Fading into the mist of time

grumpyoldman

grumpyoldman

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i touched on this breifly on a thread about okra , but it extends to other things as well , foods that were cooked a certain way in the past seem to be fading away in favor of what we have now , some of these changes are good due to being healthier others just seem to fade away because one one wants to bother cooking the old stuff in favor of just cooking the quick and easy way at the cost of flavor , another example is corn now people just dump can of corn into a pan ande heat and eat , simple , quick and easy, the old way in the south is to pan fry fresh creamed corn, its so much better than the caned corn , the younger generatons don't seem to care about flavor just as long as its quick and easy ( no need to actully learn how to cook , just heat and eat )
i guess some of it is understandable , things are faster paced now and many work two jobs , but still its kinda sad to see the old ways fading into the mist of time
 
grumpyoldman said:
i touched on this breifly on a thread about okra , but it extends to other things as well , foods that were cooked a certain way in the past seem to be fading away in favor of what we have now , some of these changes are good due to being healthier others just seem to fade away because one one wants to bother cooking the old stuff in favor of just cooking the quick and easy way at the cost of flavor , another example is corn now people just dump can of corn into a pan ande heat and eat , simple , quick and easy, the old way in the south is to pan fry fresh creamed corn, its so much better than the caned corn , the younger generatons don't seem to care about flavor just as long as its quick and easy ( no need to actully learn how to cook , just heat and eat )
i guess some of it is understandable , things are faster paced now and many work two jobs , but still its kinda sad to see the old ways fading into the mist of time
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That trend actually started after WWII. My parent's generation gave us TV dinners, casseroles (that morphed in to Hamburger Helper). Back in the sixties, almost all of the veggies my mom cooked came from a can. Here I am, the generation after my mom, and I only use canned veggies when I can't get good fresh ones (such as good tomatoes in January).

I never actually liked cream corn. In my house, I cook it on the grill (BBQ) and eat it off the cob. I love a little char on my still crunchy corn.

On the other hand, meal kit's like Hello Fresh are helping younger people (and busy people) learn how to cook from scratch.

CD
 
I don’t really think too much about it, but I’m not all that nostalgic. If I like the way something was done a hundred years ago, then that’s how I do it, but if I like a new technique, or a new tool comes along and I try that and like it, I’ll do that.

My mom, she was very much “the old ways are better!” Period. End of conversation. This was a woman who, right up into the 1990’s, still cooked on a wood stove, hated the electric one, and we churned our own butter when I was growing up, that sort of thing, and forget healthy - anything that could be cooked in copious amounts of bacon grease was cooked in copious amounts of bacon grease.

Mom, circa 1980, making chicken and dumplings (meaning slicks to some people), always started with either killing a chicken fresh or pulling one of ours that had been killed earlier from the freezer and thawing that.

Me, 2023, making chicken and dumplings, I’m not likely to even boil a raw chicken. I’ll almost always just get a rotisserie one from the store and pull the meat off.

Similarly, I don’t make my own stock. I have done, I can say I know how to do it, but I don’t find the results to be so superior to commercial stocks to make it worth the extra effort.

I do wish I’d paid closer attention to my dad when he was curing/smoking hams and sides of bacon. I’d love to know exactly how he did that, because it’s still the best I’ve ever had, and he was never the type to say, “Ok, first do this, then this, then this.” He was more a “watch and learn” kind of teacher, and I did neither.

Popcorn, I still make on the stove in a pan, can’t abide the microwave stuff. A nephew saw me do that once and was enthralled, because the only popcorn he knew was from the microwave or a bag of pre-popped, and he was amazed to know it could be done on the stove.

Corn…I do still fry that off in a skillet about half the time. Bacon grease, a little onion, a little flour to help it brown, that method. That’s how my mom and my grandmom did it, and that’s the way I like it, and when I don’t have fresh corn, I’ll still do that from frozen.

