Episode 15 – What We Can Learn from our Grandmothers about Food and Dining

Today we’re going to be talking about what we can learn from our grandparents and great grandparents about food and dining; our grandmothers and our mother’s past generations. I asked one of my daughters what she thinks of when she thinks of granny’s food, and she said that the food is very solid and simple whenever we go to visit. It’s meat and vegetables, and it’s not complicated and difficult. I like that. I think we can learn so much from past generations about food and about how to cook.  

There are always special things that are passed down from our moms and grandmothers. In our case, it’s things like homemade ice cream, which I’ll give you the recipe for. There’s a wonderful British fruitcake that my mom makes, a Christmas cake with the icing and all, and there are crunchies made with syrup. Good, hearty fare comes to mind.  

My mom used to have a catering company at one point for church camps and other events, she and her friend. She didn’t start off married life being a great cook, she just learned along the way, and learned so many good ways to do things. 

Also, I think in the world we live in, we’re so used to having supermarkets, restaurants, and fast food delivery. It’s easy to imagine that it’s always been this way and always will be. We’re so used to being able to buy any fruit or vegetable or meat anytime we want them. If we’re too tired to cook, it’s pretty easy to go out to eat, to order takeout, or to buy a pre-made reheatable meal.  I’m in the same boat, and I totally get it. Our lives can be rather exhausting, and I certainly don’t blame us for doing those things. They often provide a good break for us in this crazy, hectic world we live in. But sometimes I have the energy to work on improving my systems so that this happens less, and then our family ends up eating healthier food. 

So, for some good tips, I’m going to look to grandmothers and grandparents of the past, both in terms of food preparation and of what they ate. Today, we have so much knowledge about good nutrition, more than we’ve ever had in the past, but somehow in the midst of all the new information, we can forget the basic, most important and effective strategies for being healthy in our families. 

I recently asked my mom what she remembered about food as a child, and some of the things she mentioned were really interesting. Here are a couple of quotes from her email to start with:

Vegetables we ate were mostly green beans, peas that needed to be shelled and checked for worms, carrots, gem squash and potato. Potatoes were often what we called glassy, which meant they had hard, almost transparent pieces in them that never softened during cooking. Sometimes we had pumpkin, but that was often very watery when cooked. I don’t remember butternut at all, and definitely not sweet potato. I remember my mom chopping the ends off green beans and cutting them small before boiling them in water with lots of salt. If we had dinner together, she always made cucumber salad, grated cucumber with vinegar, salt and pepper. 

We also made a lot of rice that was much harder to cook than modern rice, and was often stodgy. Only white rice and no brown rice at all. Chicken was a luxury, and we ate it very seldom. There were no chicken portions, only whole birds. Pasta was pretty much unknown aside from macaroni cheese, which was considered a Sunday night dinner dish. Vegetables and fruit always came from the green grocer, of which there were many, some much cleaner than others. All fruit and vegetables were seasonal and not available year round.  The meat came from a butcher. They cut and minced everything as you ordered, nothing was pre-packed. You could buy one sausage, a small piece of steak, or a large joint if you wanted to. We had oxtail stew quite often. 

Isn’t that fascinating? No pasta. I’ve also spoken to someone recently who told me there’s not been mozzarella available in all countries other than Italy for very long. 

As well, the chicken was always whole. No chicken breasts in a pre-packed package. No pre-packed meat. You just ordered what you wanted. Oxtail was not that expensive, whereas chicken was. That’s a strange concept. 

The cucumber salad, the green beans, and the glassy potatoes are so different from what we see today. Also, avocado back then was quite hard, not nearly as easily ripe and soft as these days. 

Let’s go back to the chicken. A whole chicken that is cooked on the bone is tender and healthy, and it gives us the opportunity to eat all the parts of the chicken, even the parts that we don’t know the names of. We eat the meat off the bone, so we get lots of good collagen and gelatine. It’s so much healthier than always only eating chicken breasts, which I’m very guilty of some weeks. It’s just the easiest thing to buy chicken breasts and cook them. You don’t have to worry about the bones or throw them away afterwards. But the thing is, we do it so much that that’s basically all we eat of the chicken a lot of the time. 

