Family dinner time was an every day happening in our family but this may be the only snapshot of us sitting together around the dinner table. It appears that Dad took our picture, thus preserving the moment that we took for granted at the time. Looking at this photo now, 52 years later, I am feeling rather old! Mom was in her 30s and we were the little kids.
We ate simple food, mostly meat, potatoes and gravy. Mom was really good at making hamburger meat patties & frying them up fast then making milk gravy in the pan. Mom bottled fruit every summer & we drank raw cows milk. We weren't familiar with exotic vegetables such as broccoli and cauliflower or green peppers, we ate regular vegetables such as corn and green beans that were easy to grow out on the farm. Mom and Dad weren't gardeners, they were farmers.
Mom made lumpy whole wheat mush for breakfast, I still don't like lumps in my mush. Can you see a 2 quart jar sitting there on the table with a little milk left in the bottom? It reminds me that Mom hated spilt milk. She hated the mess! Even if we almost spilled our milk we were in trouble. Mom learned to cook when she was a teenager cooking for her brothers and father on their dry farm in Pocatello Valley, Idaho every summer. She learned to cook "Poke Style" where the food was served on the table in the cooking pan and the milk was poured straight from the jar it was stored in. Nothing was fancy, just easier when all the household water was carried in from the well and had to be heated on the wood burning stove.
In 1957, eating at a restaurant wasn't done in our family. I don't think the idea of taking us kids to a restaurant ever came up! There weren't many restaurants in Quincy, Washington and fast food was coming in the future, except for the A&W Root Beer stand. Sometimes we went there to buy a gallon of root beer in a jug so we could take it home to make our own root beer floats...it was much cheaper to do it that way.
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My mom cooked exotic veggies like broccoli, but as adults we've notices that there are still many vegetables that we were't often given growing up. We all like squash and zucchini but my mom never served that. Thanks for all the memories. I'm really enjoying it!
This was a good one so I have a couple of comments about this post.
1) Meal time was so entertaining as a kid and brings back many memories. We always ate together and when dinner was over the food was gone and there was nothing else until the next meal. No snacking, unless you wanted a piece of crumbly whole wheat bread.
2) I remember how much Mom hated it when we spilled our milk and it seems like someone did it every meal. Count on it. It's a good thing we had plenty of milk from that ole Jersey cow (at least in the Ephrata years) and she wasn't crying over spilled milk because it was scarce. It was just such a big mess each time.
3) Like Rosalin, I don't remember having anything else for dinner except meat, potatoes and gravy, (jello on Sunday) and a vegetable (corn or beans...and the beans are a topic for another post I think). Maybe occasionally she would make Spanish rice which I hated. I still shudder when I think how much I hated it. Blaaa! But the normal meal of meat, potatoes and gravy always tasted good and we ate it with relish. Well, maybe Gayla ate with a little less relish because she couldn't stand to have any of her food touch something else on the plate so it was an art to keep it isolated and safe from contamination.
4) Reed, on the other hand, must have wanted casserole because he would put all his food on his plate, sprinkle it liberally with catsup and then stir it up into a big pink pile of goo. We always watched this process with amazement that he would think that pink goo looked good enough to eat. I think I see a bottle of catsup on the table in this photo so he was probably up to his same tricks. Unfortunately the view of his plate is blocked by a bowl.
5) We all learned about eating "Poke Style". I still make the excuse sometimes and have for years that we are eating "Poke Style" if things are kind of casual and we dish out of the pan.
6) Eating in a restaurant. As Rosalin said, we didn't do it....only once. It was Reed's birthday and Dad decided to take him out to the Turf for dinner to celebrate. They intended to go alone except that I heard about it and bawled and begged to go so soft-hearted Dad gave in and let me tag along. It was so exciting and I have never forgotten how much fun it was. Thanks Dad...and sorry Reed.
7) One last comment. The conversation at the dinner table always included a session of DeAnn and Alan accusing the other of "looking at me". "Quit looking at me." "I wasn't looking at you. You were looking at me." On and on they would banter back and forth about the crime of looking at one another. And then one of them would spill their milk. It was so tiresome then but funny now. Kids!
Yes, the spilled milk...it always brought on the dreaded reaction from Mom. Those little tin glasses were rounded on the bottom, they tipped over so easily. Because of the leaf in the table (which meant a crack) the milk not only covered the table but seeped through the crack and dripped on the floor. It was a sticky mess.
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