Can you remember the smell of fresh-baked bread? Or the taste of a flaky pie crust, served golden brown? How about the gurgle of a percolating coffee pot?
This was a time before “fast food” and “coffee to go,”
a time when you sat down at the kitchen table to enjoy your meal, and if you traveled anywhere with a fresh-brewed cup of coffee, it was only as far as the front porch. It was a time when front porches were for sitting on, not just for decoration.
Food was served on dishes made of glass, and your “fast food” choices were limited to such things as an oven-baked cookie pulled from beneath the lid of a countertop jar, a peanut butter and jelly sandwich you made yourself, or maybe a ripe, juicy apple picked from a tree that grew within sight of your backyard window.
Nothing about food preparation went quickly. Breads were baked from scratch, vegetables were grown in your own garden and later canned, and double-layered cakes originated from a flour bin, not from a box.
It was a time when a “dishwasher” was not a machine, it was a person—or several people pitching in to divide the chore of cleaning up the kitchen after a meal. “You wash. I’ll dry.” Sleeves were rolled up and hands were plunged into deep, porcelain sinks filled with warm, sudsy water.
These were the days when clanging kettles pulled from cupboards could be heard daily in every kitchen, instead of the now-familiar beep of a microwave unthawing a frozen dinner packaged by a stranger in a factory a thousand miles away. Truly, is there anyone among us who isn’t delighted to hear the clatter of pots and pans in the kitchen knowing that a home-cooked meal is about to be prepared?
Ingredients originated in your backyard and were also purchased from the grocery store downtown, owned by a local family, not a chain store. Purchases were bagged in paper sacks, then carried out to your car and loaded for you. They called it service. Elderly folks in frail health could telephone in their weekly list of needed items and expect a bag boy to deliver their order. Grocery stores made house calls, and so did doctors.
If you happened to stop for a few gallons of gas on your way home, a friendly attendant would pump your gas, check your oil, and wash your windshield—all for free! Who doesn’t miss this—especially when it’s raining!?
Merchants had their own doorway—the baker, the florist, the butcher and the man over at the hardware store. These were businesses owned by generational families who had served their community in the same capacity for years. We remember the names and faces of these men and women who stood behind the counter and waited on us. Strip-malls didn’t exist, nor did one-stop-shopping mega structures. Stores were closed on Sundays so families could spend time with one another. (It was the law!)
Outside of town, farmers were active in fields, and wives kept busy in the kitchen, making the most of every morsel—especially during the Great Depression years of the 1930s when both food and money were scarce. Nothing could be wasted—particularly food—because it was not uncommon to have a dozen mouths to feed in a single family. It was a time in our nation’s history when people went to bed hungry and woke up the same way—a worry most of the younger generation of today can say they have never had. The depression lasted a full decade and is remembered as “the longest ten years in our nation’s history.”
The difficulty of providing nourishment for your family meant that carefully-tended gardens were “as big as the whole backyard” and hoes could be found in every garage. In addition, it was necessary for most families to search for anything they could find to supplement their food source—mushrooms, fish, wild game and nuts (if you were smarter than the squirrel). Red-ripe apples, gathered from orchards, were pressed into cider. Syrup was drawn from maple trees. Wild asparagus was located in a nearby ditch and carried home in one-gallon tin pails. So were blueberries.
Cooks had a genuine talent for making good use of everything. People lived by the belief that to “waste not” was to “want not.” These were more than mere words; they were a way of living. If butchering a pig, it meant the entire animal would be put to good use “except the squeal.”
Pork-roasts and beef-roasts were stretched into stew. Meaty bones were boiled into soup broth (much to the dismay of the family dog). Butter was churned. Pears and peaches were hand-picked and canned in tightly-sealed quart jars. Cabbage was shredded and packed into stone crocks for sauerkraut. Raspberries and strawberries were turned into pint-sized jars of jelly. Canned goods helped sustain families during the long winter months when the garden was buried beneath the snow. Long rows of neatly-stacked jars were lined up behind glass pantry doors, or were stored in a cool basement on makeshift wooden shelves. Stone-walled cellars with dampened-earth floors helped preserve the autumn harvest for months—bushel-baskets of squash, gunny-sacks of potatoes, and carrots buried in sand. Some vegetables and fruits even lasted until spring!
Many white-haired folks today, leaning on canes, still miss the gardens of yesterday, and the joy of having awakened to “the sight of things growing” when they were youngsters. There was a certain thrill in picking an ear of corn in your backyard and eating it “five minutes after it left the garden,” or screwing off the lid of a canning jar filled with pickles and dill sprigs, both pulled from the garden with your own hands.
Well-stocked cellar shelves were scaled back considerably when the great drought—“the dust bowl”—devastated the food supply of the entire Midwest in the 1930s. Soil was turned to powder, and it blew away. Crops withered and died. So did the grass. Years passed without a drop of rain—yes, years. People pulled dandelions from the dry earth where grass had perished and ate the leaves as salad.
