and garlic and grew our own herbs. I don't remember our food's being particularly bland.

We actually had that neighbor kid visitor. I particularly remember when he waited for an apple pie to cool enough to cut. My mother cut him a piece, nudging more apples onto his portion and less crust. He looked at it and tears started to pour down his face. "Mrs. xxxxx, I like PIE, not APPLESAUCE!"

My mother made extraordinary from scratch baking powder biscuits and fabulous French bread. Even into her late '80s. Her daily fare was balanced, and tailored to my father's meat and potato preferences. I do remember garlicky lamb shanks,and what I grew up knowing as "lambcurryandrice". Always vegetables from the back yard.

Darienne, we could have been twins separated at birth. Except, my mother stuffed steak down me as diet food. On the positive side, I have little taste for steak today which is probably good for my health.

A favorite toddler food in our house was "marble meatballs" which = 1/2" ground round balls in Cambell's tomato soup. Decent if not perfect nutrition, and said toddler is an accomplished eater and home cook.