Do you think the meals we cook today are different to years ago?

[Pichet]

Hello everyone! Yesterday there was a big gathering of family in my granny's house to celebrate one of my cousins graduation.

My granny cooked up a feast and I was surprised and actually a little apprehensive that she had cooked tongue!! I had never tried it before! It was actually really nice but it made me wonder how much have the meals we all cook today changed over the years?

Do you think there has been a certain type of cooking, perhaps more health conscious in the last few years?

 

[CWS4322]

My paternal grandmother was dismayed that people made cakes from a mix. She wasn't a good cook--but she did make a mean Angel food cake from scratch.

 

[Andy M.]

Yes. Depending on what you mean by 'the last few years'. Food preferences change constantly. More convenience foods, more diet foods, more organic and 'free range' foods.

Not to mention all the changes to the basic foods we eat. Pork is leaner, milk is homogenized, tomatoes are bred for durability rather than flavor.

 

[GLC]

How many years past? Well, it hasn't been that long that groceries carried the variety they do today. Prior to the 1980's, you wouldn't find many "ethnic" items, unless you actually lived and shopped where that ethnicity was common. I think the results of any comparison between now and a a few decades earlier goes both ways. I remember well when "TV dinners" became common as the only heat and serve home meal, other than individual dishes like canned stew or hash. Certainly, there were no frozen family. meals, nor any bags of frozen chicken breast and the like. Fish sticks was about it. And you could buy canned tomato paste, sauce, or whole, unflavored. No paste with basil, diced, diced with peppers, sauce with Italian herbs, etc. No exotic salad dressings. Maybe no salad dressings at all. Bread was white loaf.

The point is that people cooked what they knew how to concoct from ingredients. A recipe could not say to add a can of so-and-so that already had the flavors in it. And cookbooks, while popular, tended to all be very "white bread." Ethnic and specialized cookbooks were uncommon. So meals tended to be generic "American" or could be the ethnic meals mama learned from grandma. In Texas, especially the west, and I'm sure in other cattle country, the generation was still around to whom breakfast, lunch, and dinner featured beefsteak, salad was ridiculous, and toast was for babies and the ill. And while not strictly food, coffee came from percolators or not at all. Drip-O-Lators were to be had, but weren't common most places.

Remember that when Julia Child first published, it wasn't just a matter of teaching proper French cooking. It was a matter of introducing American wives (pretty much only wives cooked, except over charcoal) that there was more than steak and potatoes and tuna sandwiches. Cooking would not be recognized as a "hobby" or something you studied and continually worked to expend horizons. Some people did, obviously, but not many. So, in those years, people cooked more but more conservatively. The norm was that the family sat down at every meal at the dining table to a full mean prepared by the mother, often according to an established schedule of which meal would appear which night. The TV dinner has a lot to answer for. The TV dinner spawned the TV tray table and spelled the end of table dinner. More mothers began working outside the home and were tired at the end of the day.

Today really represents both an arising of much better cooking by much better and more versatile home cooks. And they have it very good, in terms of ingredients and equipment being available. But it also find many more people who never cook or who never do more than open a bag of frozen meat balls and pasta and stick it in the microwave.

 

[Siegal]

I think it depends on your community. All my grandparents (great grandparents, great-great grandparents, aunts, etc) lived in Queens in the same few blocks so they all ate the same food. But when you start marrying out of the community I think the food changes. Like my mother tells me my great grandmother still made all the old food (cholent, kasha varnishkes, brisket, chopped liver, knishes, matzoh ball soup, fried fish in the morning, appetizing on sundays, etc). I don't really remember it that much because she was old and stopped cooking much when I was a kid. But like my father moved out to long island as a kid and started eating all the goyesha/Italian food (mayonnaise, white bread, lasagna,) and now my husband didn't even grow up in this country and the thought of appetizing makes him want to vomit and he says no kishka in the cholent because his family doesn't make it that way (the best part!). So I think by the time my daughter learns to cook from me she will have lost the taste for all the "old food" because it has been watered down so much by preferences from my husband, and my parents (who taught me). But thats just my take on it.

P.S. I make tongue all the time! so yummy and I am still in my 20's. My grandmother's never made it b/c it was available at the deli all the time but not anymore...

 

[Steve Kroll]

Meals today are vastly different than they were even 10 or 20 years ago.

Just think about the variety of fruits and vegetables we have available today. Just to name one example, growing up, I had only seen artichokes in photos. The first time I was ever able to buy one in my area was somewhere around the early 90's. Now they are commonplace and you would be hard pressed to find a produce section that doesn't have artichokes.

