# How did our great-grandparents eat?



## hmsteader71 (Mar 16, 2006)

This probably sounds stupid but I am honestly wanting to know. What did our great-grandparents eat? Was it basic meat, potatoes and vegetables? 
I am redoing our grocery budget & want to get as basic and simple as possible. We both have relux so I'm wanting to do away with most of the tomato based products. I could really use some help here.


----------



## where I want to (Oct 28, 2008)

I think it depends on where they lived. Some places, like where you live, did not have access to fresh garden produce for half the year. 
I'd say from my father's food preferences it was potatoes, soup, meat, beans and baked goods. He called anything green rabbit food. Everything was cooked a long time.


----------



## mrsgcpete (Sep 16, 2012)

DH's grandma and great grandma grew up on island..they ate fish and deer and were so excited when the bread wasn't homemade


----------



## jassytoo (May 14, 2003)

Well, I can tell you how my grandparents ate. They were born in the 1870s. They lived in a small town in England. They ate fresh. Even though they lived in a row house with very small backyard they rented a pea patch ( or allotment as its known there). My grandad grew veg. Mainly potatoes, carrots, cabbages, greenbeans etc. Nothing fancy. They had a few berry bushes too. My grandad fished off the beach and hunted rabbits on his relatives land. My grandma did not can anything and never bought anything in a can. When the allotment food ran out they lived on cabbages and root crops which they bought at the weekly farmers market,which ran all year, meat fresh from the neighborhood butcher and milk from a little dairy on the corner.They ate seasonally.Grandma baked on a coal range. They shopped only for what they needed that day. I don't remember them trying anything new ever.


----------



## soulsurvivor (Jul 4, 2004)

My grands were basically not around when I was growing up but my neighbors were, and some of them were old enough to be from that era. I got to enjoy their food at the many potluck church events. Every recipe was made from scratch and used basic homegrown ingredients. They took pride in what they brought to the table.

My favorites were big pots of chicken and dumplings, fried fresh fish, fried cornbread, sweet potato casserole, layered stack cakes, fried apple pies, corn pudding, pickled beets, country ham and red eye gravy, lard biscuits, fresh deviled eggs, strawberry shortcake with whipped cream, banana pudding with meringue topping, chocolate pie, butterscotch pie, chess pie, apple pie, Italian cream cake, banana bread, chocolate chip cookies, watermelon fruit baskets, pinto beans and country ham, green beans and country ham, thick fried bacon and fried eggs with sliced tomatoes, fried eggplant, fried green tomatoes, fried porkchops, fried steak, beef chili with brown beans, yeast rolls, angel biscuits, baked apples with cinnamon, kraut and sausage with whole red potatoes, fried squirrel and squirrel gravy, fried deer, fried frog legs, fried chicken, fried dove, potato salad, peas and pearl onions, fried potatoes, fried salmon cakes, corn on the cob, lima beans and red peppers, souse meat, meatloaf, stuffed peppers, beef roast with potatoes and carrots, homemade donuts, caramel popcorn balls, pulled taffy, divinity candy, maple fudge, black walnut topping for ice cream, fresh peach ice cream, and now I have to go find something to eat....

DH and I eat simple food. It's grilled/baked meat, a vegetable and sometimes a dessert that incorporates a dairy/fruit into our daily diet. We don't use additives such as sugar, salt, flour, no grains, no seeds. It has to be a very basic diet for him because of how he eats to keep the Crohns from bothering him. I sometimes fix myself a sweet treat or snack, but he mostly avoids those for himself. It's a cheaper way to eat but it does get pretty boring.


----------



## SFM in KY (May 11, 2002)

Not great-grandparents, but grandparents and parents ... and myself, for that matter. My grandparents homesteaded in MT in the early 1900s. Nearest town was 60 miles and it was a 2-day trip with a team and wagon so they didn't go to town often. They raised most of their own food or bought in bulk.

Growing up on the ranch in the 1940s, rarely went to town, no electricity for food preservation, everything was either fresh or home canned or in the wintertime, cold enough to stay frozen outside.

Bread, butter and jelly were on the table at every meal. Usually meat, potatoes and a vegetable. In the summer the meat was fresh, most often chicken. We usually killed a hog in the fall, cured the hams and ate a lot of fresh pork quickly. My grandmother also canned chickens to make chicken and dumplings during the winter. When it was cold enough, we shot deer and hung it in the shed where it was stay frozen. 

We ate a lot of stew, beans and ham and chicken and dumplings/noodles. We had eggs, but they were usually eaten for breakfast or potato salad in the summer. In the summer, we ate whatever was ripe from the garden but that far north, what we could raise was limited. Peas, beans, corn, carrots, beets, cabbage, squash, potatoes, plus salad vegetables ... we stored potatoes, carrots and onions in the cellar for the winter. Some cabbage and squash held over for a few months in the cellar as well.

We made our own bread. Picked wild plums and chokecherries for jelly and jam. By the time I was in grade school, we had a car and in the summer, went to town several times during the summer. We bought pears, peaches and apricots in town specifically for canning,which came in wooden crates. We ate them plain or in cobblers or pies for dessert. A friend that lived in town had apple trees and would give us a bushel or two of apples which were also canned.

We bought flour, sugar, salt, coffee, cocoa, baking supplies and spices, also canned milk for when the milk cows weren't milked (a couple of months before they had the new calf). Anything we did buy had to be things that stayed usable when stored on the pantry shelves or in the cellar, didn't have electricity until I was 11 or 12, but after we did it made things easier.


----------



## emdeengee (Apr 20, 2010)

Just as today it depends on where you live and what you like and what was available. Refrigeration sure changed the way we all eat. A huge influence on any diet came from immigrants who brought their food preferences and recipes with them. 

I love to read old cookbooks. This is one of the best ways to find out what and how people ate. If you want to go back to pioneer days there is even a cookbook called the Little House Cookbook made up of the authentic recipes found in Laura Ingalls Wilder's Little House books.

Great grandparents also fit into different eras. It all depends on how old you are. Some are from the era of WW1, the Roaring Twenties, the Dirty Thirties, WW2 and the Fabulous Fifties. Lots of books and information available for all of those times. This is a very good site for WW2 with over 100 economical recipes from that time

http://1940sexperiment.wordpress.com/about/


----------



## ChristieAcres (Apr 11, 2009)

My GGP's were Ranchers/Farmers and ate a diverse diet, were incredibly healthy, and lived into their late 90s. They ate fruits/veggies/nuts/grains/variety of meats. Their sugar intake was low. Honey was a more common choice. All of their food was fresh or preserved by them. They had their flour ground from the wheat they grew... They raised sheep, cattle, goats, chickens, pigs, ducks, and had their own milk cows. All had orchards, gardens, and fields of crops. They canned, smoked/dried their foods. In addition, had root cellars. Forgot to mention, they grew all their own livestock feed, too.


