The Ago, Again

When I was a kid, there was Winter, with freezing temperatures appearing in our area in mid-September and continuing until the third week of May or so. (Not constant, of course there were warmish days and thaws and freaky hot spells.) Every house had a basement, and those basements were climate-controlled coolers. Thus you bought your bushel of apples from the orchard owner in September, and stored them in the constant coolness of the cellar. Carrots and cabbage might also have been stored there in that way. And your potatoes from your garden.

Last year, potatoes from my garden got the fridge in the garage to keep cool enough to eat as we used them up. If I buy a big bag of apples, it's likely to be in there, too, beside the carrots.

Mom did keep some carrots in her little refrigerator. We never ate cooked carrots, but if my sister and I whined for snacks, Mom could always say, "Eat a carrot." Carrots were not a staple, but an expedient.

But there was never spinach dip (or fresh spinach, for that matter) or kalamata olives; no hummus or refried beans, or chimichurri, or garlic cloves; no avocados, no sour cream, no Greek yogurt. A 16-oz jar of mayonnaise, yes, but not a big-ass jar of it like we have -- mayo was used only thinly, and mostly in macaroni salad or BLTs. I'm not certain we always had a jar of it open.

All those specialty items needed no room in Mom's little fridge.

And as my mother had no use for corned beef, she would never have bought up five packages of uncooked corned beef as I did a couple weeks ago when it was on sale for $1.88/lb. They took up a lot of room in the garage fridge. Also, from a discount store in Modesto, I buy my sandwich cheese five pounds at a time, which also takes up room. In addition, the bottom shelf of that old GE holds two flats of eggs (that would be about 4 - 5 dozen) -- I buy them cheaply from the poultry farm out the road.

Not only did Mom not cook any extra-big batches of stuff, or keep or make specialty stuff, she also didn't shop per se. She got what we needed (plus her morning ration of sweet stuff, which oddly enough, I don't do) and that was that. I, on the other hand, ran into a "Today's Special" at the store in which they were trying to get rid of legs of lamb for a jaw-dropping $3.99/lb, down from the $7.99 it was a month ago. I brought home two whoppers that about filled the garage fridge before I deboned them and froze the meat.

Today we re-filled the garage GE with a slab of spare-ribs the size of a Radio Flyer wagon, for tomorrow's dinner. And fresh corn on the cob, which was also on sale. Crazy. Mom is probably looking down from her space in the afterlife and yitching, "That's why you're all fat!" But she had no interest in food, really, and even as a spirit, likely has no understanding that those ribs will be lunch for a few days (the corn will all go) or that the brisket I trim off the top of the rib-slab will become pulled pork for sandwiches ... or tamale filling.

My guess is that by tomorrow night, we'll find enough room in the inside refrigerator for what remains of the ribs. And have some room to spare.

The Ago

My mother's kitchen, looking west.

Bernie asked me today about what kind of refrigerators our parents had when we were kids.

I know what kind his parents had, because the 72-year-old GE creature is still happily humming away in our garage. My parents had a similarly sized Frigidaire.

Both sets of parents upgraded to newer frost-free models sometime between our clueless pre-teens and unobservant teen years; Bernie's parents kept their GE (thank goodness) while my parents ditched the Frigidaire.

Today's point was that our parents made do with teensy fridges, while we have this 26-cubic-foot Samsung glitzy utter lemon bastard, and the ancient GE I tricked my mother-in-law out of, and a small chest freezer, and all of them are crowded. "How did our parents manage with such little refrigerators?" Bernie asked.

I opened our Samsung Traitor Piece of Shit (which today was not leaking condensation water all over my new tile floor) and had a peek. "Well, there are things that my mother did not store in our little Frigidaire."

Ice water. We have two gallons of purified water in the fridge, because John has kidney problems, and because not only do I loathe the taste of the hard water here in Ripon, but also the clay content constipates me. (I know, TMI. Oh well.) My mother was a great unbeliever in ice water, and considered those neighbors who kept water in their fridges to be ostentatious. We did have two ice trays, but use of them was frowned upon as a kind of weakness.

Looking at my own storage, I can see things in there my mother would never have tolerated. Top shelf: more than one jar of jelly. More than one flavor at a time would have been more than enough. No way would she have had pomegranate, grape, and strawberry. Nor would she have kept a mason jar of dog-quality chicken broth, which I do, for Howie's sake.

Meat drawer, (dropping to the bottom of the fridge) Mom would never have had cotija cheese, mozzarella cheese, pecorino romano cheese, pepperoni, quesadilla cheese, snack string cheese, summer sausage, gorgonzola cheese, a big storage container of grated cheddar cheese, a block of regular sharp cheddar cheese, a chonk of extra-kick-ass-sharp cheddar cheese (for snacking), or salami, or bologna, or packaged sliced turkey. Those things were simply not on the menu. Dad had, at times, a small wedge of cheddar cheese we'd snip at when he was drinking beer and felt munchy, but it was not used in cooking and was not a staple.

Veggie drawer? There was no such thing. Vegetables with our meals consisted of canned corn, or canned peas, or lettuce and onion salad. Maybe pickled beets. In summer, sliced cukes or tomatoes. Mom would not have had a big bag of kohlrabi scored on a store mark-down day, or asparagus, or broccoli, or mushrooms, or spinach. She did not know how to cook them, eat them, and they did not exist for us.

Leftovers? Her meals were made to be eaten on the day of the cooking, and if there were leftovers, they were eaten the next day as the next day's meal. No finicking. No discussion. There was no such thing as having to mark a container with the date to make sure it was eaten before the end of the week. Next day.

In my mother's Frigidaire there were also no:

Tabasco sauce
Steak sauce
Soy sauce
Green tabasco sauce
Blue cheese salad dressing
Ranch salad dressing
Capers
Horseradish sauce
Barbecue sauce
Shrimp cocktail sauce
Cottage cheese
Greek yogurt
Worcestershire sauce
Heavy cream

Because we lived in a small town, and the markets were within walking distance, she never stocked milk at more than a quart, butter at more than a pound, eggs at more than a dozen.

"What the hell did you eat?" Bernie asked me.

"Basic meat and potatoes meals, and leftovers."

"That's why she was so skinny when you married her," chimed Alex, butting in on the conversation as she passed through the room.

To be continued ...