The next generation after me, even though some of them profess a love of cooking…it’s all Hello Fresh and pizza rolls for them.
 
there are also certain veggies in the south that are slowly fading away , but you can still get them if you know where to look they aren't in most store and the few that are taste like ...well i better not say what they taste like , in the south they have two beans that look like lima beans , one is called speckeled butter beans the other one is a white looking bean to get the best flavor from them they must be harvested when they are about 3/4 grown , i have found them in cans a couple of times but they waited to the beans were full grown and you could tell they used a machine to pick them
can't really blame a company for that , just saying there is a lot of lost flavor , the wife and i are planning a trip back to the south at harvest time and will bring back enough to last through next winter
i'm sure the same thing is happening in other parts of the country , the old ways are fading away, and i'm sure a lotof good comes with the new was but a lot of good eating is also lost
 
grumpyoldman said:
i'm sure the same thing is happening in other parts of the country , the old ways are fading away, and i'm sure a lotof good comes with the new was but a lot of good eating is also lost
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When’s the last time you had leather britches? :wink:

AFA54E9E-55F0-470E-9697-668531A102DF.jpeg

Appalachian Mountain Roots

We dried a lot of ours up in the rear window of the family car.

Two beans I miss from growing up - goose beans (very large a spotted/streaked with purple), and greasy beans (small white bean, about the size of a pea, eaten still in the pod/shell).

Dad hates, absolutely despises supermarket canned/fresh/frozen green beans, because they’re “all hull, ain’t no bean in ‘em!”
 
Morning Glory said:
This is new to me! What are they? Not sure we have anything like them in the UK.
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They’re dried green beans. Not only does the drying preserve them, but when they’re later rehydrated and slowly cooked, they have a taste that’s somewhere between coffee and beef broth.

You need to use green beans that actually have a bean in them, for best results. I haven’t had these since I was living at home, so for me, it’s certainly something that’s faded into the mists of time.

Here’s a little lore for you:
Leather Britches - Edible Asheville
 
TastyReuben said:
They’re dried green beans. Not only does the drying preserve them, but when they’re later rehydrated and slowly cooked, they have a taste that’s somewhere between coffee and beef broth.

You need to use green beans that actually have a bean in them, for best results. I haven’t had these since I was living at home, so for me, it’s certainly something that’s faded into the mists of time.

Here’s a little lore for you:
Leather Britches - Edible Asheville
Click to expand...

I love the idea of them. So you string them up raw?
 
Morning Glory said:
I love the idea of them. So you string them up raw?
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Yes, just like you would when drying cayenne peppers, though we used to park the car out by the garden, where there was full sun, and spread them out in that area up behind back seat - it’d get as hot as an oven in there, especially with those big rear windows cars had in the 1970’s.

After they dried, we’d gather them up and pack them in…my mom’s old pantyhose! Then they’d hang up out of the way in the basement, in a little cubbyhole area up under the stairs.
 
I still cook stuff my mum used to make and her mum before her. Rissoles stews gravy from scratch. Son doesn't cook but his wife gets hello fresh. Daughter cooks stuff I cook so 4th generation. They all come here Sunday night for tea. I cook stuff from mums era as well as Indian or Italian. Mum would never have made they.
Maybe I still live in the past ?

Russ
 
Btw my kids and grandkids love all that I cook. I still laugh when I think of mum boiling 3 Veges , boil the guts out of them. With lots of salt.
She was on a tight budget .

Russ
 
rascal said:
Btw my kids and grandkids love all that I cook. I still laugh when I think of mum boiling 3 Veges , boil the guts out of them. With lots of salt.
She was on a tight budget .

Russ
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My mom believed in boiling things, too. Boil it until it is done... and then boil it more. I'm not being disrespectful, she knows she was a bad cook. When I go to visit, her first question is "What are you going to cook?" :laugh:

CD
 
Lol, no offense taken. Note I always ate what was in front of me. I was a lean athlete at the time. Although the salt thing i don't really use a lot of salt now. I know you dont use it a lot as well. I shudder to think of the amount of salt she used .

Russ
 
rascal said:
Lol, no offense taken. Note I always ate what was in front of me. I was a lean athlete at the time. Although the salt thing i don't really use a lot of salt now. I know you dont use it a lot as well. I shudder to think of the amount of salt she used .

Russ
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Thank goodness for healthy kidneys!
 
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