What's for Dinner?

Have you been wondering what we're eating around here?  (Apart from my little cheat with the salad the other day.)

Yes, for the most part, we are eating meals from the 19th century.  Apart from the chocolate chip cookies Hailey made last week, we haven't seen chocolate all month.  Or tacos.  Or eggrolls.  Or pizza.

Here are some of our dinner menus:
Corned beef, potatoes, cabbage, carrots, onions
Baked beans, cornbread
Fried chicken, mashed potatoes, green beans
Beef stew, biscuits
Bacon, scrambled eggs, toast
Chicken pot pie
Steak, curried rice with carrots, celery, peas
Macaroni & cheese, ham, green beans
Welsh rarebit, toast, bacon, tomatoes

It's very different from our normal bill of fare, where we eat vegetarian about half of the time.  All this meat is foreign, and while my family mostly enjoys it, I was pretty skeptical about eating so much heavy food for a whole month.

But it hasn't been that bad.   It might be that more physical work makes this a better diet for us, or that we're just accepting it as part of the 19th century, or maybe we're just so excited that we can cook successfully that we don't care!  I'm not even gaining weight, which I was afraid would happen.  I think it's because The Corset limits my appetite.  I've even had to make myself eat more a few times.  And it turns out that you can live comfortably, even happily, on fewer vegetables.  Who knew?

This is a picture of my groceries for this week:

It's nearly all meat - chicken, pork chops, and bacon.  Always bacon.  Bacon is the solution to anything lacking flavor.   I also bought onions (because our garden onions are just too small), peaches, beef broth and buttermilk for baking.  That's it, for a family of five, $74.  I'm not sure if it will last us the whole week, but it should do for most of it.

We are also eating vegetables from our garden - zucchini, carrots, chard, green beans, tomatoes, potatoes and broccoli.  (Except that over a candlelit dinner the other night someone discovered several critters in the broccoli, so now no one will eat that.  It's hard to be as careful when there's so little light to cook by.)  Besides the meat and vegis, we have rice, cornmeal, and flour for various baked goods.  Our neighbor has been supplying us with fresh eggs, (thanks Bill!), and Karl milks the convenience store cow periodically.  We're baking up a storm around here - cookies, pies, bread, biscuits, etc.  I'm not much of a baker, but Karl and the girls are terrific.  (I made a deal with the kids, that in exchange for participating without complaint in this project, we'd have dessert every day.)

My trip to the grocery store yesterday revealed how great are the differences are between our modern lives, and those of people who lived only 100 years ago.  As Abigail, I walked through the whole store looking for things I could feed my family.  First the deli counter, with lots of pre-made foods.  I can't have any of those, although I may have heard of some of them - soups, sandwiches, chicken pieces.  But many others are  completely unfamiliar, such as the dips and salsa.  Did you know that tomatoes were thought to be poisonous until Thomas Jefferson began raising them?  They are more tart in the 19th century, so are often eaten with sugar, and perhaps cream.

A counter full of Chinese food and sushi.  Never heard of 'em.

The produce section.  Although many of these foods are totally unfamiliar to me, like bananas, mango and avocado, this part of the store looks the most like home in the 1800's.  However, most of the varieties of fruits and vegetables available here are different ones from my day.  Modern produce varieties are usually chosen for their ability to survive shipping long distances - a trait that seems very peculiar to me, given that y'all plan to eat them!  What happened to flavor?  Some modern seed companies and individuals are beginning to revive heirloom plant varieties before they die out altogether.  Hurrah!  (Search "heirloom vegetables" for more info.)

I walk right by the aisle containing cereal.  Ready-to-eat cereals were invented in the last quarter of the 19th century for patients at a health sanitorium.  However, it costs too much for my 1800's farm wife budget. 

We have some canned foods, mostly vegetables and seafood, such as salmon and clams.  The Borden company began selling canned milk in 1857, and prospered during the Civil War selling milk to the Union Army, and other canned foods followed.  But most of the aisles are off my map.  Cleaning products and medicines are replaced with vinegar, baking soda and common sense.  Snack food?  Utterly foreign.  In the meat section, I actually feel at home, but frozen foods are again impossible.  Very little in the modern grocery store is available to me as Abigail.  A small corner market selling staples, meat, eggs and fresh produce would be a luxury, and everything else, a science fiction tale!

Meals in the 1800's are very different from today, and are frankly quite unappealing to modern tastes, so used to spices, variety and a heavy ethnic influence.   Check out this recipe for "Housewife's Beef" from Godey's Lady's Book, a popular magazine, 1865: 

"Take about twenty rather small onions, brown them in a frying pan with a little butter, and when they have taken a bright color, sprinkle over them a little flour or some breadcrumbs.  Remove the onions to a stewpan, taking care not to break them.  Add a teacup of broth, the piece of beef whole, a sufficient seasoning of salt, pepper, and nutmeg, and a bouquet of sweet herbs.  Let the whole simmer over a slow fire for about two hours.  Serve the beef on a dish and arrange the onions round it."  (From Civil War Recipes, by Lily May Spaulding and John Spaulding, editors.)

Not too bad, except that all the recipes look the same.  And folks ate this way until very recently.  My mother-in-law, who is of German heritage and grew up in the midwest, shared with us a week of meals she cooked as a teen when her mother was away for a week:

Tongue:  Brown onions, add flour, tongue broth, 1 T lemon juice and serve.

Goulash: Cut beef chuck in small squares, brown and add water as needed.  Add 1/2 c. tomato sauce, a teaspoon of paprika.  Cook slowly for 1 1/2 hours.

Pfeffer Pfleisch (Pepper meat): Cut veal in small squares.  Brown and add water as needed, salt & pepper.  Simmer for 1 1/2 hours.

Veal Stew: Simmer onions, add flour, 1 1/2 quarts water and veal squares.  Cook for 1 hour.  Add vegetables and cook for 1/2 hour.

Swiss Steak: Flour beef chuck and brown.  Add onions and ketchup.  Cook.

And so on.  Beef every night, and seasonings were limited to salt, pepper, onion, tomato, and paprika.  By the way, did you know that there were many, many varieties of ketchup in the 19th century, using many different seasonings?   How about mushroom ketchup?

Something has occurred to me about the differences in our diet.  Although I know that many Americans are overweight, even severely overweight, due to the fat, sodium, etc. in convenience foods, I also think the sheer variety and excitement in our food causes us to overeat.  There is always something new to try.  Look how many television shows, blogs and magazines there are devoted to cooking!  We are a nation obsessed with food, and with abundance.  I think that eating a 19th century diet keeps food in balance.  We still enjoy it, but we don't think about it as much.  We've been using The Little House Cookbook as a resource.  Laura Ingalls Wilder writes very fondly about food, but it's from a sense of gratitude for simply having it available.  She gets excited about bean broth and apples!  I hope I never starve through a Long Winter, but I think there's something to be said for keeping a healthier perspective about our need to eat.  

That said, I intend to spend October catching up on tacos, eggrolls and Vietnamese pho!!

Autumn