----------



## hmsteader71 (Mar 16, 2006)

I actually own the Little House Cookbook.


----------



## SFM in KY (May 11, 2002)

I actually have my grandmother's cookbook, one she was given when she was married when she was 16 years old. The recipes are interesting ... the chicken and rabbit recipes start with how to kill/dress the chicken or rabbit ... and none of the recipes for anything in the oven have actual temperatures.


----------



## hippygirl (Apr 3, 2010)

I can tell you how my GGM ate because she raised me until I was 9...

"Ma" was born in 1880, so she turned 80 the year I was born. Until her physical health got so that she could no longer wield a hoe (she was almost 89 by that time), she raised ALL of our vegetables, poultry/eggs, pork (she even smoked her own bacon/ham), and most of our fruit. We had cattle (dairy and beef) until I was around 5 or 6, but my GF (her son) worried that she would get hurt due to their size and her physical decline, so they were sold. She traded with neighbors for milk/butter after the cows were sold, as well as nuts (she loved pecans...a lot!).

Of course, she did purchase things she couldn't produce on the farm (flour/meal, sugar/salt/spices, etc) and we always had store-bought condiments such as Blue Plate mayo (yuck, but it was the only brand she'd buy), Heinz ketchup, yellow mustard, etc. 

As for sweets, the only ones I recall eating that weren't homemade were "holiday" candies, Creme Drops (more yuckiness!), and a RARE Hershey bar.

We ate good!


----------



## coup (Feb 28, 2007)

most times they had oatmeal and soakydab for breakfast,,,,, home grown-ground-cornbread and brown beans about 70%.....rest of time,pork,canned veg.eggs and such.............


----------



## Sawmill Jim (Dec 5, 2008)

The year i was born is the year my Grandparents got electricity Liking food was a easy thing if you didn't like it today you would tomorrow :clap: We have always raised and canned a lot of our food as they did . We had oranges and such around Christmas time only . I remember when Granny got a used Black Diamond wood range ,boy was she in tall cotton . :happy: And fast food was a biscuit out of the warming closet on top that wood range . Those days the house hold bills didn't exceed $15.00 a month if that much :awh: Well one thing i never did learn to like was baked possum even with sweet taters


----------



## SteveD(TX) (May 14, 2002)

Lots of peas, beans, greens from the garden or wild such as poke salit, meat was either chickens, pork, or whatever game that could be trapped or shot. Squirrel, duck, and deer were quite popular, and meats were smoked or heavily salted to cure them. My grandfather (born in 1900) wrote a lot of letters about growing up 100+ years ago.


----------



## Tabitha (Apr 10, 2006)

My GGP and GP ate the same. My GGP were born in the middle of the 1800, give or take a few. GM was born in 1888. They farmed and ate what they raised. Potatoes in so many ways, cooked, cold potatoes were a staple and there was a drawer for them in the kitchen. They were shredded fine, kneaded with flour and an egg and the dough was made into all kinds of things, all yummy. They ate a lot of potaoes in their jackets, with sour milk. Sour milk was a main stay of their diet. So was bread, mainly rye, which was always home made. 
They had a big outside bake oven, brick, which was also used for drying. They dried bushels and bushels of little pears, prunes, appleslices. They did something similar to canning, in crocks, with sloes, huckleberries and lingon berries. Potatoe dough rolled out, filled with lingon berries and folded over and fried, Uhh, I miss it. 
They made a vat of sauerkraut and a smaller one of turnip kraut. They ate rutabagas also in winter. And beets. Breakfast was a soup made of sourmilk, water, flour and some sweet cream if you had it. Stale and hard bread was cut into pieces and floated in the soup. supper was the same, but with the addition of potatoes, either baked, boiled in their skins, fried. Meat was eaten on sunday. If a pig was butchered it was mostly brined, smoked, turned into smoked sausages. There was lard, and there was butterfat, no other fat that I know of. 
When Grandmother was very old I bought her an icecream. She had never had any in her life. She did not like it, it was too cold and too sweet. 
The dried fruit was soaked in water and strained, the fruit was eaten or used as filling, and the water was drunk. I loved dried pear water. No pop of course. Never heard of it. 
Grandmother had to give up farming because at age 82 because she could not see well anymore. She really needed cateract surgery. 
On special occasion there would be chicken soup. All noodles were handmade. In summer on hot days, GM made sour noodles. Homemade egg noodles, with vinegar and lots and lots of chives. I do not recall ever eating any dessert, ever. My own mother and my maternal grandmother baked a cake on saturday. Nothing fancy. My grandmother boiled some plain sugar and water, and brushed it on the finished cake and put it in the oven again, and it made a thin, crunchy covering, like thin ice on a puddle. For variation she made the cake marbled, half dark with cocoa and half plain yellow. 
the cake was for sunday afternoon, when relatives came to visit, and we in turn would visit them and eat their cake. 
GMs, all women I knew, made plum jam in fall. How I miss plum jam. There also were a lot of cherries. Mother canned them in jars. I do not know what they did prior to jars. Probably dried them. 
Wild mushrooms also were dried for winter use. Pasta dough (egg noodles) was used in a number of ways. I remember my uncle taking grain, wheat and rye, to the mill to be ground. Flour was kept in a big bin, holding about 100 pounds with two or three compartments. Grandmother had lettuce growing in the garden, radishes were very popular, they were white and like an elongated turnip, not the little red ones. 
They used a lot of herbs, mostly chives, parsley, leaf celery, lovage, caraway seeds, fennel seeds and coriander seeds. Grandmother used a lot of browned onions. I take it so did her mother. Dinner always, always, always, started with soup. My own mother had to make soup every day because my Dad was used to it and just had to have it. I did not get anything else until my soup was eaten.


----------



## newfieannie (Dec 24, 2006)

we lived on the ocean. they ate fish,fish and more fish. i eat the same now.i'll pass up anything else for fish. ~Georgia.


----------



## Nimrod (Jun 8, 2010)

I have no first hand knowledge of what my great grandparents ate. Parents and grandparents were all city folk. I know my parents were raised to eat fresh fruit and veges when they were in season only. Stuff that was trucked in was very expensive. We kids used to get an orange in out Christmas stocking because it was a special treat and expensive. 

For Sawmill;
[ame]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x2d-D1qM9dY[/ame]


----------



## J.T.M. (Mar 2, 2008)

A - hummmm

http://www.homesteadingtoday.com/ge...families/485276-great-depression-cooking.html


----------



## GrannyG (Mar 26, 2005)

Lots of chicken....had a milk cow....gramps grew taters and corn, beans.....fruit trees of plum, cherry and apple...we picked wild strawberries and elderberries for jam....chickens for eggs....


