Directions: |
Directions:I don’t have a lot of veggie recipes, but we ate so many veggies growing up. But they were fresh out of the garden, and we usually ate them plain and fresh or cooked with a simple cream sauce, like the yummy creamed peas mom would make for the fresh picked peas out of the garden. She would just make a flour /milk sauce seasoned with a little salt and pepper and some of her magic, I think ,because it was sooo good and flavorful!
And there were the tons of sweet corn we also ate on a daily basis, just boiled about 10 minutes in a big pan of water, then slathered with butter and salt and pepper.....There was always the sliced tomatoes at every meal in the summer too, just add salt, and the green leaf lettuce for a salad. She would make a little dressing of milk and mayo, a little salt and pepper and there was nothing better! There also the never ending cucumbers too and these would be sliced and salted and left to soak in a bowl on the counter till dinner/supper time, then drained and rinsed. We were told this was to get the poison out of them ?? Wait...what?? Needless to say, now I eat them raw in my salads and haven’t been poisoned yet....but old wives tale I suppose....We never ate them directly without soaking in salt water first. Then she would make the milk/ mayo dressing and salt and pepper, oh yum! Or maybe just a little vinegar-salt-pepper on them. Loved those poison cucumbers!....ha. And my mom would always make the open crock dill pickles, in the fall when the cucumbers got big. Grape leaves, lots of fresh dill, (which grew wild everywhere if you let it) and a brine over them. Then they sit for day’s and weeks? I always remember coming home from school in the Fall....and coming into the house through the enclosed porch where she would have the big crock fermenting with the dill pickles. We would just reach our grubby little hands into the crock and pull out a big old pickle on our way into the house. OMG! To die for! They would sit out there for a good long time till they reached the level of dill that she wanted, then if we hadn’t eaten them all by then, she would pack the rest into jars and can them for the Winter. And we also had a lot of red beets too out of the garden, and she would end up pickling them in jars for the winter too. Always tons of rhubarb too in the spring, which would always come up year after year, along with the asparagus. oh yum.
Mom and my grandma would make tons of “relish”. A big conglomeration or chopped veggies....( or rather ground in the old manual meat grinder that you would attach onto the edge of your table and grind away, juice flying everywhere....... green and red peppers, cabbage, onions, carrots, whatever. Then it was put into a vinegar/seasonings brine and let it stand at least overnight to let the flavors develop. We used to eat a lot of “relishes” back in the day, just a little refreshing side to our meats and heavy meals. You don’t see that much anymore. But they were good and tasty! And very colorful and healthy. Along with our pickles at nearly every meal, sweet or dill or mustard pickles, yum....or bread and butter pickles, those were so good too...I remember making the relish a few times for you kids, but you were never too impressed with them, if I remember. There were always the never ending string beans (you’d pick one and six would grow back, I swear), too, cooked in a little boiling water and seasoned with maybe a little salt and pepper and a little butter, sometimes I remember a little vinegar added too. We would have tons of fresh onions, big one and little green ones, too that we would add to basically everything, great flavor. She also grew a lot of Swiss Chard, basically spinach, that she would boil up and put vinegar, salt, and pepper on them, if I remember correctly. We would have tons of potatoes, too, which was a good thing, because we ate then with basically every meal, fried, mashed, baked, scalloped.....The gardens were a never ending cornucopia of good things all summer long. Even popcorn in the fall. But what a lot of work for those poor housewives. They became very efficient ladies.... One of the reasons, I am sure most of them were stay at home moms, no time to do anything else. It was a full time job and then some....Not only serving them on a daily basis, but then canning all the excess veggies for the long cold winters. And these are only the veggies, we also had endless fruits....strawberries, grapes, apples, peaches, pears, cherries gooseberries, watermelon, cantaloupe (we called them muskmelons back them) and whatever! Oh the bounty! We had it all, plus farm fresh, chickens and beef and pork and eggs and milk and cream, made our own butter even and bread. All organic and “ free range” too, back in the day! We were truly blessed to have grown up back then, wish all you guys could have experienced it a bit. But now I sound old, sorry.....We would eat our big meal at lunch (dinner time back then, we called it). In the early evening about 5-6 pm we would have our supper. It would be a little smaller meal with all the “dinner” leftovers, mainly fried....fried potatoes, fried meat , slice the corn off the cob, add to the plate of sliced tomatoes left from dinner, whatever we had at the noon meal and always pickles, and so forth. Yummy even the second time around. And it was all fried in good old fashioned lard...back in the day when it had flavor. ; ) No microwave to heat the leftovers in, so 2nd best thing, fry it up! I’m not talking deep fried, just fried in a pan with a little good grease....Mom also made the BEST fried potatoes! Simple meals, the best!! |
This recipe for GRANNY ALSO SAYS.... is from