Click on photos to enlarge
The year was 1973. I traveled through this area where highland farmers met and traded with lowland caravans who traded camel dung as fuel and other goods for food grown by the farmers. I ended up living in Ethiopia for a year and a half, mainly in Addis Ababa.
For Throwback Thursday–a glimpse into the past.
These were the only photos of family meals that I could find. I think we were always too busy eating to take photos! Click on photos to enlarge and read captions.
For Cave Wall’s Throwback Thursday, here are some more nosy questions about family meal rituals. I couldn’t pass up this one. This was my favorite Throwback Thursday ever. Such fun answering these questions.
Let’s start at the top of the day, breakfast! Did your family have a sit down breakfast or were you more grab and go? What beverages were served at breakfast? What was your favorite (and/or least favorite) breakfast meal? Our most frequent hot breakfast was corn meal muffins with butter and light Karo corn syrup or honey from the beehives on my dad’s land. Sometimes we had bacon to go with them and we always had orange juice. We had one of those old black castiron round waffle makers that had a star shape in the middle. It was used on top of one of the burners of the stove and you had to move it really fast back and forth to keep the waffle from burning. It took some time to make waffles for a family of five, though, so waffles were usually reserved for supper. My favorite meal. We sometimes had dollar-sized buttermilk pancakes with syrup or honey or scrambled eggs and bacon and toast for breakfast as well..or, it’s all coming back to me …Cream of Wheat or Coco Wheats!!! We never had oatmeal but always had boxes of dried cereal in the cupboard as well. Kellogg’s Frosted Flakes and Bran Flakes. I don’t remember eating them that often, but probably my dad did as he got up hours before we did to go out to the ranch so rarely had breakfast with us except on Sundays. He also loved to crumble the leftover corn meal muffins from our breakfast into a tall glass of milk and eat them with a spoon.
Did you snack before the mid-day meal? No because we were in school for most of the year and in the summer we were usually outside playing. Snacking was reserved for night time.
Lunch for most children was eaten at school with the exception of weekends, holidays, or summer vacation. At school, did you buy your lunch from the cafeteria, or did you pack lunch? In high school, were you allowed to leave school grounds during the lunch period? Everyone except farm kids whose parents had to drive them in to school in the morning went home for lunch. We lived directly across the street from the grade school and one block from the high school (two blocks when we built our new house) so walking home for lunch was no problem. Farm kids brought their own lunch. There was no school lunch program.
For times when you had lunch at home, was it sandwiches, leftovers, or a newly prepared meal? Lunch was called dinner in our little town and it was the main meal of the day since most of our dads were ranchers. It consisted of salad, vegetable, potatoes, meat and dessert.
The evening meal is usually the most formal meal in many homes. Did your family sit down together and enjoy the evening meal or were you more of a TV dinner in front of the TV family? We all sat down together for the noon meal and sometimes did at night, but we usually had leftovers or sandwiches–once we got TV, often in front of the TV.
How did your weekend meals differ from your weekdays? They didn’t. My dad worked so hard in the fields and on the ranch every day that he needed a big meal at noon. Sundays varied a bit as he usually didn’t have to go out to the ranch. We usually had chicken on Sunday. A big treat as beef was our daily fare. We never had fish.
Who did most of the cooking in your household? Did that person also do the meal planning and grocery shopping? Were you taught to cook or were you shoo’d out of the kitchen? My mother did all of the cooking and meal planning. My dad kept beef on the table as he was a cattle rancher and we had a huge freezer in the basement that was completely filled every time they butchered a cow. I loved to cook with my mother and knew how to make everything she made. When I got older, my friend Rita and I would bake cakes and cook–especially fried potatoes!!!! I did help my mother in the kitchen a lot.