----------



## Seth (Dec 3, 2012)

How did our great-grandparents eat?


By chewing and swallowing. Seth


----------



## Grandmotherbear (May 15, 2002)

emdeengee said:


> I love to read old cookbooks. This is one of the best ways to find out what and how people ate. If you want to go back to pioneer days there is even a cookbook called the Little House Cookbook made up of the authentic recipes found in Laura Ingalls Wilder's Little House books.


If you pay close attention to the little house books, there really wasn't much meat served. People lived on bread, root vegies and dried beans. During summer there were greens, during autumn fruits but during winters, people ate roots, dried beans and bread and their eyes turned brown. That's why people took tonics in the spring, they had to blast the constipation out of their guts. 

My paternal grandfather was a country doctor and when times were hard farmers paid in food- chickens, hams, during the height of the Dust Bowl almost everything died on the farms but the turnips. The doctor was paid in sacks of turnips that year. They never went hungry, but afterwards they only ever ate turnips on Thanksgiving- to remind them to be thankful they weren't poor folks no more. My paternal grandmother had a root celler, apple trees and a grape arbor and put by preserves and pickles from her own garden. 

My maternal grandmother married a man who was in the building trades so they were very mobile. They didn't own a house till they retired to Florida. When they rented houses she would garden. My mother tells me people would admire her garden and she would tell them to help themselves, but that's not the image I have of her. She was always "what's yours is mine and what's mine is mine". During the height of the depression when Pop=pop couldn't find work they stayed in homeless camps a few times. Sometimes if the adults in a familyin the camp got work they would hire my mother, at age 9 and 10, to watch their kids -(all obviously younger than her) all day. She would have to fix them oatmeal or cook dried beans for a meal for them, boil the baby diapers and hang them, clean the house, and she would earn a dime or 15 cents for this. On the rare occasions she could keep it for herself she would buy herself and her younger sister kewpie dolls. Mostly, though, it went to her mother, who would buy flour, baking soda and lard and make pancakes for dinner. For a treat, Nanna would roast sweet potatoes and slice them into rounds. They ate them as candy. When Pop -pop was working Nanna baked her own bread, and they ate a lot of potatoes. Fried in lard for breakfast, mashed with butter and milk for dinner, and leftovers squished up with an egg, rolled in flour and fried for breakfast. For dinner green beans would be boiled up with potatoes, and maybe a slice of bacon. Pop-pop always got meat, if they were having any. Nana also got her meat. The kids, sometimes they got the chicken, and sometimes they got the gravy, as my mother says. But my mother taught me to make cream gravy like my grandmother. There was always lots of milk and butter or lard in the gravy, and eating it wasn't really a hardship, according to my mom, who had to move in with a friend to finish high school. That one's mother made gravy out of cornstarch and water, and according to my mom, you could starve to death eating that one's gravy...
That reminds me of another habit my father brought with him regarding food. My mother hated my father's guts, but she did grant that he did not stint on the groceries. We ate a LOT of chuck- broiled rather than fried, and my father, after the chuck was plated would throw bread into the drippings for "sop bread". I have only found it referred to as "sop" in writings from the Ozarks. I LOVED my sop bread, eaten prior to grace cause it was best still hot, and it didn't occur to me till I was an adult that it was a good way to take the edge off the kids hunger and stretch the rations a little further. 
I found an excellent book about 25 years ago entitled Feed your Family on $10 per person per week" Of course the prices have gone up, but basically she does treat meat as a seasoning, and suggests that every week you should have one vegetarian meal of inseason produce- like during sweet corn time just cook everybody 4 ears or so of sweet corn, serve some beans, bread, you're done. One meal should be beans, one grains, one fish, one meat, -that's only 5 I can remember and the book is back in the city, but- you get the gist of the matter.
Thanks for letting us reminisce about the older folks eating habits. I hadn't thought of sop bread in years.


----------



## wanda1950 (Jan 18, 2009)

Daddy's family was farmers for generations--they always had a big garden & an orchard plus wild blackberries & plums. Several cows were milked so there was always cream, buttermilk & milk. When trucks began to run, cream was sold to local dairies--the cream cans placed out by the mailbox for pickup. Nuts were gathered in the woods & shelled around the fire in winter to snack on & make cakes. Main meat eaten was pork--salted or smoked & canned or chicken freshly killed. Meat was more often eaten at breakfast with eggs--salmon patties & fried chicken were also sometimes breakfast. Biscuits were always made for breakfast. Neither side of my family were ever much pancake eaters. Huge family & cooking was sometimes done outside in a black iron kettle to have enough. 
Mama's family was not landowning farmers but still ate pretty much the same way except never heard of them pressure canning. They also generally had a beef roast of some kind on Sundays--probably purchased on the trip to town since they never slaughtered cows. In depression time, Mama feels sure one of the roasts was actually horse meat. Game was a biggie during the depression but there was no big game locally then & rabbits & squirrels quickly became scarce. They set traps called rabbit boxes to catch them.
Some were hungry during that time, of course, & Mama's mother regularly fed the neighbors supper. 
Scarce stuff was fresh food of any kind out of season & citrus of any kind--oranges were for Christmas only but Mama says her father brought home an entire stalk of bananas for them once & they were so happy for such a treat.


----------



## kimmom2five (Apr 19, 2009)

They ate dirt- and they were glad of it!


----------



## Rosepath (Feb 18, 2011)

Find the book See You in a Hundred Years. It is a fascinating true story about a young couple who decided to spend a year living like it was 1910 or so. They only ate what would have been available then, and had to grow it all. Pretty eye-opening.
Our grandparents and greats too, all had gardens, canned, cow and chickens, hogs for meat, put up kraut in crocks, etc. Ate what grew here and not much else, except at Christmas had the traditional store-bought orange for each kiddo. They lived a long time.


----------



## Allen W (Aug 2, 2008)

They mostly lived on what they grew, some of my wifes family has diaries from just after the land run. They survived one winter mainly on mush made from ground kaifer corn. They were glad when spring arrived and they had some thing else to eat.


----------



## d'vash (Apr 25, 2013)

My paternal grandparents ate lots of potatoes, peas, cabbages, turnips, parsnips, carrots and fish growing up. Beef would be a special treat.

My maternal grandparents lived in a much warmer climate, in an area where cattle was the main agricultural industry. Their diet consisted of beef, dairy products, rice, baked goods, chicken, eggs, all sorts of greens, some pork and mutton, and a variety of fruits. 

There wasn't such a thing as packaged goods. All food was either grown and raised in your own backyard, your neighbours' or purchased [sometimes traded] at the nearest farmers market... And even then, you knew who owned the farm you were buying your food from.