...more organic and 'free range' foods.

It's funny that we often think of this as something new. I tend to think of the organic and free range movements as getting back to a simpler time. After all, almost all food 100 years ago would've been free range and/or organic. Industrial agriculture and the "green revolution" is a relatively recent development.

 

[CWS4322]

Meals today are vastly different than they were even 10 or 20 years ago.

Just think about the variety of fruits and vegetables we have available today. Just to name one example, growing up, I had only seen artichokes in photos. The first time I was ever able to buy one in my area was somewhere around the early 90's. Now they are commonplace and you would be hard pressed to find a produce section that doesn't have artichokes.


It's funny that we often think of this as something new. I tend to think of the organic and free range movements as getting back to a simpler time. After all, almost all food 100 years ago would've been free range and/or organic. Industrial agriculture and the "green revolution" is a relatively recent development.

Growing up in Northern MN, I only saw artichokes in a jar--my parents would go to CA and bring them back...and the FRESH eggs from my chickens are free range...my maternal grandmother had chickens, but we didn't!

 

[bakechef]

For me "modern recipes" seem to fall into two categories, gourmet/heavily ethnic with lots of ingredients, or "component" recipes that are just combining of pre-made components.

I don't like component recipes because I'm not a fan of processed foods, but I also don't like spending a fortune on gourmet recipes. I like to take component recipes and try making them from scratch.

My grandmother's food was amazingly simple and resourceful, born of much leaner times. I wish that I had been old enough to learn her cooking style while she was still doing it, but by the time I was old enough to cook, she really couldn't cook large meals anymore.

 

[PrincessFiona60]

"Component Recipes," I like that. It was how I learned to cook growing up. Once I learned how to deconstruct and reconstruct my own recipes I was able to branch out and change component recipes to full recipes. A lot of my cooking starts with creating a roux to make something that would come out of a can, i.e. mushroom soup.

 

[CWS4322]

I've got a component loaf of bread in the oven right now...

 

[danbuter]

I used to eat haluski growing up but I don't see it anymore unless I go home:

 

[buckytom]

i would think a meal cooked years ago would have gone bad by now, so there's no comparison...

 

[Andy M.]

i would think a meal cooked years ago would have gone bad by now, so there's no comparison...

Yeah, but some of the meals cooked today are bad too so they really are the same!

 

[buckytom]

lol, point taken.

 

[babetoo]

i would think a meal cooked years ago would have gone bad by now, so there's no comparison...

 

[Claire]

Very, and I do mean VERY. My mom was ahead of her time in the nutrition department; we always had green vegs and salads (yeah, both), and starches were starches (in other words, she considered corn and peas to be starches, not in the same category as non-starchy vegs). Because we were military, Mom learned to cook from "war brides" and we lived overseas, so our diet had more ethnic foods than most in the 60s. Many of Mom's friends were Japanese, French, and German, and she adopted and adapted to varying sources of food and ways to use them over 26 years of moving hither and yon.

That said, now I can go to the grocery store and buy things like bags of baby mixed greens (any time of the year), two or three types of fresh mushrooms and a few dried. I can buy many kinds of pasta, both US and imported, in more shapes than Mom could have imagined. Even in a ten-year period, when I first moved to Galena (small midwestern town, pop 3000, 3 hours from Chicago, and I don't mean 3 hours of suburbs, I mean 3 hours of farms), I could only buy long grain generic rice, Uncle Ben's, Rice-a-Roni, and Minute Rice. Now I can buy, in the same store, Jasmine, Basmati, rice specifically for risotto, Mexican short grain rice, and more. This is a huge difference in a small town grocery store. I'm just using the rice as an example of how much the grocery availability in small-town midwest has changed in the past ten years. From my childhood, it is an amazing leap. And, as I've said, we were ahead of most people who didn't live in metropolitan, cosmopolitan areas.

 

[GLC]

The next big change in mainstream grocery stores will be the increasing stocking of truly local products. My local chain has kind of an advertising advantage over stores in some other states. They have an ad series running touting their local producers. By local, they mean in-state. Texas, being so large and having such a range of environments, means a lot of what they're not bragging on is exactly where they were sourcing their stuff before and always have been. Grant you, they make some effort to stock good product, and that naturally tends to mean as local as possible. But they are also beginning to stock a very few truly local produce items. Heirloom tomatoes and such.