So, this is just a reminder that it’s healthy to eat the whole chicken, to cook the whole chicken, even with the giblets inside, and then to use the bones for bone broth. If we’re just eating chicken breasts, there’s no skin either which is also good nutrition. Back then, they would have had a much higher nutrient level from their chicken than you can get from the chicken we eat today. 

Also, these days chickens are fed large amounts of grain, even though they’re not actually vegetarian. In those days, farm chickens were eating insects in the grass – they were definitely free range. These days, a lot of the time chickens aren’t even free range. 

So, it’s a good reminder that meat on the bone is better whatever meat it is. When it’s from the butcher, a leg of lamb or a piece of beef on the bone is so much better for us. Also, the less something is messed with, the better. For example, minced meat is great, but it’s not as good for you as cooking the meat on the bone. I also love the fact that the meat wasn’t just pre-packaged in plastic back then.  

Number two: it strikes me how meals were much simpler. There wasn’t a huge variety like what you get in supermarkets today. The meal was usually a piece of meat with salad or vegetables, and that’s all they needed. My mom says in her email: 

We never had pudding in the week. Sometimes on a Sunday night, my mom would make dessert: rice pudding, bread and butter pudding, and on special occasions, we’d have trifle or jelly and custard, but it definitely wasn’t a regular occurrence. 

Nowadays, our supermarkets are brimming with variety, and our food is far from simple. We really tend to overcomplicate things when we are making a meal, and trying to add all the things because there’s so much variety. We feel like we need to have more than one vegetable. Casseroles that can be complicated, with all kinds of dairy in them. Forget just a piece of meat and a side veg being enough. I love that. Sometimes I really want to challenge myself to just do one piece of meat and one vegetable and let that be sufficient for dinner. 

And then as for dessert, we really don’t need to have dessert except on special occasions, or perhaps on the weekend, which makes it extra special. 

Number three: the methods of cooking. My mom mentioned things like meat stew and oxtail; cooked meats on the bone. Stews are made rich in collagen and bone broth, and are often slow cooked or very slowly boiled on the stove. 

I remember my grandmother’s kitchen – one with those old pots and pans, and black and white tiled floors with this metal range. She would cook on the stove – she didn’t have the fancy crock pots or instant pot, but she always had this beautiful old pot simmering on the stove with some meat in it. There was this rich stew with the broth, and the tender meat that would fall off the bone. Often there were marrow bones in there. Sometimes it would be a soup, not a stew. But there was always this pot simmering on the stove that smelled delicious. 

This slow kind of cooking really breaks down the meat and the vegetables in the best possible way, so that we can get the most out of that meal when we eat it. 

Also, they weren’t crazy into raw vegetables and smoothies. They ate rich hearty food and they were satisfied. They also didn’t eat a huge amount of starch. Though they did eat rice or potatoes, it wasn’t like bread and rice at the same meal. It was a good, balanced amount of starch to complement the meat. Instead of a pre-packaged stock to add to the water that you buy at the supermarket, they would make their own broths from their own bones, which are always healthier. And also, because they ate less food from the supermarkets, but more from the fresh markets and from butchers, they would eat a lot less processed food than we did today, and a lot more fresh food. 

Another thing I notice when talking to parents or grandparents is that they always ate a big hearty breakfast, especially on farms. The farmer would go out into the fields at 4 or 5 a.m. and then come back at 8 a. m. for a huge hearty breakfast of sausage, bacon, eggs, and bread. That would really do them well for the rest of the morning, especially because it’s protein packed, nutritious, and hearty. It’s got lots of good stuff in it. I think that’s so important for us. We are often not able to do that these days because we’re rushing out in the mornings, and we grab something quickly, but I definitely do so much better if I have a hearty breakfast. 