Even with the little food that they had, somehow they always managed to feed their large families and even the neighbours too!


----------



## Elffriend (Mar 2, 2003)

emdeengee said:


> Great grandparents also fit into different eras. It all depends on how old you are. Some are from the era of WW1, the Roaring Twenties, the Dirty Thirties, WW2 and the Fabulous Fifties.


I never knew any of my great grandparents. The oldest was born in Ireland in 1830. I image he ate a lot of potatoes, but that's just a guess.


----------



## JHinCA (Sep 20, 2003)

Thought this was very interesting regarding our great great grandparents generation in England.

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2672390/

The study shows that mid-Victorian (1850 through 1880) working class people in England were the sturdiest and healthiest generation on record, if you do not count infant deaths from infectious diseases. Those who made it past age 5 lived long healthy lives with only 10% of the degenerative diseases we modern folks get. The causes of death for women who died before their time were usually childbirth related or --and this is something I had not thought of-- from burns and infection resulting from burns due to working around open fires while wearing long, full, flammable skirts.

They ate seasonally, lots of vegetables, much more organ meats, no canned foods, much less sugar, no transfats, more whole grains, etc. They were also VERY physically active.


----------



## Elizabeth (Jun 4, 2002)

Very interesting thread. Makes me marvel at the quality and variety of foods we enjoy today, and at how cheap and easy food is to obtain.

None of my parents or grandparents came from farm families- and I am pretty sure that none of my great grandparents did either. It is interesting that I know absolutely nothing about what any of them ate, except, of course, for what my parents ate after they were adults and married and started their family.

My mom was an excellent cook. She often took cooking classes and would "practice" new recipes on her family and friends. My parents traveled a lot, internationally, which back in the 1950's and even 1960's that was a pretty big deal, not nearly as fast and easy as it is these days. They both enjoyed what was then considered "exotic" food, and my mom would pry recipes for her favorite dishes from the chefs she met as they traveled. My family also, for many, many years, hosted foreign graduate students for the Experiment In International Living and we often had guests who shared the cuisine from their home countries. Needless to say, we ate pretty well growing up. Lots of good food and plenty of variety. Never had a garden, so everything was store-bought. We did have a lot of fruit trees (I remember pears, cherries, and apple trees in our yard). We would pick tons and tons of strawberries at u-pick farms in the summer and my mom would make strawberry preserves from some of them, and freeze a lot of them. We also picked a lot of wild blueberries, and my mom froze lots of them for the winter.

I do have some recipes that my mom kept from her mother's collection, and some that a paternal aunt saved from her mother's collection, but they were just family favorites, nothing extraordinary about the recipes themselves.


----------



## jwal10 (Jun 5, 2010)

We not only eat many of the same foods, we cook much of it the same. Simple, plain and seasonal. We do can some, but much of it is fresh or stored away for off season use. Much of it cooked on a wood cook stove and fire pit. A lot of milk products, eggs, fruit, vegetables, small animals and hunted game....James


----------



## Oma2three (May 5, 2012)

Since I was born In Germany 2 weeks after the WW2 ended,In an apartment in a big city .we had no garden. But my Opa had a garden spot (allotment) he grew no vegetables,but had fruit trees and lots of gooseberry, currant and blackberry bushes.And lots of flowers.It took him 20 minutes on his bike to get there.Me quite often sitting on the back in a childrens seat. My Oma and mom made lots of jams and je lly.Fruit was canned or dried.For breakfast we always had bread,butter and jam,coffee or tea.At noon was our big meal always soup ,then a potato or noodle dish quite often with eggs.Meat was only served on sunday. Everything was bought daily and cooked fresh. Nothing from a can.For our evening meal it was open faced sandwiches .My Opa did raise lots of rabbits t hose great big ones.The cages were in the courtyard of the Nursing home.He got all the kitchen scraps from them and in turn he supplied the headnurse with rabbits for the staff to eat.I remember they were all elderly nurses,but so kind to me,since i usually helped.now we only ate rabbit for Christmas and other big family dinners.Every Sat. my Oma baked a couple of big cakes quite often with fruit on top,since we had coffee or tea and a piece of cake every afternoon.I never felt deprived since every family lived the same way.Nothing was ever wasted.I love to remember those times and how loved I was.I still keep some of the same tradition.I hope I didn"t bore you to death.


----------



## Michael W. Smith (Jun 2, 2002)

Being that my Geat Grandparents lived on the same farm that my Grandmother later owned, it would have been the typical farm food - several cows for milk and to make butter, a big garden, fruit trees, etc.

My Great Grandfather was apparently a "carpenter" by trade, but I think was a "bit off" with mental illness. The stories my grandmother told of her and her 11 siblings seemed to be that "Papa" would leave for days or weeks at a time, leaving "Mama" and the children to do all the work.

I don't think Papa really brought in much income, because my Grandmother told stories of them having fields of strawberries - and it wasn't a "U pick" project - apparently Mama and all the children would hoe the weeds and tend the plants and then pick them and sell them.

Of course, the corn also needed to be hoed as well. I know they raised chickens, milk cows, and pigs. Most people back then also kept a hive or two of honey bees for sweetner.

I also know my Grandmother talked about the ground hogs they would eat - the young ones were good - and of course with Grandma growing up during the depression, if a dog killed a groundhog, she would also cook it on the stove and feed it back to the dog - waste not, want not.

They mostly canned or stored foods for the winter, but with 12 children, I'm sure food was stretched out as much as possible.

I know when I was a kid (and this would have been in the late 70's, Grandma was at our house for supper when we had pizza. That was the first time she had ever ate it!


----------



## mountainlaurel (Mar 5, 2010)

My mother's side has been in the Northern Neck of VA since my ancestor came here from Wales as an indentured servant. They went from that to owning a large plantation near Fredericksburg. They lost that during that dreadful war:yuck:. So my gr-grandfather was born, not to a plantation owner but instead to a man who was now a school teacher, local postmaster and one of 15 children. 
They lived right by the Tidal Potomac then so they had a lot of good Bay food, Crab, oysters, fresh fish and eels. Cornbread, spoonbread, lots of sour milk products, fresh vegetables and pies were eaten a lot.
On my father's side, I never knew even his parents but him and his siblings were raised dirt poor in Picher Ok, and they ate anything they could catch. Plus a garden.


----------



## hmsteader71 (Mar 16, 2006)

I have loved reading everyone's posts. Thank you all for contributing. I now have another question. The house we live in, we are in town but have a good sized area for garden, our basement stays damp and has a sump pump in it because it has flooded in the past. In fact, we have to carry flood insurance. So it's not the best idea to store root vegetables down there. 
I need an idea of how to store things like squash, pumpkins, potatoes, sweet potatoes, onions I know that I can braid the tops and then hang them in my pantry. I also know that mice will be attracted to any food as we've battled this with just keeping what we do in our pantry. But I am seriously going to give our garden one more shot & I want to grow things that can keep over the winter too. I remember in Little House in the Big Woods how they stored quite a bit of their food in the top of the cabin. They also only heated with the fire downstairs though, so it would have stayed pretty cool upstairs. Any ideas?


