Subj : Grocery Getters
To : Dave Drum
From : Ruth Haffly
Date : Sat Jan 25 2025 14:23:13
Hi Dave,
DD> We had a school lunch program even back in the late 40s. 1st grade in
DD> 1948 was the only year I got to carry my Roy Rogers lunch box.
RH> Our school had a lunch program but my parents made us take a lunch
RH> except for the pre Thanksgiving turkey dinner. Since there were 5 of us
RH> kids, 99% of the sandwiches were pb&j on white bread. Before sandwich
RH> bags came out, Mom would put a cookie on top of the sandwich, then wrap
RH> the whole thing in wax paper. By lunch time, the cookie had absorbed a
RH> lot of moisture from the bread and the bread had a big stale spot.
RH> That's why I don't like peanut butter to this day. Oh, and I carried a
RH> lunch box (had some generic cartoonish characters, my siblings got the
RH> TV show lunch boxes) up until 7th grade, then switched to a brown paper
RH> bag that we had to bring home every day. IIRC, one school year I made
RH> the same bag last the whole year.
DD> That's a lit6tle ... no a lot ... overly ch... frugal. There were
DD> times, given some of the horrid things the school cooks did to the
DD> food that I wished I could be like mt dad and bring my lunch.
With 5 kids and only Dad working, bringing home a relatively small
paycheck, my folks economised wherever they could. Once my youngest
sister hit first grade, my mom started working--at the school so she
could have off whenever us kids had off. She was a school aide for 2
years, then moved into the library--had to get her Master's within 5
years. (That was when I really learned how to cook!) When she first
started working, she started buying sandwich bags with the fold in flap.
She'd fold in the flap, put the cookie on that and then "cuff" it. It
worked, as long as none of the cookie slipped onto the sandwich.
DD> I dunno what makes this especially "Coal Miners" but that's the
DD> title and it's on topic as well as beinf a "Burton". Bv)=
RH> I don't see anything that makes it especially Coal Miner's either,
RH> except maybe an inexpensive meal, affordable on a miner's pay.
DD> We were a union town. Coal mining paid well.
I've read enough English historic fiction where the (usually) Welsh coal
miners have had the short end of the stick and barely earned a living
wage.
DD> Well, besides the "Bohunks, Welsh, Britons, etc. There was a
DD> substantial Italian population. And some dynamite Italian restaurants.
DD> I was eating at one owned by one of my chilli cook friend (6 time
DD> in-a-row State Chilli Champion) and I'd ordered the special of the day
DD> rather than my usual of chilli-mac. It was almost tooth achingly
DD> sweet.
DD> When Don stopped at our table as he was doing the rounds of the
DD> customers I asked him about the "sweet". He said "Look around, you
DD> see all those old guineas? They're here for lunch must days and if I
DD> didn't add the
DD> sugo (sugar) they'd go somewhere else. You guys are here once a month.
DD> Which way would you go?"
DD> So, I went back to chilli mac when I go there.
RH> I would too; I don't put any sugar in my sauce and don't like a sweet
RH> sauce when I encounter one.
DD> A little bit sometimes helps - although I'm more likely to use honey
DD> than sugar. Same w/BBQ sauce unless I want it to caramelize on the
DD> meat. Overall I don't do a lot od sugar in/on anything except
DD> desserts. And I only do those sparingly.
I've switched to stevia for my morning tea, cook sometimes with half
stevia for baking, half sugar or all sugar or honey. I don't do bbq
sauce; Steve smoked some baby back ribs yesterday but just used a couple
of dry rubs on them. There was just enough heat that my mouth had a
slight tingle of heat, just right. But, like you desserts are where I
usually get my sugar.
DD> Dennis brought home some Little Debbie's Star Crunch cookies from a
DD> gog food run one evening. The bakery guy was picking up "out of
date" DD> product from the Dollar General where he buys the dogs'
supper. He got DD> an armload on a "freebie" Now I've a new favourite
store-bought DD> cookie. And I buy DD> them at the store. But I have to
pull a gun on myself to keep from DD> pigging out. Bv)= If you see
then at Weggies I recommend them DD> hoighly.
Have to think about it, we don't buy a lot of cookies. Working on a box
of Italian cookies Steve got at the VFW Christmas dinner, only 4 more
meal's worth. Plus he has some Mrs. Thinster's coconut cookies and some
Bell Vita blueberry cookies, but I didn't bake any for Christmas last
month. Time was, when the girls were home, I'd make about 6 different
kinds of cookies, but as they left home, I baked fewer and fewer.
DD> 1/2 c Salted butter
DD> 1/2 c Unsweetened cocoa powder
DD> 1/2 ts Espresso powder
DD> 14 oz Can sweetened condensed milk
DD> 20 Soft caramels
DD> 5 1/2 c Mini marshmallows
DD> 5 c Puffed rice cereal
*******************
My mom used to buy that for one of the cold cereals in the few months we
had them (between early June and the end of August). She'd get that,
puffed wheat, wheaties, corn flakes and rice krispies on a rotating
basis--when you added milk to the bowl of most of them, you got a sorry,
soggy mess but we had to eat it. Only one of the above I've ever bought
is the rice krispies, for the treats. Oh, she also bought (regular)
cheerio's, another one that got soggy fast in milk.
---
Catch you later,
Ruth
rchaffly{at}earthlink{dot}net FIDO 1:396/45.28
... Yesterday was the deadline for complaints.
--- PPoint 3.01
* Origin: Sew! That's My Point (1:396/45.28)