Recently, we went away for a couple of nights, and we had breakfast at the restaurant in the morning after packing up our rooms. I think I haven’t enjoyed a breakfast so much for a long time. One of the most important reasons for this, as I realized afterwards, was because I was relaxed. I wasn’t in a hurry, and there was a beautiful view of trees and there were some deer and grass. Eating breakfast in that kind of context is so different. I was able to eat eggs, which I’m not always that fond of. I had an amazing eggs benedict with Hollandaise sauce, and I ate it all because I ate it slowly, and I wasn’t in a hurry. I enjoyed it so much and I felt so good the rest of the morning. Because of things that need to be done, it’s not always possible to sit down and really be relaxed, but I’m really aware of how much it does help us if we can take that time out and eat a proper breakfast.  

Number four: if I think of my grandmother, she had so many cups of tea in a day. It was always her thing to sit down with a cup of tea. I think this has multiple benefits. 

Firstly, it gives you a break many times a day. Making herself sit down, looking forward to sitting down with her cup of tea meant she could stop whatever she was doing, stop the busyness for a moment, take a breath and have some good tea. She used to have black tea with no sugar. 

I find I enjoy green tea, so I love to try to have green tea every day, and also herbal tea like peppermint tea or chamomile tea. I find that those are quite easy to have without milk or sugar because they’ve got a good flavor.  

So, secondly, I think it’s good for digestion to have some green tea about halfway between meals. Also, peppermint tea definitely helps with digestion. As well, that time of slowing down helps with digestion. So, having a few cups of tea in the day is definitely a good tip from our grandparents. 

Then number five – this is a great one: our grandparents didn’t deprive themselves. There was dessert. It may have been a healthy dessert like a rice pudding or a fruit, but they weren’t afraid of dessert. It was all part of the meal, part of the nutrition, part of the sitting down together and eating. 

Plus, there was the simplicity of flavor in their desserts; they were made from scratch, but it was dessert and it was a treat. I think this is so important as well, to add a dessert to a meal. It really nurtures family bonds, helps us appreciate food, and I think it helps to round out the meal. I know my mom said in her email that they only had desserts on special occasions, or on weekends, but even that’s fine because it’s still within the weekly cycle. I think it’s so good for the soul to have that dessert after dinner and to have that extra time together. 

So, I’ll be talking some more about what we can learn from our grandmothers in a future episode, but I hope this inspired you, and helped you feel a bit of freedom when it comes to desserts, or when it comes to having a break, to sit down and enjoy your meal and to realize the value of doing that. 

As I said at the beginning, one of the most valuable things we can learn from our grandmothers is the actual recipes. Isn’t it wonderful when you’ve got a special recipe passed down from your mom or grandparent, and it makes it extra special, as well as delicious? They’re usually very delicious.  

One of the things I mentioned was our family’s homemade ice cream. It’s the easiest thing ever. You take about half a pint of cream, and you blend it in a blender or a food processor until it starts to thicken. Be careful not to overdo it, as you don’t want to make butter. Once the cream is starting to thicken, then you add a tin of condensed milk, a pinch of salt, and a little bit of vanilla. Then you blend it again in the blender, or mix it in the food processor until it starts to thicken. And there we go! You just scrape it into a container and put it in the freezer; I usually use a glass container with a lid. It doesn’t get crystallized like ordinary ice cream does if you don’t blend it enough; it’s just perfect. It’s always creamy and rich and delicious and goes so well with any kind of pie, or with peaches from a can.

Then the British Christmas cake. I’m going to put the recipe below. This one is alcohol free – we like to do it that way, and it still tastes so good. It uses cherries and raisins. It’s an amazing fruitcake. Then we use plastic icing fondant on top, as I don’t like marzipan like they use in England. We just use  plain butter icing underneath. So, have a look for that recipe in the blog post on familyfoodformoms.com. 

Below is the recipe for the crunchies. This is kind of a South African slash British recipe. It’s made with oats, coconut, syrup or honey, and some butter. It’s completely delicious.

CRUNCHIES (COCONUT OAT BARS)