more about my 1950s cookbook...how to kill vegetables

[Liz CA]

There's a line in a 1930s novel by DL Sayers about 'the right way to boil fish'.  It always makes me shudder.

 

ETA: The line is:

 

'Peter perfectly capable of looking after himself and probably not wanting wife with head stuffed with chicken-pox and best way to boil fish'

 

Busman's Honeymoon

 

 

I love the Lord Peter Wimsey books.

 

Now I am not being snarky here but don't the Brits boil a lot of food, that is often fried, sauteed or baked in other places?  

[Bluegoat]

I had never thought of that but a well kept home which would include ironing all clothes, towels, sheets, table cloths could potentially kill a lot of pests making the home be less infested than a home without. I always wondered why in the world when they had to do everything by hand and things were so much harder that they were so much more particular than us.

 

Also I remember my grandmother saying the legs of the bed were kept in little dishes of kerosene so the bugs couldn't climb up the bed. They would have to start on the bed. That doesn't help a mattress but I could see how having a couple bites sure beats waking every morning to being covered in them. Hmmm

 

Once the light went on for me about this kind of thing, I had a totally different kind of insight when I was reading older books.  Things that had previously seemed just elitist or puritan or prudish suddenly had a whole other level.  

[Laura Corin]

I love the Lord Peter Wimsey books.

 

Now I am not being snarky here but don't the Brits boil a lot of food, that is often fried, sauteed or baked in other places?  

 

In the 1930s I'm sure we did.  I can't think of anything particular now.  I've never eaten dishes that I've heard of in books like 'boiled beef'.

Edited February 21, 2018 by Laura Corin

[foxbridgeacademy]

They say to boil broccoli and asparagus for 20 minutes.  LOL  That shi* would be DEAD.

 

My mother was born in the mid 50s and this is the sort of thing she did (although she bought canned and she'd boil the canned if you can imagine).  She hated vegetables.  No wonder why.

We must have the same mother. There wasn't/isn't a vegetable she can't turn into a mushy, gray mess.  I thought I hated vegetables growing up, come to find out I LOVE them.  The only vegetable we eat from a can is tomatoes that go in soups or stews.... and I will occasionally do canned corn.  

[Carol in Cal.]

I had never thought of that but a well kept home which would include ironing all clothes, towels, sheets, table cloths could potentially kill a lot of pests making the home be less infested than a home without. I always wondered why in the world when they had to do everything by hand and things were so much harder that they were so much more particular than us.

 

 

I have a relative who served in the Peace Corps in central Africa. 

All clothes and bedding had to be made out of cotton (maybe linen, too, but that didn't come up) specifically so that they could be ironed at a high enough temperature to kill off the deadly parasites inherent in the water they would be washed in.

[Carol in Cal.]

You iron sheets because wrinkled linen is really painful to sleep on. It's not like cotton. I'm sure all the bugs died when you washed the clothes, anyway.

 

 

 

No, see above.  Some of the bugs are actually from the wash water in certain areas.  Fun fun fun.

[TechWife]

This explains a lot about my mom’s cooking.

[Rosie_0801]

In the 1930s I'm sure we did.  I can't think of anything particular now.  I've never eaten dishes that I've heard of in books like 'boiled beef'.

 

I always assumed boiled beef meant corned beef/silverside.

[gardenmom5]

And you’re here to tell the tale. I’m impressed! :p

 

 

I don't recall anyone actually eating it  . . . . 

and she's done worse.  far worse.   the dog wouldn't eat her spaghetti.

[goldberry]

Raises hand--I grew up on that s***.  Horrible, nasty food.  Ugh ugh ugh.

 

I always hated green beans growing up.  They were totally limp and flavorless.  I believe now they were from a can and then cooked to death.  The first time I had roasted fresh green beans... YUM!  Maybe I wasn't a veg hater after all.

[umsami]

I have to admit that I like my veggies cooked more than the current trend of (IMHO) still half-raw.  

 

But I'm not so 50s that I'm going to make some sort of weird savory Jell-o mold with them. :P

[Pawz4me]

I have to admit that I like my veggies cooked more than the current trend of (IMHO) still half-raw.  

 

But I'm not so 50s that I'm going to make some sort of weird savory Jell-o mold with them. :p

 

:iagree:

 

I want my veggies raw or cooked. Not some in between limbo of nastiness.

[FaithManor]

I was raised on Del Monte everything all of it cooked to death! Beyond death! Into food Hades.

 

Then I met Dh and his parents knew how to prepare vegetables. So I eat vegetables because my in-laws saved me!

 

Del Monte peas boiled to oblivion makes a very unpalatable grey goo that makes children gag at the dinner table so they can be yelled at by their parents for not being grateful because children in Africa are starving which may he true but still doesn't stop the gagging thus creating emotional trauma related to vegetables.

Edited February 22, 2018 by FaithManor

[Garga]

I prefer my broccoli steamed for a good long while—longer than most people. But certainly not boiled.

