What's old is new again....
Feb. 4th, 2012 04:31 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
susan8020Reading others' Carnival posts, I see a lot of mentions of cooking a big pot of something, enough for several days' meals ... then proceeding to eat it all in the same week, without having to package and freeze it.
That's country style!
That's what my mother and grandmother did on the ranch. One day they'd cook a kettle of black eyed peas with salt pork, which would sit on the back of the stove and be heated up every night till we used it up. No bother with freezing or even trying to fit it into the fridge. Another day a roast or pot of chicken dumplings* that lasted several days, overlapping the kettle of peas. Another day a pie or a pan of cornbread.
So there was only one major cooking project per day, or none.** On a night of fried pork chops or fish, all the vegetables and the bread and dessert were already there from previous days.
Also, except on days with fried stuff, there was no time pressure. Whoever came in from the field, dipped something out of the kettle and cut themself a piece of the cornbread and then of the pie. When there was fried stuff, it didn't go in the skillet till everyone was at the table.
When I got married and became a housewife in an apartment with little to do except fancy cooking, I made a fresh interesting meal every night, one night at a time. Big pot low stress cooking was for DULL food....
Even now, pulling together a scratch meal of wine, cheese, crackers, cold meat, already made soup, etc -- feels like cheating.
*Meat dishes and gravy eventually went in the fridge, but got eaten too soon to need the freezer.
** Of course holidays and company evenings and Sunday dinner were different. But even so, a big country meal had a lot of ageless stuff made in advance, sometimes way in advance.... Pickles, ham, cake....
That's country style!
That's what my mother and grandmother did on the ranch. One day they'd cook a kettle of black eyed peas with salt pork, which would sit on the back of the stove and be heated up every night till we used it up. No bother with freezing or even trying to fit it into the fridge. Another day a roast or pot of chicken dumplings* that lasted several days, overlapping the kettle of peas. Another day a pie or a pan of cornbread.
So there was only one major cooking project per day, or none.** On a night of fried pork chops or fish, all the vegetables and the bread and dessert were already there from previous days.
Also, except on days with fried stuff, there was no time pressure. Whoever came in from the field, dipped something out of the kettle and cut themself a piece of the cornbread and then of the pie. When there was fried stuff, it didn't go in the skillet till everyone was at the table.
When I got married and became a housewife in an apartment with little to do except fancy cooking, I made a fresh interesting meal every night, one night at a time. Big pot low stress cooking was for DULL food....
Even now, pulling together a scratch meal of wine, cheese, crackers, cold meat, already made soup, etc -- feels like cheating.
*Meat dishes and gravy eventually went in the fridge, but got eaten too soon to need the freezer.
** Of course holidays and company evenings and Sunday dinner were different. But even so, a big country meal had a lot of ageless stuff made in advance, sometimes way in advance.... Pickles, ham, cake....
