Well, here’s a good story, and something I never knew about my wife’s upbringing.
Remember a couple of weeks ago, I posted in the groceries topic about buying some pepper loaf and Dutch (old-fashioned) loaf lunchmeats? I pointed out at the time that both are considered from another era and aren’t popular like ham or turkey are.
Today, when we got home from shopping a little, MrsT was peckish, so I made her a folded-over sandwich of one slice of Dutch loaf, mustard, a little raw onion, and one piece of bread.
“Here, eat that.”
I went back in the kitchen to make me one, and all of a sudden I heard, “Oh my god!!! Dutch loaf!!! This is Dutch loaf!!! I haven’t had this since I was a kid!”
Now, I grew up on the stuff, as Mom bought it quite a bit, second only to bologna, so I knew what to expect.
Turns out, though, when MrsT was a wee thing, and her folks would go to Pennsylvania (right to the exact area we’re looking to move to) to visit family, her dad would buy a whole unsliced block of Dutch loaf, however many pounds that is, and bring it home and freeze it, because they couldn’t get it in extreme upstate NY.
They’d eat that a lot, all through the year (five people can go through a lot of lunchmeat), but as the kids grew up, got married, moved out/away, they stopped doing that, so she hadn’t had any Dutch loaf since she was probably 16 or 17 years old.
She actually started to cry.
“I don’t know,” she said, “but Fall always reminds me of home, and Mom and Dad, and being in the North Country, and this just takes me right back to being 10 years old and Mom making everybody Dutch loaf sandwiches! Just like this! With mustard and raw onion! This tastes just like home!” 😭
She never realized, in the 19 years we’ve lived here, that Dutch loaf is pretty common here.