Tuesday, July 26, 2022

Making Do(n't)

Mom and Aunt Grace.
Making do. Even on holidays...
A friend told me a story.
A true one.
About his grandfather during the food rationing days of the Second World War.
The friend's grandmother had been to the grocery store and purchased, among other things, a new tin of pepper.
Which she set on the table.
Her husband picked it up and studied it for a moment. He looked at her and said, “This pepper is half peas!”
“Oh, for heaven's sake!” she said. “I thought I looked at it!”
I should explain, here, that, during the war, creative ways of extending food were discovered and explored. They called it ersatz. I'm not sure where the name came from, but it was expressive. Many different readily available foodstuffs were dried and powdered and added to other foods not so easily come by. Corn meal, for example, was widely used.
The use of dried peas, though not as usual, was not unheard of.
Back to my friend's story . . .
Another can of pepper was procured the next day.
Again, the grandfather picked up the little tin.
“Huh,” he said. “This one is half peas, too.”
His wife snorted in disgust. “Well, there's only one kind left,” she said. “I'll try that one tomorrow.”
She did.
She proudly set the third little tin on the table in front of her husband and proceeded to get his dinner.
He picked up the tin and peered at it closely. “Yep,” he said. “Half peas.”
“What?! I looked at it! Where does it say . . .” her voice trailed off.
Her husband was pointing at the 'Pepper' part of the label. “Here,” he said. “See? P-E-P-P-E-R. Half of the letters are P's.”
Oh. P's. Not peas.
She didn't upend the tin over him or anything drastic like that. I know I would have been tempted.
But I'm sure they had pepper to last until the turn of the century.
This story reminded me of my Mom . . .
Raised during the Depression years, Mom knew very well the days of rationing and going without.
She learned very early to 'make do”. And to purchase things quickly, when they became available.
She often spoke of a large, twenty-five pound tin of peanut butter, for example. Oil on peanut butter rises. The first two-thirds of the container were edible. The last third had to be run through a meat grinder to make it spreadable.
But they ate it.
Several large cans of cherry jam appeared at the local grocery. Her Dad quickly snapped one up.
At first, cherry jam was a treat.
Served at every meal, it became a bit tiresome.
Still, it disappeared.
In her own home, Mom tried to practice what she had been taught throughout her life. Waste not want not, she often told us.
Some of her attempts were successful.
Others . . . not so much.
When buying frozen orange juice, she always added an extra can or two of water to make it go further.
It certainly went further--actually lasted for days. (and days...)  
When there was no milk cow on the place, she tried to extend the life of the milk container in the fridge by added powdered milk to it.
Fooling no one.
She tried purchasing the cheapest brand of peanut butter.
Unfortunately, her children hadn't been raised during the Depression and were finer-mouthed than their parents.
The cheaper peanut butter languished on the shelf.
Finally, in desperation, she bought the favourite kind. Which disappeared in a flash.
Coining the phrase, “I'm going to stop buying that peanut butter. You kids just eat it!”
She made her own roast beef sandwich spread by running cold roast beef through the meat grinder, along with some pickles. Then mixing in some mayonnaise.
That one was a hit. We kids loved sandwiches spread with beef and pickle hash.
I'm sure that, through the years, Mom saved our family a boatload of money with her careful ways.
Unfortunately, my children were even finer-mouthed than we had been.
One day, one of my kids saw her adding water to the ketchup.
I had seen her do that before. It made the ketchup a bit runnier, but still tasted okay.
The child was horrified and told all of his siblings.
And she became, forever, the grandma who put water in the ketchup. The lesson in frugality and making do was completely lost.
Pity.
P.S. I've been known to put water in the ketchup, too. Don't tell my kids . . .

12 comments:

  1. There are times when you just have to do what you have to do to get by. Right now is one of those times. Although I don't add water to anything, nothing goes to waste, we have leftovers sandwiches and "bits of this and that" dinners a few times a week here.

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  2. Your mom sounds so creative with the food. She could've had had own blog!... Laurie

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  3. Definitely a way of life kids today don't know....

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  4. I drive my husband crazy because he's frugal and well I'm not. He grew up with 11 siblings, I was spoiled I don't deny it. I cannot eat a hamburger or hot dog on bread. Won't do it. I also won't eat the last bun in a pack or crackers once the pack has been opened. I know weird!

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  5. My parents both were teens during the Depression, and grew up in large families. So they were expert. My Dad boasted of how his mother would create chickens with eight legs. I'm not even sure when I had my first glass of non watered-down Kool Aid.

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  6. My mother made the beef salad. Think a little ketchup in hers. Watered down no doubt. Post depression there were day old bread stores, cottage cheese drying on the clothesline and picking out a chicken in the backyard for dinner..we have turned into such a wasteful, ungrateful society. Sad!

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  7. My parents lived through the depression and WWII rationing. I'll never forget growing up and watching my mother carefully cut apart the sugar bag to get out every last granule of sugar. My father grew up in a house without indoor plumbing and had to heat water for baths. He taught us all a lesson in how to do this during the 70s oil crisis when he didn't order oil from May until October. No heat meant boiling pots of water on the stove for a bath.

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    1. The string that held the sugar bag together by a fancy chain stitch was carefully pulled out and made into a ball - saving string was important.

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  8. I love the idea of beef and pickle hash. Although I don't eat beef hardly at all, it sounds yummy!

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  9. That generation reallly did know how to make things last...in so many ways!

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  10. I still add vinegar to the almost empty ketchup bottle to help us enjoy every drop of ketchup!

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  11. Oh, that beef mixture was so delicious - I still enjoy it!

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