July blogathon #11: The Kitchens of No More

[anghara]

It often seems hard to remember the details - but I grew up in a time and a place where stuff to eat was seasonal, and you couldn't just wander into a stuffed supermarket and buy tomatoes from the other hemisphere if you felt like having them in mid-winter. When I was growing up, my grandmother's kitchen was one where old-fashioned jam-making and

Comments

[bunsen_h]

You can't see bottles like those nowadays? A couple of them look like wine bottles, and the square one on the right looks like the bottle of olive oil I finished recently.

[melissajm]

This brought back memories of my grandparents' farm kitchen, and the canning jars of Ayershire milk in the fridge. (Brought from the milk tank to the house in a wire basket.)

[seticat]

My grandmother was born in the late 1800's and my mom was a depression era child so I learned to can whole chickens, make lye soap, scald flats of peaches to can, tend her garden, etc. I remember having to flatten butter and oleo wrappers to store in the freezer to grease pans as needed and you *always* saved all the bacon fat for things.

I've been away from that life for so very long, but today I picked my very first tomato from my very own garden along with a nice summer squash. That and some fresh picked lettuce was tonight's salad. And one taste took me back all those years.

[anghara]

Deer, hell. It's the squirrels who would make short work of them. And our bigger problem is that we live out in the woods. We REALLY don't have enough sun for long enough out on the back deck to have decent tomatoes take shape...

[keris45]

Oh yes...you've taken me back. Only in my life, it wasn't my grandmother's kitchen, it was ours. My mother's. An Australian kitchen with water that came from the roof, untreated and sweet. And the frig ran on kerosene.

Glenda L.