HW 4 - Your Families' Foodways Part 2

Imagine walking down the street to the grocery store, grabbing 3 bananas and heading to the checkout with only 10 cents in your pocket. The chances of you leaving the store with even half of a banana are extremely low. In the 1930s 10 cents could get you a lot. 3 different candies at the movie theaters or 3 bananas at the food store. My grandma was born in 1927 as Bernice Kaplan. She grew up in Brooklyn, belonging to a Jewish family of seven. Although the 1930s were the time of the great depression my grandmother's family's eating habits weren't strongly affected. My great-grandfather had a steady job at a coat factory and was able to bring home money during hard times. That doesn't mean that they were rich and ate fabulous meals every night; but they could eat comfortably. In winter, every morning my great grandmother would make hot cereal (cream of wheat) for the 5 girls of the family. Each night my great grandfather would come home and dinner would be served, "He had his own special chair and then everyone would sit down to eat". Every Friday night was chicken soup night. My grandma recalls that her mom was the only one who cooked and never really had any help. The easiest thing for them to get were vegetables. Weekly vegetables were carrots, corn and mashed potatoes. My grandma told me, laughing, that "Spinach was about the only green thing I remember". There weren't supermarkets; "there was a food store, a butcher and a bakery". My grandma would get sent to the food store every once in a while with 10 cents to get bananas for her mom.

Candy was never kept in the house; it was considered an extravagance. The only time candy ever entered the house was for passover. My great grandma would order special sesame candies which can actually still be found in some grocery stores. "For passover, many families did this, we would get a big fish. We would get a live Pike and keep it in the bathtub. Then kill it". I laughed when I heard this. She said, "don't laugh, lots of people did it. It was very common- remember, this was the 30s and my mother was born in the 1800s, it was tradition". My grandmother kept her kosher eating style right up until she was married. Even though she no longer keeps kosher, she still has some of the same eating habits. Chicken was one of their regular foods and my grandma still loves chicken; she eats it at least once a week. She will buy a full chicken at the grocery store, cut it up and freeze most of it. When my grandma is looking for food she tries to go for protein. She still loves salmon which she now gets fresh instead of in cans like her mother did to make salmon patties. Just like her mom she always has eggs in her house and always has a fresh, seasonal fruit or vegetable ready to be eaten.

Some traditions from my grandma's childhood carried over to my mother's childhood. My grandma would cook the meals every night; with little to no help from my mom and her 2 siblings. One difference is that instead of eating with the whole family, my grandma and the three kids would eat early and my grandfather would eat later in the day around 9pm. He was a doctor and had very long hours. Sometimes he would come home for dinner at a regular time and then turn around and go back to work. Breakfast was really important to my grandpa and my grandma, following in the steps of her mother would make him hot breakfast like cream of wheat in the mornings. My grandpa's uncles were in the food business and actually opened one of the first supermarkets in their county. My grandmother would shop there to support the family business. Another difference is that they would actually keep sweets in the house. My grandpa really loved chocolate; especially with almonds so there was always Hershey with almonds in the house.

My mom used to work for Citigroup as a producer. She was laid off about half a year ago. I've noticed since then that she has more time to cook meals. When my mom did work, take out was at least a once a week event. There were probably some weeks where we ate only takeout and leftovers. She would cook using a crock pot and it was hard for her to make vegetarian food for me because most of the recipes she knew involved meat so sometimes i had to find something else to eat. Now, we tend to have family meals 3-6 days out of the week depending on our schedules. We rarely eat leftovers for dinner now and we've started to have meals like the ones described by my grandma; full meals with vegetables and not just some gross mashed potatoes.

I think that the change in foodways relies on just a few things; religion, economy, and time period. When my grandma was younger her family kept kosher because of the Jewish religion. As time went on my grandmother decided that she didn't want to keep that particular habit and dropped it. Now, my mother doesn't keep kosher and I doubt that I'll ever keep kosher. During the great depression, my relatives didn't suffer too many of the side effects but it did keep a shortage on what was actually available to them. With this current economy my mom lost her job and now has more time for family meals rather than just ordering in. 80 years ago, there were no "pre-chopped" foods, no chemical preservatives, no genetically mutated foods. Now a days we have so much more technology to "help" us make our eating experiences more pleasant...or at least easy.