Eating in the 50's

[milkman]

I've never had the polk greens, but every spring, mom and I would go to the woods and pick wild greens. I remember she would look for lambs quarter, crow foot, wooly britches and narrow doc (she pronounced it nar doc) then on the way back to the house we'd pick a bunch of wild green onions. The green onions never got very big, but were really tasty, cut up and hot bacon grease poured over them. I don't think I could recognize any of the greens now, sure miss my mom. We would have fried polk stalks every spring that was similar in taste and almost as good as morel mushrooms. We would take the tender stalks of polk and strip the leaves and then peel the purple skin off. We then cut them about 4 inches long and split down the middle, soak over night in salt water. Then drain and roll in flour and fry in lard or bacon grease, real good eating.

 

[Johnny g]

When I was going to grade school(1room grade 1 -8) we would hear stories from adults about how they would eat wild leeks and get the day off school because of the foul odor, myself and a couple of others tried it and all we got was a lecture and a promise of the strap if it happened again.

 

[Leejohn]

I've heard of eating dandelion greens, but never tried them. How about sheep sorrel? When I was a kid, I made a cobbler of sheep sorrels a few times using a green grape cobbler recipe. The taste was good, but that green color wasn't very appetizing; too close to the color I saw every day when I went to milk the cow.

What, a old John Deere?

 

[2LaneCruzer]

I've never had the polk greens, but every spring, mom and I would go to the woods and pick wild greens. I remember she would look for lambs quarter, crow foot, wooly britches and narrow doc (she pronounced it nar doc) then on the way back to the house we'd pick a bunch of wild green onions. The green onions never got very big, but were really tasty, cut up and hot bacon grease poured over them. I don't think I could recognize any of the greens now, sure miss my mom. We would have fried polk stalks every spring that was similar in taste and almost as good as morel mushrooms. We would take the tender stalks of polk and strip the leaves and then peel the purple skin off. We then cut them about 4 inches long and split down the middle, soak over night in salt water. Then drain and roll in flour and fry in lard or bacon grease, real good eating.

You take a K and an E an N and a T a U and a CKY that spells Kentucky, and it means Paradise!!!!!

 

[Looking4new]

My Grandma used to make from scratch chocolate cake complete with chocolate icing. IF the cake lasted a couple of days it would dry out a bit and I would pour dark maple syrup on it. T'was real good. My Dad tried it and although he thought it was real good his mother (my Grandma) gave him a bawling out like I never heard before. It was okay for me to put syrup on her cake, BUT not him.

 

[TomSeller]

Anyone else harvest wild dandelion? My mother and grand mother always fixed it with a hot bacon dressing....it gets tough and bitter after it starts to bloom

My mom made wine out of it once.

 

[kevin37b]

Did you people ever do fondue ? The pot of oil with a can of sterno for heat . You put your steak , pork , sliced tater , etc on a fork and dropped it in the grease . I loved it and it was fun . Nothing like a quart of hot grease sitting in the middle of the table . It was a good way to get family and friends talking about how fine a cook they were .

 

[2LaneCruzer]

Did you people ever do fondue ? The pot of oil with a can of sterno for heat . You put your steak , pork , sliced tater , etc on a fork and dropped it in the grease . I loved it and it was fun . Nothing like a quart of hot grease sitting in the middle of the table . It was a good way to get family and friends talking about how fine a cook they were .

Nope, never did anything that fancy. With the advent of Aluminum foil, though, my Mom used to make "Hobo Dinners" for us kids. She would take a hamburger patty, a couple carrots, a couple taters, maybe a chunk of celery, some butter and salt and pepper, wrap it up in Aluminum foil and pop it in the oven. Us kids thought they were great!

 

[Bird]

We did the fondue thing a lot from '71 to the late '70s; still have some of the fondue forks, but can't recall having fondue now in many years.

Another thing that we did a lot in the '60s and '70s was cut round steak in strips, marinate it just in soy sauce, then cooked it on a cast iron hibachi grill. Pretty good eating with a salad and hot rolls to go with it.

 

[check]

Yes! Fondue at the Grizzly House in Banff, Alberta (90 minutes West of Calgary). We used to go there all the time in the 70s. Check out the current menu:

https://www.enjoybanff.com/menus/Grizzly_Menu.pdf