Simple Meal Planning from the Past
As I sat down to the table and began to add these simple staples to my shopping list, I found my hand pausing above the paper while memories of my mother’s kitchen flowed through me like warm breezes on a cool day.
A Pantry Short on Sugar, Tall on Fresh
Plain white vinegar and plain vegetable oil. These were in her pantry when I was a little girl, but she never kept the varieties I had come to use. 
The same with cereals; while I stocked up on granola, corn flakes, grape nuts, and even frosted flakes now and again, she kept only raisin bran to eat in the warm weather and cream of wheat to cook when the days turned cool. And Lord forbid there should be sweet snacks or drinks in her kitchen unless company was coming, while I had boxes of cookies, bags of candy bars, ice cream in the freezer, and plenty of soda pop.
Meat, poultry, and fish came fresh from the butcher and the fish market, vegetables and fruits fresh from the grocery or farm stand, and breads fresh from the bakery. Occasionally, for convenience, we’d eat frozen vegetables as well. This fresh fare meant that my mother shopped several times a week, even though she always held a full-time job.
My Mother’s Recipe for Healthy Eating
My mother’s recipe for healthy eating was both simple and rigorously applied:
- Weekday breakfast of cereal and milk (Saturday breakfast might involve eggs or pancakes, while Sunday breakfast came from the Jewish deli in town)
- Lunch of sandwich and fruit and milk, rye bread only
- Daytime snack, fruit or cheese only
- Dinner of salad with homemade Russian dressing, green vegetable, starch, meat, milk, and no dessert
- Nighttime snack (if necessary) of cereal and milk only
- No soda, no sweetened juice drinks, no cookies, cakes, candies, or ice cream (all of these were reserved for enjoying at others’ houses, for having company, or for dining out on rare occasions)
No wonder I loved going to my best friend’s house after school. Her mother always kept Hawaiian Punch and Pecan Sandies on hand. And no wonder I never gained weight until after I moved out of my mother’s house and set up my own.
Getting Back to Basics
Hand hovering over the grocery list, I snapped back into my own time, with its obscenely overstocked pantry, and began sorting out the expired, the nearly expired, the overly processed, and the sugared. I tossed some, put some aside for whoever would want it, and kept very little.
Today, although I plan meals with my mother’s principles in mind much more than I did prior to that epiphany a few years ago, I do hang on to the flavored vinegars, and I do enjoy a dessert after dinner. Who doesn’t love, and need, apple pie?
Photo by funny-p at sxc.hu
May 29th, 2009 at 7:29 pm
I loved this information, it makes me realize how important “fresh” is; and how fortunate we are to have access to so much of it. I do keep a food storage of at least 3 months of the basically pasta, rice, flour, veggies, a few meats, lots of seasonings. But, your reminder to toss out the expired makes me shiver. Perhaps a cleaning of the pantry and spice cabinet is in order? =) lovely article!!!
May 30th, 2009 at 6:43 am
Sally, in India we’re at that transition stage where packaged and frozen foods can be bought from stores and malls. Yet, the old fresh vegetable vendor is still there at the street corner, as is the butcher’s shop and a small bakery. One might even find an old fashioned flour mill at some places. Fresh foods do taste so much better. And dishes prepared from basic ingredients, taste different in every home …
The mention of apple pie makes my mouth water. Even that tastes so much better when baked at home and served with farm fresh cream than after defrosting a frozen one bought at the store … and what a delicious aroma it spreads around the place!