----------



## mekasmom (Jan 19, 2010)

They didn't eat processed foods. That is why they were so much healthier. They ate real food.... real eggs (not egg beaters), real grains (not white flour crap with the wheat germ removed), real butter, whole milk, meat from animals that ate food and foraged instead of only eating corn, etc. Our ancestors ate all sorts of wild meat too, and ate more of the animals. They were just healthier people because they got more nutrients from their foods and they worked more in the "sweat of their brow".
The processed foods on grocery shelves today lack nutrients and life in them.


----------



## Elffriend (Mar 2, 2003)

hmsteader71 said:


> I need an idea of how to store things like squash, pumpkins, potatoes, sweet potatoes, onions I know that I can braid the tops and then hang them in my pantry. I also know that mice will be attracted to any food as we've battled this with just keeping what we do in our pantry.


I'm in a similar situation. I haven't grown pumpkins or squash for storage, so can't help with that. Some of my cupboards in the kitchen are against an uninsulated brick wall. When the doors are kept closed they are noticeably cooler than the rest of the kitchen. I store my potatoes in laundry baskets in there. For onions and garlic I got some mesh bags from the dollar store. Our kitchen has a door to the stairwell that leads to the basement. My onions and garlic hang from hooks on the back of this door and on the wall leading to the basement. Again, it's cooler than the kitchen, but not as damp as the basement.

We also had a problem with mice for awhile. We bought a big box of traps and set 2 or 3 baited with peanut butter every night until we stopped catching any mice. That took about a week. Then I put cotton balls with peppermint oil on them in all the cupboards and haven't seen any since. That was about two years ago. I refresh the cotton balls every month or so.


----------



## hmsteader71 (Mar 16, 2006)

Thank you for the ideas. I have used the squares they sell at Rural King for mice, it has pieces of corn in it and you break it up and put it around. We don't have very many now but I like the cotton ball & peppermint idea.


----------



## Ohio dreamer (Apr 6, 2006)

hmsteader71 said:


> I need an idea of how to store things like squash, pumpkins, potatoes, sweet potatoes, onions I know that I can braid the tops and then hang them in my pantry. I also know that mice will be attracted to any food as we've battled this with just keeping what we do in our pantry. But I am seriously going to give our garden one more shot & I want to grow things that can keep over the winter too. I remember in Little House in the Big Woods how they stored quite a bit of their food in the top of the cabin. They also only heated with the fire downstairs though, so it would have stayed pretty cool upstairs. Any ideas?


Our modern houses today are not set up to store these crops easily. Modern furnaces keep our basements too warn (and the rest of the house). If you have a forced air furnace, you might be able to build a "cold room" in your basement in a way to "protect" it from the heat. But with your water/moisture issues that might be a bit of a stretch. Your being in town, like we are, a root cellar is likely out of the question.

We have a cold room in out 130 yr old house....but the boiler heat causes it to be too warm. No real way of insulating it from the heat pipes running through it.....ceiling is only 5'10" in there. With the men of the house being over 6'....an insulated drop ceiling is out of the questions for us, lol. Now they can stand between the floor joists when they are in there and be fine.....a ceiling would me it a room only I could use.


----------



## chickenista (Mar 24, 2007)

My ancestors lived deep in the mountains of NC.
They ate fresh out of the garden and put away for the winter.
Even when I was a kid my great aunts each had a huge garden.. corn on the cob, frest sliced tomatoes, green beans and potatoes and cornbread or biscuits. That is still one of my favorite meals. Mmmmmmm.

Hanging on the porch were the leather breeches beans, they made apple butter in a huge old copper pot on a fire, and canned anything that couldn't run away.


----------



## Jean in Virginia (Oct 5, 2008)

chickenista, did you ever eat leather britches? What did they taste like cooked?
I've always wondered....


----------



## whiterock (Mar 26, 2003)

This thread is bringing back lots of memories and stories I heard growing up.

My ancestors were farmers, and I can only assume they ate home raised pork, chicken, turkey, and occasional game and beef as it was available. Pinto beans, black eyed peas, potaotes, sweet potatoes, onions, tomatoes, garlic, peppers, squash, corn, melons, mustard greens, collards, turnips and turnip greens, beets. Peaches and plums, dewberries, mustang grapes, and pecans. Most were probably boiled or fried. Poke salit was popular in the spring, I'm sure catfish was a big event when available, I heard that they would sometimes go to a river and camp for a few days to catch and eat catfish. 

I know from stories that my great grandparents had a storeroom in the attic. A floating platform held barrels of flour, corn meal and other dried items such as beans and such.
The other set of Dad's grandparents lived in a small one story house, no basement, not sure how they kept food or where.
Great, great grandparents lived in a cedar log cabin. Probably had a cellar, may have stored items in bins and barrels in the barn.
Dad told me that they wold can their beef, he said it was a poor excuse for meat, but he was a picky man about his meat.

GG grandpa was a Confederate soldier at the Siege of Vicksburg. After the surrender, he was paroled and to go back home. He headed back to Texas, (his home about a mile from where I currently live) with nothing but the clothes he was wearing. He came upon a camp where he found a can with some beans and juices still in it, some bacon rinds and some sweet potato skins. He put this all together with some wild greens and boiled them up. Told my Dad that it was the best meal he ever had in his life.
One of the greats, I'm told, would put a potato in the coals and ashes of the fireplace at night and eat it as a bedtime snack.
Ed


----------



## chickenista (Mar 24, 2007)

Jean in Virginia said:


> chickenista, did you ever eat leather britches? What did they taste like cooked?
> I've always wondered....


 
They are different from the fresh beans, that's for sure.
You know how when you reconstitute dried apples they are sweeter, darker and almost spicy?
The beans are the same.
The taste is darker and almost brothy and they are dense.

I like dried pumpkin rings and candy roaster squash rings more than I do the leathered beans.
But you should go ahead and string a few runs to see what you think.


----------



## Jean in Virginia (Oct 5, 2008)

Thanks for the info. I think I will. 

The husband really liked the story of the doctor's "turnip winter" and I remember someone's grandma talking about the winter they had just turnips, and were really grateful to have them, or they wouldn't have had anything to eat.


----------



## Oma2three (May 5, 2012)

I really enjoy reading the posts of every bodies ancestors and how they lived.I wonder how many of us could live like that again.I know if we had to we could ,and most likely be be a lot healthier.