Mothers who had a genuine talent for making food stretch needed to be even more creative during the drought. Housewives considered what could be made from everything. It took great skill for a woman to cook a meager pile of spuds into an oh-so-delicious kettle of scalloped potatoes, flavored with an old ham bone.
The Great Depression and subsequent drought years affected every aspect of a person’s life—from food to clothing. Garments were worn until they were beyond mending. Socks with holes were darned, instead of thrown away. Patches were sewn on the knees of pants—and sometimes more than once. No one was embarrassed to wear hand-me-down clothes because you were in the majority, not the minority—especially outside the cities. If you were treated to a new dress, it was undoubtedly sewn by your mother from a flour sack. (Flour was sold in large, 50-pound fabric bags with printed patterns on them.)
Life continued to be economically difficult until the late 1940s because World War II followed the Great Depression and the dust bowl. Supplies were challenged again—food and otherwise. The United States was engaged in the raging war from 1941 until 1945. Wartime cookbooks were distributed which promoted “point-stretching, money-saving” tips. These recipe books were an attempt to assist cooks in the kitchen during the lean years of the war when rations and narrow incomes reduced the supply of everyday goods we now take for granted. Sugar was rationed. So were butter, milk, and cheese. Shortening and lard were also limited supplies. Each family received ration stamps to purchase small quantities—very small quantities—of scarce items. Everyone “made do.” “Sugar Shy” cookbooks instructed housewives how to make cookies and cakes with as little sugar as possible.
Coffee was another rationed commodity. Grounds were used and re-used, day after day, until the brewed pot was nearly as colorless as water. Complainers were reminded: “Someday you’ll be weak and old, too.”
Prosperity returned in the 1950s, and food was again in abundance, but if you were to ask almost anyone who grew up as a youngster during the 1930s and 1940s, they would be quick to tell you that their mothers and fathers did an incredible job of shielding them from the raw truth of those difficult days. Most would assure you that they never tasted cooking so delicious as they did in those bygone years when everything was made from scratch, a period when families had more time than money. This proved, in many ways, to be a treasure beyond measure. As one old-timer said about the years following the stock market crash of 1929: “When the banks closed, we opened our hearts.”
Those long ago days of cookbooks and aproned mothers truly yielded more than lump-free gravy and over-sized kettles of soup—soups made with vegetables, dumplings, and beans, simmered to perfection on gas-lit stovetops. The real bounty of these memorable meals was the fellowship shared by those who congregated around the kitchen table for a sit-down supper, together, enjoying both the food and the company of one another, eating as a family and talking about nothing in particular—a father inquiring about a daughter’s homework, a mother sharing news from a letter received in the mail from a distant relative, a teenager warning a little brother to quit crossing his eyes or they would stay that way.
There was, and still is, a certain satisfaction in plain-spoken talk, in hearing someone ask you when you return home in the evening, “How was your day?” The time spent eating a simple meal with one another became a source of unity. Kitchens were places of sharing, and of caring, when the supper hour came.
Even though eating together was a nightly event, there remained something special about gathering together on Christmas around a table that could seat twelve (or more) comfortably. Maybe it was the cloth napkins or the extra-fancy silverware, used only for holidays. Or it could have been the carefully-placed porcelain china, handed down through the generations, laid exactly in its place on a freshly-starched linen tablecloth, ironed wrinkle-free. Perhaps it was the infrequent use of “the good dishes.”
These fine details probably made their contributions to the merry scene, but the real magic of the moment came from the reunion of familiar faces gathered around a steaming turkey, baked to golden-brown perfection, or around a honey-cured ham, or a goose as big as a kindergartner.
Never have the words “the more the merrier” been more true than in the years of multi-leafed wooden tables that could be pulled apart and lengthened by several feet when company joined the meal. Those were the days!
Kinfolk arrived by the carload—everyone piling out. What a sight! Front doors opened, and hearty greetings were called: “Come on in out of the cold!” Loved ones, with arms fully extended, flung wide their welcome.
Overcoats were hung up (or placed in a large pile in the center of the bed), and everyone pulled one another close against their heart for a hug. Aunts and uncles pinched little cheeks, remarking at how tall the young children had grown since the last time they visited.
Then it was time to be seated on mismatched chairs for the feast. Every year, family, and extended family, came together in honor of Christmas, sitting closely around a table laden with holiday favorites, and in those moments, the memories of all that occurred around that table came rushing back, and it felt as if none of them had ever left.
Platters and bowls were passed from individual to individual, and drumsticks were vied over—so was the wish bone by the children after the meal. Aunts and uncles and all manner of cousins filled the tall, straight-backed wooden chairs. Happy faces spoke to one another across the dinner table, everyone talking at once—those with wrinkles and those with flesh as soft as a just-picked peach. The youthful “whipper-snappers” talked about their futures, and the elderly talked about their pasts, re-telling the old stories again. The middle-aged would smile and listen to the older folks, pretending it was the first time they heard the details of a story they had long ago memorized, with an ending they knew by heart, because they realized that those repeated stories would soon be missing. They understood that time passes, and so do lives, and the day would come, soon enough, when they would give just about anything to hear those familiar voices ramble on in their heartwarming way.
