O.T. Old Timer's Food.

Yvsa

Yvsa

Joined
May 18, 1999
Messages
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At my urging Barb planted a small patch of leaf lettuce this year so we could have some early spring greens.
The other day she came in with a handful she had picked with the thought of fixing us a couple of sandwiches with it.

I talked her into wilting it.:D Wilted lettuce is an Old Time Salad that predates salad dressings as we know them today.
It is made by frying up a batch of bacon really crisp, draining it and then crumbleing it into fine pieces.
Then the bacon grease is mixed with a bit of vinegar and heated up hot and poured over the fresh lettuce, preferably with green onions chopped up in it and salt and fresh ground pepper. Instant wilt and some of the best salad greens you ever lopped a lip over!
Since then we have bought several bunches of leaf lettuce and green onions so we could have even more.
I'm still not tired of it.:D
This is a food from my childhood that I remember with great fondness and always think of my mom making the first mess of it every year.
A mess was a generous amount of freshly prepared food generally fresh picked from the garden or in some cases wild along the tree line or in the uncultivated fields.
When you make a mess of Wilted Lettuce you need to use a lot more than you think you will because wilted means reduction in volume. Barb and me can eat a fairly large head of it along with the rest of what we may be having but YMMV.;)

Other Old Timey foods like slow simmered Beans and Fried Potatos, Whole Pickled Beets, Red Eye Gravy with hotcakes and Ham, Poke Salat, Green Beans and New Potatos are a few that are still my favorites even if I don't get to have a couple of them anymore.
I'm hungry if you can't tell and Barb is just starting supper.:D ;)

What's some of your Old Timey favorites?
 
Yum!

yeah, wilted poke salat

beans & cornbread (coarse yellow, not the white stuff)

fried green tomatoes

vegetable roast(pressure cooker) meat

chicken simmered with biscuit-dumplings
 
Dean...I get the same result with popping the meat into a slow cooker...great stuff and a lot safer!
 
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Darn, Yvsa, you've made me hungry. I love wilted spinach and such.Your recipe will definitely be put to use, thanks. I'm a meat and potatoes guy.
My mom used to make the best swiss steak and mash potatoes. I had kind of forgotten it till you brought food from your childhood up. Thanks again
Regards,
Greg
 
My mum does a variant on Yvsa's recipe with Spinach instead of lettuce. Yum!

How about lentils? I love those things, cooked plain or spicy India style.

Green pea soup?

My dad also taught me the ways of the peanut butter and banana sandwich.

How about potato pancakes?

My wife makes a dish called sausage, green beans, and potatoes, like Yvsa's green beans and potato recipe plus kielbasa.

I've also been eatin a lot of soul food here in the city.

Keith
 
Ripper...my Mom did swiss steak and mashed potatoes too. I think it probably came from the back of a Campbell's soup can. :-)
 
Rice and beans ( red beans and rice, black beans and rice, dirty rice ) made with bacon or sausage and chicken livers,
Ham hocks and lima beans,
Mashed potatos and gravy,

and Cornbread. NO sugar added. With butter. After 3 or 4 pieces some beans if I have any room left for them.

Bunch of other stuff too, but cornbread is in first place. For now.
 
Hamhocks and limas, chicken and dumplings, cornbread, black-eyed peas, scrapple and eggs for breakfast--mmmmm.... thank God I'm cooking dinner right now; I'm starving! :D
--Josh
 
Yvsa I talked her into wilting it.:D Wilted lettuce is an Old Time Salad that predates salad dressings as we know them today. It is made by frying up a batch of bacon really crisp said:
Heck, I do that whenever I can find enough nice dandelion greens in the yard, just toss the parts that are only stems. If you do get tired of the concoction, put some garlic in the oil first to flavor it (remove the garlic when it browns) then mix resulting wilted greens (squeezed dry) with bit of cheese (or well-drained sour cream, or genuine sour-tasting yogut if salt is an issue), maybe a few bits of good olives, and bake it in a pie. You can turn just about any green stuff into a tasty dish this way. Thicker toughert stuff like collard needes to be steamed or briefly boiled first--doesn't wilt and exude the water that well on it's own. A well beaten egg and a bit of baking powder don't hurt either.