----------



## Horseyrider (Aug 8, 2010)

Several years ago I read a fascinating book called "The Food of a Younger Land: A portrait of American food- before the national highway system, before chain restaurants, and before frozen food, when the nation's food was seasonal, regional, and traditional- from the lost WPA files." 

Apparently one of the projects that FDR's WPA engaged in was the research and preservation of the rapidly changing (and sometimes disappearing) dietary habits of Americans. Remember this is the 1930s, and elders were born in the mid-19th century. Many were first generation immigrants, many still on farms. There are recipes as well as passionate and lyrical writing by authors such as Eugene Jones DuBose and Eudora Welty. 

The editor of this book found the WPA information and republished it. Fascinating, fascinating glimpse into the lives of our forebears.

http://www.amazon.com/Food-Younger-...31&sr=1-1&keywords=the+food+of+a+younger+land#_


----------



## michelleIL (Aug 29, 2004)

Oma23 I lived in Germany for almost five years! Them folk have the best gardens and orhards! Loved as a kid going on the german economy and walking thru orchards grabbing an apple or plum or a big fat red cherry! Juneberries too! MMM


----------



## sherry in Maine (Nov 22, 2007)

thank you all! I enjoyed this.
My grandma had a farm in NY state. When I was 3 or 4 (around 1960-61) I would visit her farm sometimes, and she would talk so eagerly about her 'prize winning bantys' and her rabbits (that she let loose in winter) each spring, there would always be rabbits hanging around in the barn & she claimed they were the ones she let loose just before snow came. 
She had bees, made butter (not very often, as she had arthritis in her wrists), she would give honeycomb and packets of butter to folks as Christmas gifts.
She had cows, would milk, skim & sell the cream.
She was a good gardener and would can foods.
She had no electricity in her house, when I first came there, or at least I remember she used kerosene lamps, to read seed packets by.
Years later, I realized she couldn't 'read' when I saw her studying the newspaper upside down. "what'r'you doing Gramma?" 
my mother said 'leave Gramma alone!' because I was laughing- I thought she was being funny, holding it upside down. 
Asked her about it a few years later. I saw her 'reading' the packets of seeds. She knew her numbers and could read months to plant by.
She could do just about anything. She fed herself and was busy always.

Wanted to add that there was a smell I associated with Grandma. I didn't realize til about 25 or so years later, when I kept chickens. The first night I had chickens, I went to the barn and smelled 'Grandma'.... she always wore orthopedic black shoes and would go in/out of chicken coop without changing her shoes.
Soon after 1961, her farm burnt to the ground. Wondered if it was kerosene lamp?


----------



## Use Less (Nov 8, 2007)

My fil was born in Germany and mil in Switzerland, in the early 1900's. A marriage at 51/41 and only son at 52/42, made them the same age as my own grandparents. My mil told about eating just turnips, apples and potatoes, sometimes some beets and carrots, all winter. Not so bad for fil since they owned a big sheep farm, though the two Depressions and the two WW's were rough everywhere. There was a Depression in Europe before WWI which pretty much didn't reach the USA. My inlaws took bags of sugar instead of other luggage when they went over once travel was resumed after WWII.


----------



## Joshie (Dec 8, 2008)

hmsteader71 said:


> This probably sounds stupid but I am honestly wanting to know. What did our great-grandparents eat? Was it basic meat, potatoes and vegetables?
> I am redoing our grocery budget & want to get as basic and simple as possible. We both have relux so I'm wanting to do away with most of the tomato based products. I could really use some help here.


Mine ate a red meat, milk, and potatoes type of diet even at breakfast. I remember a meal my great aunt fed us at breakfast. She didn't understand why we didn't eat it. She fed us hamburgers, gravy, and bread. 

Do you take GERD medications? Long term consequences of untreated GERD can be serious, like cancer. Have you looked up a GERD diet? I doubt our grandparent's diets would reduce GERD symptoms. 

The right medications help. I had to try several medications with various doses. I also take medications twice daily. You should eat small meals. Don't eat after dinner. There's no magic diet. What's best for you may not be best for your husband. There is no proven correlation between diet and symptoms. I would suggest journaling what aggravates your particular symptoms. 

I would think that foods that take a long time to digest would worsen GERD. They leave food there longer. The longer food sits in your stomach the longer it can give you GERD. (My opinion only.)

Some things eliminated from a GERD diet:
Alcohol
Pop or other fizzy things
Spicy food
High fat foods
Very hot things
Peppermint
Chocolate

I don't notice any association between foods and symptoms. For me, it's all about the proper medication.

http://www.gerd-diet.com/

Have you been to the GI?


----------



## Tommyice (Dec 5, 2010)

My grandfather was a butcher and grandmother ran the store that also sold some grocery items. They ate pretty well. Meat was never a problem, even during the depression, until WWII broke out. Then it was rations like everyone else. Although a skilled butcher and a creative cook could make you ask for seconds of shoe leather. My grandmother made a lot of roasts, stews and braised dishes. Heavy on the root vegetables. Lots of German dishes just like great-grandmother used to make.


----------



## highlands (Jul 18, 2004)

"basic meat, potatoes and vegetables?"

Yup. About like we eat today. Lots of cabbage, onions and winter squash in there. Dominant fruit was apples in the fall and winter with berries in the summer.

In the past rural folk ate a lot of meat. Meat by hunting as well raising pigs and chickens was most common. Beef less so. Meat, and its accompanying fat, was a very important source of energy and nutrition - still is. Meat, root veggies and cabbage got people through the winters to a large degree.


----------



## simi-steading (Sep 27, 2012)

I spent a summer on my great grandmothers ranch when I was 13... Since they had about 3000 head of Hereford cattle, they ate a lot of beef.. even for breakfast.. 

Of course fresh milk and butter... and fresh cream for the coffee... 

They had a lot of chickens. Those became my chore...eggs every breakfast along with chicken for dinner, or lunch in sandwiches.. 

Huge garden too, so what ever was in it.. I cleaned a WHOLE lot of green beans.. 

Shopping was for the staples, like coffee, tea, flour, salt and so forth... 

I got to clean a few rabbits they shot while out tending cattle.. rabbit was considered a treat since it wasn't chicken or beef... but they did trade a neighbor beef for some pork every now and then... 

They pretty much ate mostly what the ranch provided..


----------



## hmsteader71 (Mar 16, 2006)

No, I haven't been to the GI. I take Zantac for it but it only flares up now occasionally.


----------



## emdeengee (Apr 20, 2010)

Both sets of my Great Grands were wealthy landowners. My Mom's family prefered to live in the city and visit the country. My father's family was nobility and they lived a country life. They ate whatever they wanted and whatever their land and tenants produced. Their lands included forests, rivers, orchards, vineyards, pastures, fields, vegetable gardens, livestock of all kinds and vast hunting tracts. 