 

 

And just to make you itchy, bedbugs will crawl up onto the ceiling and drop onto you if they can’t get to you any other way.

[8circles]

And just to make you itchy, bedbugs will crawl up onto the ceiling and drop onto you if they can’t get to you any other way.

 

Ohhhhhh, that was mean.

[umsami]

I prefer my broccoli steamed for a good long while—longer than most people. But certainly not boiled.

 

 

And just to make you itchy, bedbugs will crawl up onto the ceiling and drop onto you if they can’t get to you any other way.

 

Thank you for the memory of our year of plagues.... lice and bed bugs...about five years ago.   Getting rid of both of those was such a big pain and totally has made me paranoid about both.

 

 

And I would love to sleep on freshly ironed (by somebody else) sheets just once...to see what it's like.  Maybe sheets that have been dried on the line in the fresh air and stored in cupboard with sprigs of dried lavender.  I guess I need to get myself invited to Martha Stewart's house as a guest. :D

Edited February 22, 2018 by umsami

[laundrycrisis]

My nightmare vegetables were mushy cooked carrots and boiled okra. 😱

[Petrichor]

And just to make you itchy, bedbugs will crawl up onto the ceiling and drop onto you if they can’t get to you any other way.

 

:ohmy:  :blink:  :svengo:

[gstharr]

I watched Graham Kerr--The galloping Gourmet tv show when I was a kid.  Grew up thinking I will cook like that one day.  A few year back, I opened one of his  cook books at a thrift.  I would not pay 25ct for the book.  The recipes seemed awful.

[SparklyUnicorn]

I was raised on Del Monte everything all of it cooked to death! Beyond death! Into food Hades.

 

Then I met Dh and his parents knew how to prepare vegetables. So I eat vegetables because my in-laws saved me!

 

Del Monte peas boiled to oblivion makes a very unpalatable grey goo that makes children gag at the dinner table so they can be yelled at by their parents for not being grateful because children in Africa are starving which may he true but still doesn't stop the gagging thus creating emotional trauma related to vegetables.

 

Because of my in-laws I eat asparagus.  My mother only bought canned.  It was so vile! 

[Lizzie in Ma]

Yup, that's how my Mom cooked every vegetable.  No wonder I hated them til I grew up and made my own. ;)

[Lizzie in Ma]

Treet?

Just no.

 

This thread made me go to Amazon and skim through the previews of Peg Bracken's I Hate to Cook book. Still feeling a bit nauseous.

 

ETA

I follow the Duggar family (as best I can with no tv). One daughter, living in Central America, remarked that you could only buy whole vegetables and had to cut them yourself. She sounded as though that was a weird custom, found only in second or third world countries.

 

My grandmother had that cookbook!

[Guest]

Betty Crocker.

 

I'd say about 80% of the recipes are for baked goods though. The veg section is one of the smallest sections. I guess there wasn't much focus on it.

“Betty, what do we do with veggies?â€

“What do you mean? You boil them for ages! Nobody likes vegetables anyway. Now, on to Cookies...â€

[MFG]

I wonder if some of the older cooking techniques for vegetables was a result of the varieties of vegetables grown and used. My mother had a large garden and, for example, I remember the green beans, i.e. ‘string beans’, being fuzzier and stringier than beans I buy now. She always home canned them, we did not eat them fresh. The processing did change the flavor but made them tender. I’m not convinced that everyone cooked the way they did because they we too dumb to know how to prepare foods ‘properly ‘.

[SparklyUnicorn]

I wonder if some of the older cooking techniques for vegetables was a result of the varieties of vegetables grown and used. My mother had a large garden and, for example, I remember the green beans, i.e. ‘string beans’, being fuzzier and stringier than beans I buy now. She always home canned them, we did not eat them fresh. The processing did change the flavor but made them tender. I’m not convinced that everyone cooked the way they did because they we too dumb to know how to prepare foods ‘properly ‘.

 

Could be.  I can't stand our garden beans lightly cooked.  The ones I buy at the store are fine that way though. 

 

Well, in fact I use our garden beans mostly for soups because I don't think they taste all that good.  Must be the variety?  I dunno. 

[shawthorne44]

My mother's cousin was in love with the concept of the microwave.  One year she invited us over for a turkey cooked in the microwave.  It wasn't good and it wasn't really quicker.  You couldn't convince her otherwise though.  She used her regular oven as a pantry.  LOL

 

My parents bought a microwave so that I could have warm food as a latchkey kid.   It was early enough that the microwave came with How To Cook With A Microwave class, and a microwave cookbook.  The front of the cookbook had a perfectly browned whole turkey that was supposedly cooked in a microwave.   Maybe she had the same one?   It was an Amana.   

 

I remember my mom and I trying to make peanut butter cookies in the microwave.  The problem is the after-cooking.  The cookies would be pulled out of the 'oven' slightly undercooked then go to overcooked while on the counter.  They tasted fine if we dunked them in milk the second they were properly cooked.  

 

The Culture Shock book on Germany said that the until-recent attitude to vegetables was "to cook them until they can't hurt you."   

