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JIM WARREN

Foods of Yesteryear

3/27/2020

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When one looks at today's foods, the ethnic cooking, the diet food, the cosmopolitan choices of ingredients available, the prepared foods and restaurant meals, the food stuffs of yesteryear are frequently forgotten!  The things we ate during the thirties and forties : pioneer food, and poor person's foodstuffs are of some interest, particularly to me. I have tried some of these recipes to take a fresh look at what we ate in those days.
      Raisin Pie was at least as common as apple pie in those days when I was a kid. No one eats raisin pie today but I was reminded how good it tasted when I made one and experienced a certain reminder of days gone by. It wouldn"t  put any more pounds on than Shoofly  Pie which Joan and I tried only once. When all you had for ingredients was brown sugar and molasses then that's what you used. We tried Apple Pan Dowdy with the Shoofly . They were both a disappointment  but they were not part of our history.
        I tried Irish Soda Bread and to give it authenticity, cooked  it in the fireplace on a grate over woodcoals since I didn't have chunks of peat. It wasn't bad for a bread without yeast or peat. Just  a bit labour intensive. I never tried Colcannon till I grew gobs of Kale one year so tried it mixed just with potatoes. It was delicious.
        My mother made Mock Apple Pie a few times during the war, with soda crackers, lemon juice and sugar  as a substitute for apples. Apples were in short supply. That's why crackers, lemon juice and raisins instead. Mock Apple Pie is a poor substitute for apple pie but it was surprisingly deceptive when I made it from her old recipe. If we were still hungry after supper my mother said we could have bread and milk laced with sugar. I tried it the other day. It was filling.
          I had never eaten Brewis 'til we went to Nova Scotia and I ordered in a restaurant. We don't have salt cod here on the wet coast and available but Brewis isn't too bad at all and fits in with food of yesteryear for sure. The food available today is only a reflection of the preponderance of ingredients. If you can mix twenty ingredients together it will be fit for the gourmet to speak  about.
          I
        


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