Did you have dessert served at your meals? If so, what types? We had dessert every meal except for breakfast. My mother made the best cherry pie I’ve ever had out of the cherries from the 9 or so cherry trees we had in our backyard. Summers, my sister Patti and I were in charge of pitting the cherries and my mom filled what space was left in our huge freezer in the basement with cherry pies, so we had them until they ran out. She also made apple crisp and the best chocolate sheet cakes with boiled fudge frosting glaze that I’ve ever had. That frosting soaked into the cake, making it so moist, then formed a thin dark chocolate glaze on top. They were made from a Duncan Hines cake mix but were incredible!! She also made pineapple cookies that she frosted while hot so the frosting formed a glaze and ran down the sides. When she hadn’t baked, we had ice cream or ice cream cake rolls from the grocery store. Or Jelly rolls.
Who cleaned up after meals? Was it a shared responsibility between men/women, girls/boys or was it delegated based on gender? My mom would rest up after the noon meal with a book or take a little nap with our dog Scamp beside her on the couch and then come in and do the dishes later on after we all went back to school, but when I was 11, I started clearing the table and said, “Come on Mom, let’s do the dishes now so you don’t have to do them later.” After that , that was the tradition. My mother mentioned this years later long after I’d forgotten it. At night and for family dinners, we girls always did the cleaning up and dishes. One time I railed at my dad saying, “Dad, I have never seen you once wash a dish. I bet you don’t even know how, do you? He calmly put down his newspaper, got up out of his chair, walked into the kitchen, took a fork out of the sink, wiped it off with the sponge, rinsed it off, dried it and put in in the drawer. Then went back to his easy chair and resumed his perusal of the paper.
How about late night snacks? Okay or discouraged? Okay. We were always free to eat anything we wanted from the fridge or kitchen cupboards. A favorite was popcorn cooked in an old black metal square popcorn popper with a long neck with a wooden handle. We’d put in vegetable oil and popcorn and run it back and forth over the burner of the stove until it stopped popping. Then, into a big bowl and melted butter was poured over it, it was salted and dug into. Another late night snack was the ever-present vanilla or butter brickle or chocolate ice cream or orange sherbet. And.. with the entire cow and stacks of frozen cherry pies in the freezer in the basement, there was bound to be an entire big carton of ice cream sandwiches that my dad bought at the locker.
Were dining manners stressed in your household? No elbows on the table, no hats at the table, no belching, please, thank you, and may I be excused? The only rigid rule a meals was no singing at the table!!! It was my dad’s rule and I don’t know why. We were not forced to clean our plates and I only remember my mother once telling us we had to finish our vegetables. We ended up throwing them between the solid bench my sister and I sat on and the kitchen wall. For some reason my mother chose that day to move the bench out and clean behind it. We had run up to a friend’s house after lunch and my mother called up and told us to come home. Actually, though, we didn’t get in trouble. She thought it was funny and never made us clean our plates again. She did later tell us that she couldn’t figure out why she kept finding dried vegetables on the wall or floor behind our bench, so come to think of it that must not have been our first time pulling that trick.
Did you have occasions where you had large family gatherings for meals? What occasions? Thanksgiving, Easter, Christmas. My Aunt Stella, Uncle Ed, Grandma Jane, my two sisters and me, my mom and dad and Aunt Stella’s kids when they were still home, then my Cousin Jim, his wife Sharon and their three kids. Dad and Stella and Grandma would speak Dutch. I had a huge crush on my cousin Jim who was 12 or more years older than me and so I hung on his every word. When it came time for dessert, there would usually be at least three kinds: my Aunt Stella’s incredible lemon meringue pie, my mom’s pumpkin pie and either apple or cherry pie. When my Grandma was asked what kind she wanted, she’d always say, “A little of each” and so she, of course, always had the most pie of all.
Did you say grace or have a blessing before meals? Always, “We thank you Lord for this food that we are about to eat, and bless it to its intended use.” And at family dinners, my Uncle Ed would always gasp, “Ahhhhhh-men!” at the end. When I was a little girl, my parents finally figured out that I was saying “We thank you Lord for this food that we are about to eat and bless it in potatoes and juice!”
