13 Comments

Nothing beats good bread and potatoes! ... That's interesting how her upbringing helped her later in life to learn how to make things stretch in times of need. Often people share stories of earlier hardships, however difficult, somehow helping them cope with something later in life.

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Yes, Linda! I have often thought that the best lessons we ever learn growing up come from the negative side - we learn as much from bad examples as we do from good, from the lack of things we need as much as the having of them. Hardship teaches more than a life of ease.

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I continue to love these stories. Your mother and my Dad would be friends.

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Oh, that they would, Scott! Two peas in a pod. She would have loved his company.

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I love reading these stories. I’m always amazed at how truly self-sufficient they were in all facets of life.

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Well, yes, Justin. When you consider that we, ourselves, just walk down to the market and buy a plastic wrapped pork chop, a box of fresh salad greens, and a loaf of bread. Voila! Dinner. [ I am anxiously waiting for the next 50-word challenge!]

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Ah sauerkraut - my German heritage coming to the surface. I used to make pork roast, sauerkraut, and dumplings.

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Yum yum. I wish we were neighbors...

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So lovely, Sharron - you've got my tummy rumbling! The food all sounds delicious - yes, even the 'head cheese' - we call it 'brawn', and I remember making it when we used to keep Tamworth pigs.

I loved reading which bits of the chicken that Katy and her siblings got to eat, 'real chicken' only coming their way when they were older. I've never knowingly eaten chicken feet, but I do pick all the meat off the neck, and I hugely prefer the juicy, slippery brown thigh and wing meat to white breast meat any day!

Such a great post, Sharron. I adore your memoir writing.

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I had no idea that the British ate head cheese, sometimes called "souse" or as you have taught me, "brawn". I can imagine myself maybe being hungry enough to try it. Maybe. I am glad you like these old history stories, Rebecca.

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What's for eats? Nooooodles and butter with milk in a bowl. Potato salad with mayo and mustard and pickles. Rice under everything. Handmade bread too soft to put in the toaster so its buttered and fried in the pan. Buttered on top and flipped so both sides are brown. Gravy made of bouillon, flour and water, to go on each of them...except the potato salad. Fry up a big onion with garlic and see what else there is to "go with". Cold salad with lemon and oil, or hot salad in the pot with water. YUMS

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Whoa! That's a lot for eats! Just plain, simple cooking. You can take in all those calories and carbs because you work it all off every day, Kate!

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Well those are not all in one day, silly. There's eggs 100 ways, veg also 100 ways, coffee of course. Meat sometimes, canned or real. Crocked it makes a big pot of soup. Now and then, a batch of cookies or a grip of chocolate chips when ya just gotta have some sugar. Peanut butter, cheese, apples, oranges. That's about it. Then work it off with shoveling snow, gardening, scrubbing apartments, painting same., shovel gravel, haul concrete and lumber. Sit still while petting cats or typing. Calories? what's that? Is anything NOT carbs? hahaha

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