The First World War changed everything for them because most of their lands were taken by the Treaty of Versailles. 

What remained was still valuable but the direction of life for all the children from the generation of my grandparents and parents was drastically changed because education and professional careers became the most important thing. My father spent every free minute of his life back on the estate and knew everthing there was to know about farming but that was not his path in life. And a good thing because all that disappeared with the second world war.


----------



## sherry in Maine (Nov 22, 2007)

wow, went back and re read this thread; apparently I skipped the first page of it yesterday, starting at the top of page 2!
It is so much fun, reading this! Makes me want to do more research right now, but, alas, must get other stuff done.

Chickenista- dried pumpkin rings and dried candy squash rings? how do you do that? Just slice thin and dehydrate? Is 'candy squash' a name of a kind of squash, or do you sugar it before you dehydrate?
I have loved reading all of this...thanks again!


----------



## freelove (Jun 17, 2005)

My great aunt talked about eating salt cod in the summer months because that was what was available and would keep without refrigeration. She absolutely loved codfish gravy on toast or potatoes. She said it was "food for the gods." Lots of vegetables from the garden, too.


----------



## Allen W (Aug 2, 2008)

It's hard to imaging having to raise enough to survive on like our ancestors did in a drought like we have had the last couple of years.


----------



## unregistered168043 (Sep 9, 2011)

I remember asking my dad that question years ago, he said 'you think they ever ate anything out of a CAN?' They didn't ever even have access to canned foods. When they saw them they didn't trust them because they didnt understand how it could stay fresh. Canned foods were like GMO of today, it was the new fangled thing that only my grandparent's generation used.


----------



## maxbetta (May 6, 2013)

My great grandparents were very different. The ones on my Grandpa's side were from Virginia. Great Grandpa was a mailman on the Pennsylvania Railroad. In addition to having a full-time job, he kept a dairy farm...as a hobby! They enjoyed lots of fresh southern food. Homemade biscuits, fried chicken, you name it.

My great grandparents on my Grandma's side were from Germany. They ate a lot of traditional German dishes, like krautwickel(stuffed cabbage leaves.) Bread was all homemade. During WWII, they ate horse meat at one point because they could get twice as much for the same amount of ration cards. They didn't tell my great grandpa!


----------



## dlskidmore (Apr 18, 2012)

Depending on where your great grandparents are from, their diet may have been documented by Weston A Price Overall, he found isolated communities with good health ate a lot of raw dairy and fermented foods. But I think there are still a lot of gaps in his conclusions. Like the absence of refined oils or white flour in those communities. Fermentation is just how people preserved food before canning, it may not be directly related to health benefits of a locally grown, minimally processed diet. Very few of the things pushed by the foundation named after him are reflected in the Inuit or plains Indians that ate very meaty diets.

If you want to eat simpler to save money, throw out what you think you know about nutrition and calculate the cost per calorie of food you buy instead of the cost per pound. Animal fat is very filling, and doesn't give me the tummy trouble that veggie oils do. (Your mileage may vary). Cheapest per calorie: pork shoulders, eggs, full fat dairy, root vegetables, dry legumes, and grains. (I avoid the grains and legumes because of health issues.) Expensive per calorie: other veggies/fruits, and "low fat"/"Diet" anything. I've been slowly loosing weight since increasing animal fats and dropping grains/legumes, and I've shed several health issues. Eating "healthy" didn't do Mom any good, I'm going to eat what makes me short term healthier and hope the newer research on the inflammation theory of heart disease/cancer is more correct than the saturated fat theory.


----------



## GirlBoyGirl (Jun 30, 2011)

I need to ask my parents these questions. I know my great great grandfather, who were born in the 1870s, loved muskrat but my great great grandma didn't like preparing and cooking it so one day she cooked the whole thing, fur, head and all and put it on his plate hehe


----------



## Oldcountryboy (Feb 23, 2008)

My grandparents on my moms side of the famiy were born in the late 1800's. Were full blood Cherokee's that lived here in N.E. Oklahoma in the foothills of the Ozark Mountains. I would say that approximately 50 percent of their diet came from the big gardens and livestock they raised and the other 50 percent came from foraging the woodlands and streams that surrounded them.

Berries, nuts, mushrooms, wild greens, fish, crawdads, song birds and quail, and small game was on the forage list. This would be almost impossible to do now days as most of the forest is gone from around here and most of the land is now private property. Try asking permission to forage anything on peoples land and you will get a good cussin now days. 

The livestock for food they mostly raised was chickens, geese, rabbits, and mostly pigs. Since there was no frigeration back in them days, butchering cattle wasn't possible for them and they only butchered pigs in the winter time and hung them up in the smoke house. Along with a few chickens and rabbits.

The only other livestock they had was one cow for milk and butter, a draft horse or two for plowing, dragging railroad beams, and pulling the wagon. They also raised a lot of grain feed to feed the horse, cow, and poultry.


----------



## Oldcountryboy (Feb 23, 2008)

GirlBoyGirl said:


> I need to ask my parents these questions. I know my great great grandfather, who were born in the 1870s, loved muskrat but my great great grandma didn't like preparing and cooking it so one day she cooked the whole thing, fur, head and all and put it on his plate hehe


Yep, that's another thing my grandparents ate a lot of. Critters! They done a lot of trapping in the winter time for two reasons. One was to collect money on the hides, and the other was to put meat on the table. 

There wasn't too many things that didn't get ate around here when my grandparents were living. They raised 11 children and survived the dust bowl days. The depression didn't have much affect on them as they didn't have any money to begin with anyway. They didn't buy much as town was 25 miles away and was only a once a month trip and there was no factory jobs back in those days either. The biggest money maker didn't come around till the 30's when they started the CC camps and started building roads through the area. After that life started getting better for them. By the time WWII hit most all thier kids were grown up.


----------



## Lisa in WA (Oct 11, 2004)

Horseyrider said:


> Several years ago I read a fascinating book called "The Food of a Younger Land: A portrait of American food- before the national highway system, before chain restaurants, and before frozen food, when the nation's food was seasonal, regional, and traditional- from the lost WPA files."
> 
> Apparently one of the projects that FDR's WPA engaged in was the research and preservation of the rapidly changing (and sometimes disappearing) dietary habits of Americans. Remember this is the 1930s, and elders were born in the mid-19th century. Many were first generation immigrants, many still on farms. There are recipes as well as passionate and lyrical writing by authors such as Eugene Jones DuBose and Eudora Welty.
> 
> ...



After I read your post I found this book and have been reading it. Very interesting!