As small growing operations revive, I suspect they will be able to stock much more local produce. It would right now be a problem for them to try to do too much from within 50 miles of the stores. It takes a fairly large local grower to keep three or four large stores stocked with one item. But growers of that critical size are cropping up more and more. I fully expect smart grocers to install "Farmers Market" sections with local grower sources named in their produce departments, alongside the produce depot stuff. The way small local produce direct markets are proliferating and being patronized, the large groceries will want to bring those customers into the store.

I'm very optimistic, because there are both people thinking more about their food and people to supply them who appreciate the satisfactions of growing more than high salaries at the ends of commutes. With the rapid growth of interest in cooking, it feels like quite something special on the way that we've never seen before, the combination of global specialties and local raw material and consumers to do something with it. Not just individuals, either. Here's a great article about some things happening in South Carolina. Good place for it. They're home to a pretty good range of heirloom products and chefs who are determined to use them.

Southern Farmers Vanquish the Clichés

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/12/28/dining/southern-farmers-vanquish-the-cliches.html?_r=1&hpw

 

[Claire]

I agree that it is our biggest failure in our community. We have two grocery stores; a Piggly-Wiggly and a Wal-Mart. Drive for a half hour west and Dubuque has some more, but not really much different. Our little community does have a farmers' market, but it rarely has anything I don't grow in my (very small, very limited) garden.

Since the grocery stores are part of larger chains, there is almost no local produce available. Even when local stuff is great, it is hard to find it. I can "do" my own tomatoes and lettuce. But it seems strange to buy asparagus from some other country when I know it is grown locally (I can occasionally find a friend of a friend and buy some locally)and during the season. SOme years I can get morels, some not. But, in fact, our local farmers' market is more geared to those who do canning & preserves. Nothing wrong with that.

I definitely do NOT believe in ONLY buying "locally in-season". Nice fantasy, if you never want to eat lettuce, tomato, etc, in the winter above the frost line. But when it is good, and it is near-by, why can't it be in the local stores?

Now that I've been here ten years, I have a source for lots of this stuff, and I'm happy for it. But ten years?

 

[Pichet]

I read an article today that said cooking habits are changing as a result of changing lifestyles. It says that while there is an increase in people cooking from scratch that now normally includes combining both raw materials and pre-prepared ingredients? Would you agree?

 

[GLC]

I definitely do NOT believe in ONLY buying "locally in-season". Nice fantasy, if you never want to eat lettuce, tomato, etc, in the winter above the frost line. But when it is good, and it is near-by, why can't it be in the local stores?

Multiple possible reasons. One is that a grocer needs a regular and reliable supply at a wholesale price. Local or afar doesn't change that. So, if they are to keep, for instance, local tomatoes in season as their primary tomato line, they need a supplies that can provide enough quantity, as often as needed. That means a competent grower, not an amateur who may or may not have a reliable crop. And it means that the local grower has to have a large enough and efficient enough operation to sell at grocer wholesale, not farmers market retail.

Another is that it takes more effort to buy locally. Standard produce is had from large wholesalers who supply most everything from everywhere with one point of contact. Local buying requires more calls and contacts to accomplish and more chances that something will happen, like the local guy gets sick, so no cucumbers that week. Grocers can't work like that. And the grower may well have to be able to present an invoice and wait for corporate to pay, just like any business grower.

Be clear. When we say "local produce," we don't mean the products of a bunch of backyard farmers or part-time country gardeners. We mean serious, professional local growers of substance and expertise. It's not just lack of stores selling local - it's lack of local farmers. It may be in season, but is there a large local grower of that vegetable so it can be had in commercial quantities in season?

My local chain is at least trying. They buy as locally as possible. I may be 200 miles away, but it's still in-state, and there's nothing closer. They also, to their everlasting credit, have small displays of things like heirloom tomatoes in season, grown locally, like within 20 miles of the store. I suspect they lose money on them from spoilage, but they're trying. So desire on the part of the sore has to be there, too. Since they're usually large corporate chains, it has to start in the corporate office with at least giving the produce managers authority to buy local goods when they can.

And stores are sensitive to customers. Ask the produce manager where things come from. Ask if they can't be had closer to home. If not, why not? Who at corporate decides? How many other customers can you get to ask the same questions? It's not produce, but a while back, my chain changes fresh tuna suppliers, and the result was a serious drop in quality. Enough people demanded answers that we're not back on the old supplier at the same good quality. It was strictly negative customer comment going back up the line through the seafood manager.