Poor Food....

I went to the grocery store yesterday. I was hungry when I got there and I bought a lot more stuff than I usually do. I bought cherries and apricots and melons and artichokes and tomatoes. And a cake mix to make a pound cake. I bought some of those French fries that can be baked in the oven, and bacon and lettuce to make a BLT.

It was as if I went back in time, to the early years, the “Young Mommy” years, to be exact. I bought things yesterday that I bought way back then. Tonight, for supper, I will be having fried eggplant, sliced tomato, cottage cheese and an artichoke.

I call it “poor food.”

Back then, when I had babies at home, I didn’t work. We made do on one paycheck. My father-in-law was a rancher and always grew vegetables in the summer. We seemed to have an endless supply of beefsteak tomatoes, squash, eggplant, and watermelon. And he grew oranges, so there were always plenty of them, too.

I know we had hard financial times when I was a child. Not always, but often enough that I remember them. And there were those times again when I was a young mommy. But the amazing thing is, we always had enough to eat. We ate “poor food” but we ate well.

I guess it is no wonder then that I equate having enough to eat with being financially sound. I was in charge of paying the bills when the kids were babies and I always paid them. And THEN I went shopping for groceries. I always figured anything would fill my family’s bellies and, if the bills were paid, anything we could afford would taste just fine.

I remember being able to buy five pot pies for a dollar, when they were on sale. I used to joke with the kids: “there’s a prize for anybody who finds chicken in their chicken pot pie!” To make them go farther, I boiled new potatoes and served the pot pie on top of a large portion of potatoes.

When I made mashed potatoes, if there were leftovers, we had potato pancakes the next night. Leftover anything became something else the next night. Funny thing, the conversation at the supper table was just as lively on leftover night as it was any other night.

I remember fixing bacon and eggs and biscuits for supper many times. And, if there wasn’t much bacon, I just made more biscuits. We always got full. The kids always enjoyed the simple foods better than the “exotic” things that we ate infrequently, such as asparagus (asper-grass at our house).

One of their favorite meals was beans and weenies. It started out as an attempt to feed my family without going to the store. I had five mouths to feed and only four weenies, so I cut them up in small, round slices and fried then in a pot with butter. When they were slightly browned, I added a couple of cans of pork and beans, a touch of mustard, some brown sugar, a little Worcestershire sauce, and a drop of liquid hickory smoke. I let them simmer while I made corn muffins….

Voila! A new family favorite!

The kids, my husband, and I gathered around a simple table: placemats, napkins, milk glasses, and simple food. The milk carton always sat in the middle of the table where everybody could reach it. We drank lots of milk and we also spilled our fair share. Well, some was snorted out little kids’ noses, too. They couldn’t help it: things were just too funny!

Poor food made for rich memories….