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A Square Meal – Foods of the ‘20s and ‘30s

slimemoldtimemold.com

51–60 of 234 posts

Re: A Square Meal – Foods of the ‘20s and ‘30s

#51
post #46

I can't stand "normal" milk from the US... the stuff you buy in the plastic cartons. It taste horrid. Milk from Germany? I love it. Milk from Darigold in the paper cartons? I love it. Milk from Darigold in the plastic? Tastes like garbage. Organic milk in a paper carton? Some is good, some taste like garbage. I didn't realize how different milk tastes until I spent some time in Germany. Prior to that I just thought I…

Even milk from the same dairy tastes radically different in plastic than paper.

I always hated plastic milk as a kid. Nobody else seemed to notice the difference though. I sometimes wonder if there’s only a small subset of the population that can notice it.

Re: A Square Meal – Foods of the ‘20s and ‘30s

#52

> We’re sure bananas would be fine served as a vegetable, or with bacon, but this is certainly not the role we would assign to them today. At least in Melbourne, Australia and Wellington, New Zealand it's not unusual at all to find pancakes or waffles with banana + maple syrup and bacon together. https://lastappetite.com/pancakes-at-fandango/amp/

Vazhakkai Poriyal (made with raw bananas, vegetable side dish) is pretty common here in India.

Re: A Square Meal – Foods of the ‘20s and ‘30s

#53
post #46

I can't stand "normal" milk from the US... the stuff you buy in the plastic cartons. It taste horrid. Milk from Germany? I love it. Milk from Darigold in the paper cartons? I love it. Milk from Darigold in the plastic? Tastes like garbage. Organic milk in a paper carton? Some is good, some taste like garbage. I didn't realize how different milk tastes until I spent some time in Germany. Prior to that I just thought I…

Most German milk is either "long life" or UHT, both of which taste better to me than "normal" pasteurized milk, which is the most common in England, for example. The three different pasteurization techniques result in different tasting milk.

I do notice a difference between foil lined carton, plastic jug and carton milk, the latter usually tastes the worst probably because the carton is more permeable?

But I do love fresh raw milk whenever I can get it.

Re: A Square Meal – Foods of the ‘20s and ‘30s

#55

> We’re sure bananas would be fine served as a vegetable, or with bacon, but this is certainly not the role we would assign to them today. At least in Melbourne, Australia and Wellington, New Zealand it's not unusual at all to find pancakes or waffles with banana + maple syrup and bacon together. https://lastappetite.com/pancakes-at-fandango/amp/

Cooked green bananas (both actual plantains, and just unripe regular bananas) are used as starchy sides in a lot of cultures (mostly South America, Africa and the Caribbean afaik).

Re: A Square Meal – Foods of the ‘20s and ‘30s

#56

> We’re sure bananas would be fine served as a vegetable, or with bacon, but this is certainly not the role we would assign to them today. At least in Melbourne, Australia and Wellington, New Zealand it's not unusual at all to find pancakes or waffles with banana + maple syrup and bacon together. https://lastappetite.com/pancakes-at-fandango/amp/

I'm partial to fried spam, eggs and pancakes covered in maple syrup.

If you want to get really wild, coat the spam in sugar before frying it at low-medium heat. It caramelizes around the outside and gets extra tasty.

Re: A Square Meal – Foods of the ‘20s and ‘30s

#57
post #3

Fantastic trove of information. It really shows how the modern diet with its emphasis on grains & vegetables is wildly different from how we were eating only a mere 100 years ago.

It's a fun article, but hardly a scientific analysis of the diet back then. It's all anecdotes and no numbers.

Though such numbers do seem to exist for 20th century USA (Android won't render the xls, though): https://www.ers.usda.gov/data-products/food-availability-per...

Re: A Square Meal – Foods of the ‘20s and ‘30s

#58

I recently discovered that flickr has book illustrations gong back to the early 1500s. Turns out walking skeletons were pretty common back then. This feisty one likes to tug on peoples clothes for some reason. https://www.flickr.com/photos/internetarchivebookimages/tags... Not sure if diet, or constant presence of death. I've considered how well people ate back then. On the one hand there were far fewer people and mo…

Maybe due to the increase of dance macabre themes in visual arts after Black Death?

https://worldhistory.us/european-history/the-plague-and-the-...

Re: A Square Meal – Foods of the ‘20s and ‘30s

#59
post #47

For those curious, I wanted to start making my own salt pork — https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=ZdmPIpQZPRg Effectively it’s pickled pork and can last for a few months. To eat it, you soak it to get as much of the salt out as you can. Good for stews, gravy, etc. It’s what was done pre-refrigeration for meat.

My grandmother made something like this without salt: cooked meat (usually duck or pork) and lots of fat, poured hot in jars. It kept for a year at least. The meat was edible straight from the jar, the fat was used for cooking or as spread (but tasted quite disgusting to me heh). I reckon salted it would last even longer.

Sounds like confit.

The meat is often salted a little before cooking. Stored in cellar/refrigerator, it keeps a long time.

You can also buy canned confit duck. Can be eaten straight from the jar, buy delicious and crispy when (re)cooked.

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