As for other dishes, it's hard to beat any long slow-cooked stew that started out about half onions.

Should take just about as long to get tired of that.
Click to expand...
 
When I was kid my Dad was sick and out of work for almost two years, but we luckily had a couple of tons of stored hard red winter wheat and a lot of dehydrated and canned foods put up, so were prepared after a fashion.

We didn't have much variety, and nothing like real desserts, but what we did have was my Mom's wheat bread. First we would grind up the wheat kernels to make the flour with a hand grinder. She would make 6 or 8 loaves, with a plan of freezing about half of it, and I can remember sitting all day watching the bread rise in the pans, before she baked it. The wheat bread would come out and we were all over it while it was still hot and she would cut thick slabs, cover them lightly with butter, and then pour honey all over same. That bread & butter & honey was the single most delicious thing I have ever eaten in my life. It was washed down with some pretty tasteless powdered milk, but nothing could take away from the taste or the experience.

For school I'd get two thick slabs with peanut butter, and always got a nickel for a pint of milk. It was a simple lunch but damn good. The other kids always seemed to have fancier lunches, but none of them tasted better I'm sure, and I remember thinking we were real rich folks to have bread like that! :)

Regards,

Norm
 
Svashtar said:
That bread & butter & honey was the single most delicious thing I have ever eaten in my life.
Click to expand...
O my, Yes.

With bits of the comb wax still in the honey.


& that makes me remember my grandmothers biscuits
with either honey or a slice of the cookedham
left on the stove for snacks all day.
 
I remember thinking we were real rich folks to have bread like that!


You were, and are, rich. You had the bread, and now, the memories.

I have vague recollections of raisin bread sitting on the radiator? waiting to rise, then the scent of it filling the house as it baked. We got huge slices when it was ready, with butter filling every empty space, and crust so thick* it could withstand gun-fire.


(*Irish cook, remember? There's a reason there are no Irish restaurants. :) )


Kis
 
Yea, the Old Timey food was/is often thought of being poor people's food but I'm with Kis on this one too.
Too me there's nothing quite as good as a huge pot of pinto beans slow cooked all day long and then crispy/soft fried taters to go along with 'em at supper time. Good fresh homemade bread or cornbread is just iceing on the cake so to speak.:D
Add a glass of fresh ice cold whole milk and it's a meal fit fer a king!:D :cool: :D

It's early enough for the beans to be done in a reasonable time for supper right now. Think I'll see if I can talk Barb into putting a big pot of them on.
Besides, the smell of beans cooking is outta this world in itself!:D

Hot Damn! Barb's gonna do it! Better go check the Beano supply.:rolleyes: :o :eek: ;) :D
 
MMMMMMM!!!! Man I am hungry NOW :D

Thanks for posting this Edutsi! Had a rough couple a days and needed some light hearted reading.

I know this doesn't qualify, but soft shell Maine lobster with real melted butter eaten by the ocean with an ICE cold beer ain't too shabby neither! Throw in some pretty girls and good music played by friends and well it doesn't get much better!
 
Deer meat stew with whatever veggies are in season...or taters and such that store well in the cold cellar.

Good stuff!

In particular, My Grandmother ("Ma")used to make Quince jelly for me, sealed up with wax on top. No one else in the family liked it except for my Grandfather ("Pa") and I...

Nowadays, seems like few folks even know what a Quince is...
 
Forgot to mention frybread. Can't think offhand what the Hunkies called it, but used to rub a fresh peeled clove of garlic over it while still hot from the fryer.

The Mexican version is call sopapillas ( sofa pillows ) and may be made as bread or with some sugar added and served with jam as desert. And of course there's the NDN version, used to make indian tacos out west.

If you want to get me ranting, try and make me eat at a French haute cuisine restaurant. But give me French country inn style food, or Hungarian country inn style, almost any ethnic style serving their type of peasant food, and I'll go before the firing squad contentedly, soon as I can move, that is.
 
Rusty - You'll have to come to a Khonvention at my place...there's a restaurant near my house called "The Amber Rose". Nothing but Hungarian, Latvian, etc food. It's like visiting my Grandmother's kitchen!
 
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