 

I still remember the first day I added some spinach to my salad at a salad bar.  I remember being annoyed that They had hidden this wonderful thing from me by boiling it to death.  

Edited February 22, 2018 by shawthorne44

[Bluegoat]

I wonder if some of the older cooking techniques for vegetables was a result of the varieties of vegetables grown and used. My mother had a large garden and, for example, I remember the green beans, i.e. ‘string beans’, being fuzzier and stringier than beans I buy now. She always home canned them, we did not eat them fresh. The processing did change the flavor but made them tender. I’m not convinced that everyone cooked the way they did because they we too dumb to know how to prepare foods ‘properly ‘.

 

Yeah, I think there were reasons for a lot of it.

 

Things were often canned to preserve them.  If you don't have the ability to freeze things or truck them in from 1000 km away, you need to store them for winter somehow.  Winter stored veg can often be tougher too.

[Carol in Cal.]

My grandmother had that cookbook!

My MOTHER had that cookbook.  And actually I have a copy that I got at a thrift store, for the one good and easy recipe in it and all the funny writing.  (I'm feeling so old right now.)

[Scarlett]

They say to boil broccoli and asparagus for 20 minutes. LOL That shi* would be DEAD.

 

My mother was born in the mid 50s and this is the sort of thing she did (although she bought canned and she'd boil the canned if you can imagine). She hated vegetables. No wonder why.

My mom kills vegetables too.

[mellifera33]

My favorite thing about old cookbooks is when a curry recipe for 8-10 people calls for 1/4 tsp of curry powder, "or less to taste." Now I understand why my Nana still had nearly full bottles of 50 year old spices. She offered them to me when she moved to an assisted living facility. "They're still good--spices last forever!"  :lol: I should have taken her up on her offer--the bottles were probably worth something!

[eternalsummer]

In the 1930s I'm sure we did.  I can't think of anything particular now.  I've never eaten dishes that I've heard of in books like 'boiled beef'.

 

When we lived in NZ they brought out a dish at a after-school function of some sort (I was student teaching in a high school) that basically consisted of very small hot dogs, boiled, with a side dish of not-very-sweet ketchup.  

 

In the US, we fry these little hot dog things, which we call lil' smokies, and then we cook them for a while in a sweet bbq sauce.

 

I explained this to the Kiwis and they said no wonder we were all fat.  We fry and then soak in syrup something that is perfectly good boiled.

[eternalsummer]

I wonder if it had something to do with poor dental care.  did people used to have worse teeth, or were dentures less functional?

 

I know my grandmother-in-law was never impressed by my grandfather-in-law's desire to have crunchier (steamed normally in modern terms) cooked vegetables.  He had lots of good teeth left and she did not; she liked them cooked to a mush so she could eat them easily.

[G5052]

My grandmother boiled vegetables to death and always served individual Jello salads. I actually liked her Jello more than the veggies. She called them "congealed salads." 

 

My dad's side were all vegetarians, so they knew how to cook vegetables. I grew up eating steamed vegetables, never canned but sometimes frozen. There was only one small grocery store, and they had little produce in the winter other than potatoes, carrots and such. When we went to the city, my dad would load up on vegetables and fresh whole wheat bread.

[Cosmos]

I know I had something I wanted to say, but now that I've reached the end of the thread it has vanished from my mind. Swept away by bedbugs and slimy asparagus and beets in jello. Perhaps this was not the best thread to read over breakfast. 

 

[Just Kate]

Now see I think green beans aren't terrible when cooked a long time. There are some dishes that call for it and they are good IMO. Some nice steamed green beans are good too.

 

But asparagus or broccoli?! No... This stuff is never good when cooked to death.

Agreed! My ds is a super-picky eater. He won’t eat most veggies, but he will eat my mom’s canned green beans, which are boiled forever with onion, salt, and butter. So that’s how i cook green beans! All other veggies are steamed or (preferably) roasted.

 

I actually don’t mind the beans, although dh doesn’t love them. When my kids see fresh green beans prepared (that aren’t boiled!) they are horrified - lol.

[Just Kate]

I wonder if some of the older cooking techniques for vegetables was a result of the varieties of vegetables grown and used. My mother had a large garden and, for example, I remember the green beans, i.e. ‘string beans’, being fuzzier and stringier than beans I buy now. She always home canned them, we did not eat them fresh. The processing did change the flavor but made them tender. I’m not convinced that everyone cooked the way they did because they we too dumb to know how to prepare foods ‘properly ‘.

That’s a good point! I live in WV and the popular green bean here are called Half-Runner beans. People harvest them, string them, and then often can them. They are always the first to go at the farmer’s markets in the summer. I love when my mom cooks half-runners for me (I just can’t get the quite right). And yes, they are boiled!

 

And just so you know that I do understand how veggies should taste, my other favorite vegetable is roasted Brussels Sprouts. Oh yummm....dd and I could eat a pound each of them.

Edited February 23, 2018 by Just Kate