More than blood unites us. Our shared memories do, too. It is why we honor the important occasions with celebrations to gather the scattered family. It’s quite a feeling to be surrounded by people who knew you from the first hour of your life. Their faces represent the history of who we are. They are a linked chain that unites our generations.
This feeling of togetherness was the thread that stitched the pieces of holiday tradition into a unison that became the whole of the season—tasty accompaniments and all.
And how grand it was when our noses recognized the scent of something familiar, a once-a-year kind of smell—a pie baked by a favorite aunt, or the exact proportion of sweet smelling spices a grandmother used in a signature dish—perhaps the stuffing inside the turkey—a recipe no one could ever quite duplicate because of her unique measurements, a “pinch” of this and a “dash” of that. Each bite could suddenly remind us that we were home, and it was Christmas, and there was no better place in the whole wide world to be at that moment than where we were.
These were the days when a woman knew how to thicken gravy, and how to punch bread dough down with her fist after the yeast made it rise. These were the days of red-checkered tablecloths, cast-iron frying pans, loaf pans, and potato mashers with wooden handles.
And these were also the days when a cook knew how to expertly double—or triple—a batch of just about anything when the Christmas season arrived. The kitchen was a favorite spot year-round, but especially during the holidays. If you walked past a heated oven in December, you knew—for sure—that something tasty was inside. (Although you didn’t need to be in the kitchen to know it was Christmas; the aromas permeating the air were enough to tease your nose and assure you that the grand holiday approached.)
One of the most notable images that comes to mind when the idea of the holiday season is mentioned is the vivid picture of a wide array of home-cooked foods and sweets decorating tablecloths and countertops, complete in detail down to the smallest drip of frosting. Mouths can begin to moisten at even the thought of a baking sheet, lined with little balls of dough placed in neat rows, waiting for their turn on the oven rack. Mmmmm! These were not quick-and-easy, pre-packaged cookies from a supermarket shelf. No, these cookies were mixed from recipes handed down through generations. Christmas cookie-baking meant the varied flavors of peppermint, cinnamon, nutmeg, and ginger—and vanilla, purchased from the friendly Watkins Man, added to a batch of buttery dough.
The best part of baking a platter full of treats wasn’t necessarily eating the finished product. It sometimes meant treating yourself to a spoonful (or two, or three…) of the scrumptious, sugary dough as it was balled up. There was something special about taste-testing the “presults” of an old-fashioned recipe.
Other cookies were created by the motion of a heavy wooden rolling pin, flattening and smoothing a thick blanket of hand-kneaded dough on a countertop covered in flour. Then came the fun part—choosing a shape! Kitchen drawers rattled with the familiar clinking sound of narrow strips of tin bent into Christmasy shapes. These cutters were then pressed into service. Can you remember a favorite cutter your mother used every holiday? Was it a candy cane? A bell? Santa’s boot? Bethlehem’s star?
Christmas meant gingerbread men and gingerbread houses. It also meant fruitcake, peanut brittle, and fudge. And popcorn balls wrapped in red cellophane. And cookies flavored with chunks of chocolate.
Thinking back, it is almost possible to imagine the taste of one of those warm, milk-dipped cookies eaten slowly, each bite savored just a little more than the last bite. A cup of cold milk was, and still is, the perfect companion for a warm cookie. (The milk in those days was, however, poured from a glass bottle delivered by the milkman to your front door—unless you lived on a farm. Then it was delivered straight from the barn.)
Christmas also meant sugar cookies latticed with colored icing, frosted one-by-one after the pan of baked goods had been transferred from the oven to the cooling rack by a mitt-covered hand. Young girls were eager to assist with the time-consuming task of decorating—or any other kitchen activity. They studied the careful eyes and practiced hands of older women, slowly committing to memory the art of being a good cook. Lists of ingredients were reviewed, and recipes were read. Years of know-how were required to develop the necessary skills to be considered “an expert” in the kitchen. Young ladies were encouraged by matriarchs who reminded them, “All it takes is practice.”
Years would pass, and the truth of those words would come to be understood. Then, these grown-up little girls would repeat the same words to their children and grandchildren as they mixed a batch of Christmas cookies together.
While the bakery was later decorated, stories would be told about long ago days when people milked cows by hand and gathered eggs from a hen house, stories about fruit cellars and cisterns, smokehouses and outhouses, and “Sunday dinners”—baked chicken, country ham, pork chops, and barbequed ribs—meals followed by contented sighs. Memories would be consulted concerning those distant days when hard work—and lots of love—went into the planning of meals.
Then it would be time for everyone to take their place and gather around the Christmas table once again.
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