Now for the fun part. What dishes are you glad disappeared over the years? What dishes have you carried forward into your own home? I do not miss salmon patties or oyster stew (which only my dad ate, from a can, while the rest of us had canned chili.). We didn’t eat it out of cans, understand. We actually took it out of the cans, cooked it and ate it in bowl. One of our staples was ham and cabbage with boiled potatoes. I made it just last week and it was tasteless. I’m still adding ingredients trying to instill it with the flavor of my mother’s. I also use her recipe for meatloaf and she made the best steamed steak with onions and potatoes which neither my sister have been able to duplicate.
BONUS: Care to share any favorite family recipes? I wish I had the recipe for my mother’s ice cream custard. It was really flan cooked in a big rectangular cake pan with miniature marshmallows baked over the top but it was sooooo good. It was served cold with vanilla ice cream but we’d also have a dish served hot out of the oven and the ice cream would melt over it. It was so good. Sometimes with raisins, but we girls liked it better without. Maybe my sister Patti will read this and put the recipe in comments? Hint, hint.
How did your family take care of minor injuries? Bandaids and mercurochrome. Ouch.
Did you have home remedies you used? When I was sick with a stomach ache, my dad always came home with a cold bottle of 7Up for me. But, he also made us take Blackberry Balsam as a spring tonic. We all hated it!!!!!
What was the typical way to care for a cold or flu at your house? Vicks Vapo Rub on my chest with a washcloth over it to protect my pajamas. And a horrible horrible cough medicine. It was thick and creamy and tan and tasted like vomit.
Were you pampered when you were sick/hurt or told to buck up and deal with it? Pampered. My mom would let us sleep downstairs in her and Dad’s room so she’d be close in case I needed anything. My sister Patti would go over and borrow books and toys from her best friend Patty Peck next door and read to me. She was the nicest to me when I was sick. Once she went and borrowed their ice crusher so I could have it in my fruit drinks and once she borrowed Patty’s furniture and little dolls for my doll house and I never had to give it back!!!
When you got sick as a kid did you stay home, or did you have to go to school? Stayed home. When I had the measles, my mother made me keep my hands above the covers so I wouldn’t scratch them and create scars, but we had a baby raccoon that she would bathe and powder and put in bed with me to help me pass the time because it had to be dark to protect my eyes, so I couldn’t read or color or do much at all. Zippy turned out to be very entertaining, zipping over the side of the bed, under it, then up the other side, like a race horse. Another additional benefit was that I’d put him under the covers and he would extend his beautiful little black-nailed pointer finger and gently scratch each measle, one after another, for hours at a time. Mother never knew until much later and he did a good job as I only have one pock mark on my leg.
Did a parent stay home with you, or did you fend for yourself? My mother was always at home.
Was a doctor visited when you had a minor injury or illness? Doc Murphy would come see us. He made house calls. I had lots of ear infections–some of them close to mastoids–and since he lived across the alley from us, he’d come see me frequently. Once when he had to give me a penicillin shot in the bottom, he gave me one spank first and asked me which hurt worse. It was to distract my attention from the shot but one of those cases where the cure was worse than the disease!
Did you ever have a major illness or injury growing up? How did it impact your life? Once my mother looked down my throat and saw a big growth. She took me to Doc Murphy and he said they should take me to the Mayo Clinic right away. They put me in the car and we drove there—-a 439 mile journey. I remember being irate because a nurse in the examining room told me, “Here, Honey, pee in this pot!” I was outraged and embarrassed as I had never peed in front of anyone that I could remember. Then the doctor came in, took one look and said, “That’s her uvula!” I passed my exam with flying colors and got a little vacation out of it. We stayed in a guest house with a big screened porch that was sorta high up in the air and I got an activity book that included tongue twisters, one of which I remember to this day: “Betty Boughter bought a bit of bitter butter. “But,” she said, “this butter’s bitter. I can’t put it in my batter, for if I put it in my batter, it will make my batter bitter, but if I buy some better butter, it will make my batter better!” So Betty Boughter bought a bit of better butter and made her batter better!!!
lifelessons - a blog by Judy Dykstra-Brown 