When we were children, our after school snack was usually 4 or 5 Ritz crackers. It was a "banquet" when we had two or three "Fig Newtons." Nabisco Saltines were also rather regularly given to us as a before supper snack after school. Ah, yes, those were the days.
There was other snack food available, but only if we went to Grandma's house. She had chocolate pudding often. She was an awful chocolate pudding maker and her fame spread throughout the family mainly thanks to my endless jokes about her efforts. There were always lumps in it. Over the years I think she actually got better, but she purposely kept making it with lumps to maintain her reputation. There was nothing exotic about what we ate in the 1940's. If it didn't grow within 100 miles, you didn't eat it. Where I grew up, our "premium" potatoes came from Maine; our cranberries from Cape Cod Massachusetts; our clams and scallops, too; our apples from Amherst, Massachusetts; our bread, our beer, our milk and oh, so many more things, came from relatively short distances.
You'll remember that I have mentioned 'Victory Gardens" here before. The Victory Garden was also the source of snacks. Fresh celery stalks, fresh radishes, fresh carrots, fresh tomatoes and my favorite, fresh rhubarb. Have you noticed the lack of imported food on the list? Seaweed? Fish Sauce; Dried Fish? Dried Calamari? Sweet Rice and Mango; Swiss Chocolate? Couscous?
These days we have forgotten where we live when we go to the supermarket. Oh, I take that back. The prices serve as reminders that we aren't in Japan or Thailand, or...
Back to the seaweed and rice. I had some again today. I remembered just how good it is. Tonight I was with my elder son and we reminisced about the nori rolls. See? After all these years we are still enjoying them. Now they feed our souls. Hmmm, good stuff.
We are spoiled now. International foods are a finger tip away. During my growing
ReplyDeleteup we snaked on sugarcanes, pineapple, bananas,tangerines and some other fruits
only grown in the tropics. Ah yes, soursap. I did not care for these. I like the bread
where my best girlfriend's father had in his bakery and butter to go with it. We could not afford those so we ate what grew around the house. Our food is Japanese oriented because they were in the island the longest I guess. I could go on, but I'll stop. That dried calamari on the hot rice. No you haven't lived until you take a test of that. Heeeee.
Justa