----------



## hotzcatz (Oct 16, 2007)

I think what your great grands ate had a lot to do with who your great grands were. On many portions of the planet, folks are still eating what their ancestors did but so much of the food of the United States had been taken over by commercial interests that folks aren't connected to their ancestral foods anymore. Not to mention folks keep moving around as well.

I remember one story told by my dad (he's in his eighties now) about visiting with someone in early fall who had a pot of soup on the wood stove. This was a bachelor fellow out in a cabin somewhere. He served up soup to everyone and my dad noticed a bullet hole in the deer's shoulder blade that was brought up out of the pot because it had a distinctive shape. They were visiting several weeks later and were also offered soup again. And, the same shoulder bone made it's appearance. The fellow just had a huge stockpot of soup on the stove and kept adding things to it.

There was always a can of bacon drippings on the stove, too. That was added to the pan before frying anything in it (the pan was always cast iron). Drippings were used in recipes, too. Lard was frequently used in cooking and recipes, too.

There were rows upon rows of home canned fruits and vegetables from the summer garden.


----------



## Horseyrider (Aug 8, 2010)

LisaInN.Idaho said:


> After I read your post I found this book and have been reading it. Very interesting!


Awesome! I'm glad you like it.


----------



## ronbre (Apr 26, 2009)

i believe they put food in their mouth, chewed and swallowed..like most people


----------



## Mickey (Aug 28, 2002)

ronbre said:


> i believe they put food in their mouth, chewed and swallowed..like most people


:hysterical:


----------



## Ann-NWIowa (Sep 28, 2002)

I once read that pioneers ate a lot of pickles, kraut and the like to avoid scurvy. I know my grandmother always had beet pickles and bread & butter pickles on the table. Also, pots of apple butter.

I know that meals were interesting -- for instance cabbage might be boiled, baked, fried, raw, kraut. Potatoes boiled, fried, baked, scalloped. Meat was usually pork or game and fried. Thick white gravy accompanied most every meal including breakfast. Biscuits were eated more than raised bread. Cornbread and beans were a staple. My grandmother's noodles were famous and still talked about today!! Chicken was a special treat especially a fat hen which made the best noodles. Bacon and bacon drippings were very important part of diet.


----------



## Pony (Jan 6, 2003)

Ann-NWIowa said:


> I know that meals were interesting -- for instance cabbage might be boiled, baked, fried, raw, kraut. Potatoes boiled, fried, baked, scalloped. Meat was usually pork or game and fried. Thick white gravy accompanied most every meal including breakfast. Biscuits were eated more than raised bread. Cornbread and beans were a staple. My grandmother's noodles were famous and still talked about today!! Chicken was a special treat especially a fat hen which made the best noodles. Bacon and bacon drippings were very important part of diet.


One of my friends has a recipe for "Grandma's Fried Kraut Dinner."

Mmmm!


----------



## Allen W (Aug 2, 2008)

Grandma talked about growing pea nuts, citron melons for preserves?, water melons, June Corn- a short season corn planted after wheat harvest. They planted sorghum for molasses, as well as planting ****** corn another sorghum for grain used in a pinch for human consumption. Turnips were a stand by in this area because they grew quickly in the fall and stored well for winter.


----------



## chickenista (Mar 24, 2007)

sherry in Maine said:


> Chickenista- dried pumpkin rings and dried candy squash rings? how do you do that? Just slice thin and dehydrate? Is 'candy squash' a name of a kind of squash, or do you sugar it before you dehydrate?
> I have loved reading all of this...thanks again!


 
A Candy Roaster is an old Cherokee squash - curcubit that is common among older Appalachian families.
Huge. Huge. Huge. 40 lbs is the norm, but they can come much bigger.
Lordy.. to chunk it up for freezing, canning or making butter you have to take a hatchet to it. You really only need one unless you are feeding to livestock as well. Animals love it in January.
But it is sweet and tender and delicious! You would think something so big would be tough and fibery, but it's not.
They are an orangey pink with a skin like a butternut, except a bit lumpy.


And the way folks used to preserve squash and pumpkins was to cut it around into rings and slide a broomstick through them and hang them in the rafters above the woodstove.
They slowly dry and to use them, you would jsut slide them off the stick, break them up and soak them until soft again.


----------



## Dolly (Dec 13, 2003)

Pie and coffee. Or biscuits and coffee. Or cornbread and coffee. Lots of it, all the time.


----------



## Ravenlost (Jul 20, 2004)

My great-grandparents ate normal Southern food. Mostly veggies that they grew. I can remember eating at their house many times for dinner (lunch). It was the biggest meal of the day and I can remember the table being loaded with food...whatever was in season or had been canned. They always had cornbread left over from dinner crumbled into milk for supper.

There was always pop bread (left over biscuit dough patted thin and baked until crispy) in the bottom of Great Grandma Aldridge's stove for us kids to snack on, so I gather she made biscuits every morning for breakfast...along with eggs (they had chickens) and bacon or sausage (they raised pigs). 

I can remember the cellar. Us kids weren't allowed down in the cellar, but I can remember going down to help bring up some jars one time. The walls were covered in row upon row of canned veggies, etc. That's what they ate...what they could grow themselves.


----------



## arnie (Apr 26, 2012)

mine lived simply on a small horse powerd farm in apilachia .pork was the meat cured hung in the smoke house and canned at home, chickens, turkeys.they raised corn and wheat for bread they made very little hay so though they always had at least one milk cow not much beef was eaten a bull calf usally was sold as a fat veal to pay taxes . corn fed hogs poultry horses they raised big gardens for fresh eating and canning lots of types of beans potatoes sweet and irish, sweet corn. squash, melons, greens cabbage turnups . they made sourgum mallases had several fruit trees honey bees .they did not buy much food from the store mostly Coffee, spices. salt ,sugar,kerosene . and had a varity and plenty root cellar with many shelves of glass canning jars .the girls took care of the poultry and gardens and the boys plowed and made a cash crop usally tobacco .they lived fairly well though never leaving the state or owning a car or TV; why would they they had there family and farm and were happy


----------



## dlskidmore (Apr 18, 2012)

chickenista said:


> And the way folks used to preserve squash and pumpkins was to cut it around into rings and slide a broomstick through them and hang them in the rafters above the woodstove.
> They slowly dry and to use them, you would jsut slide them off the stick, break them up and soak them until soft again.


Thanks for that tidbit! I saw a reference to dehydrated pumpkins in a book, but hadn't any idea of the method.

Ox-Team Days on the Oregon Trail by Howard R. Driggs and Ezra Meeker
http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/29543

Personal account (with co-author) of traversing the Oregon Trail three times. First time over they had a large supply of dehydrated pumpkin, flour, and butter, as well as a cow producing fresh milk and ate pumpkin pie most of the way across.


----------

