It's hard to think I'm related to my family when discussing the topic of food. My generation, also known as Gen-Y or Millennial, is well known for dining out at restaurants or ordering meal delivery on the daily. It's even a rare occurrence to see me enjoying leftovers! There's something about the elapsed time between the food being cooked and it being ingested that I just can't stomach.
So juxtaposing that lifestyle with those of my parents or grandparents feels like a world of difference. My parents, the Baby Boomers, really straddled the middle of two food cultures in America. They were born and grew up in a time where families gathered around the dinner table each evening to enjoy a home-cooked meal off the stove or out of the oven, which the matriarch of the family likely labored over for the majority of the day.
Then, eventually, the newest invention in cooking became affordable in the 1970s: the microwave oven. This opened new avenues for their generation of instant, hot food. And, of course, fast-food and drive-thru eateries really started multiplying during my parents' adolescence, but for the most part, their generation remained pretty conservative when it came to food preparation.
The below image of my mom in her teen years making up a sandwich on the go in the car would be a rare sight today for the modern family. It would be an inconvenience in comparison to grabbing a bite on the road at a drive-thru.
From my perspective, even though I count myself extremely fortunate to be able to afford eating out all the time, I sometimes wish life hadn't made it so easy to do so. Perhaps if I had grown up without the luxury of fast-food or microwaves, then I may have gleaned more appreciation for leftovers or serving up some old family recipes in the kitchen. As it is, I detest the act of cooking or baking (and especially the cleaning afterwards). If I had been forced to spend more time in the kitchen, maybe I would have learned to love it. Maybe....
My mom recalls their family keeping all of the leftover bacon grease congealed in a jar over the stove that they'd reuse each morning to fry up their eggs with. The image this conjures for me is revolting, but if I had grown up in that environment, it obviously would have been so commonplace, I wouldn't have thought twice about recycling this ingredient.
And then there are my grandparents -- the Greatest Generation, or the G.I. Generation. They lived through the Great Depression and went out to fight in World War II. They were not only brought up cooking for themselves, but typically growing their own produce or raising their own cattle for butchering or milking, even! And due to the struggling times they lived through, they certainly didn't waste any food.
I once noticed my grandma, Edna (Dean) Millhouse, place a half-eaten apple back in the fridge. I found this odd, as she was clearly finished with it in that moment, and it was sure to turn brown. If this had been my apple, I would have thrown it out, despite the other half going to waste. When I asked her about it, she lectured me on not wasting a perfectly good apple that she could eat later on. She mentioned growing up during the Depression taught her the value of saving food, so you wouldn't starve. As an adult, nothing about this seems weird to me now, though it would still not be the actions I would take, admittedly being groomed in a more wasteful society.
Her holistic approach to eating was taught to her through their generation's way of life. And her sisters confirmed they all ate well growing up. They didn't need to rely on restaurants, or take-out, the way my generation does:
Their mother and aunts were excellent preservers as well! It was just the way of life to work inline with the seasons, planting and harvesting, then picking and preserving. This would sustain the whole family, as well as neighbors and friends.
In my cupboard, the only canned goods you'll find are store-bought and mostly only kept for emergency situations, like earthquake preparedness. You certainly won't discover any canned fruits or vegetables picked from my own garden. You won't even find that garden! The shelf life of many foods in my fridge and pantry are two weeks at best. There's plenty I could learn from my relatives about food preservation.
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