Family Stories -Savory Succotash

Family Stories -Savory Succotash

My father would not have stew served at the table. "I ate enough stew as a child to do for the rest of my life." We were not allowed to eat canned meat. Dad was Inspector at meat in the packing plant in Edmonton. “I know what goes into that stuff!”

   Dad was a beef eater. Roast of beef on Sunday. Hash on Monday, steaks often, leg of lamb at Easter. There were capons at interval, and of course, turkey for Christmas. The turkey would have been bought fresh at the market. I remember my grandmother 'plucking the turkey'. Her hands were full of feathers. Then next the pin feathers had to be removed, one at a time. She cleaned the turkey, with her hands full of entrails.  Mary was always helping grandmother. Mary was learning what were the heart, the lungs, and the kidneys. When the turkey was carefully cleaned, grandmother rubbed the insides with salt.   When some chickens were brought alive from the market, they were executed by my father in the basement. Frank and Mary were always in attendance. Not me. We could hear the squabbles! Frank chased me once with a dead bird which had a stiff neck, and with head still on. Never again! 

We lived in the age of 'ice boxes'. It was before Refrigerators were made. The Ice Man delivered the ice. He had a special cart filled with huge blocks of ice and covered with sawdust chips. The Ice Man wore a leather shawl across his shoulders. He lifted the block with large metal prongs and swung the ice onto his back, and brought it into the kitchen and put it in the ice box. Our dog, Nancy, a big setter, hated the Ice Man. His leather shawl flapped and scared her. We had to be sure that she was tied up when the Ice Man rounded the corner of the street, and Nancy growled and barked and jumped at the door. There were no more problems when Dad threw the ice box out, and bought a refrigerator for the kitchen

   My grandmother usually boiled her Irish foods for menus, but we never shared it. It was a slab of fresh bacon with wedges of cabbage. Her 'finger food' was unknown to us. Junk food was not part of our eating.

   A treat was an ice cream cone on a hot day. A special treat was when we had visiting relatives. We would take them to Cream Parlor for a strawberry soda, or a chocolate sundae. We sat at a small round table that had wires to hold it up, and the seat had iron legs.

   The nearest we came to junk food was at Penny Candy at the corner of the street. It was a rare occasion when brother Vincent came home from college for holidays. He gave Frank and me handfuls each of pennies, and we went to the store and peered into the glass counters. They would have long strings of twisted licorice, or licorice pipes or paper sheets with candy buttons on them. Sometimes the wax had shapes filled with flavored liquid. Gum was forbidden as a rude habit. No Coca Cola, either. "Poisonous", said father.

We were allowed have Vernon ginger ales when we went to the Ottawa Exhibition in the summertime. They also provided us with the wonderful pink cotton-candy. We did not know of the potato chips or toritos or cheeses. They did not yet exist.

In winter we had popcorn at home. We filled a wire basket and let it go back and forth on to the open kitchen coal stove.

Snacks were apples. Mackintosh apples in fall season, and Spies and Russets were bought in barrels. In Christmas there was Hard Candy and Rock Candy and, of course, red and white candy canes.

Meals were rituals. It was breakfast together at the table before going to school. They came home for lunch. Dinner in the early evening was family gathering at the table. Father said the Grace. I don't remember the children taking part of the conversation, but there was talking between the adults.

Mother often made butterscotch pie for dessert. Mother made a marvelous cake: white with sticky white frosting with raisins in it. When the cake was a birthday cake it had nickels and dimes in it. No one worried about swallowing them.

Many weeks before Christmas, the Fruit cake was ritual, with grandmother in charge. She was grinding the fruit in an old hand-ground clamped at the edge of the table. Then mixed everything else and she was stirring and stirring and stirring.Plum pudding was hers too. It was boiled in cloth for many hours.

We graduated into new dishes when we had children and had our own homes "Savory Succotash"; a vegetable casserole became a must for every family dinner. Every year, at the cottage, we seemed to have something special. One another year it was a "Flan". We each bought a flan pan and had every imagine kind of fruit flan with burgher.

In Halloween we always had pumpkins-cookies and butterscotch pie. At every Christmas we had boxes of pickles and tins of cake and cookies. They came from Wilf's aunts in Little Current, Manitoulin. Then another era arrived.

In Sault Ste Marie there were many different foods from Italy, and Finland, Quebec, and many other Europeans and also Chinese.

Then you choice wines even for hamburgers. Today’s life has not all simple food, and nor has always nutrition, but interesting.