From Victory Garden to Tang—and Back?

During my grandchildren’s visit, I was rummaging among Little Golden books in the basement and came across a cookbook of my mother’s (left)—some 800 recipes from the members of the Ingomar Woman’s Club, assembled and sold as a fundraiser sometime in the 1950s. Mother, who was not a particularly inspired cook, contributed a few: Cold Pickles (first ingredient: 3 quarts of vinegar!), Corn Fritters, Date and Nut Bread, and Macaroni Loaf Casserole. The latter was scrumptious; a slightly altered version can be found in Irma Rombauer’s classic Joy of Cookbook (p. 187, 1963 ed.) That casserole requires at least 45 minutes of chopping, grating, cooking and stirring, then 1-1/2 hours in a 325° oven. With that sort of time commitment on many of the recipes, no wonder the cookbook migrated to the basement.

It started me remembering the way we ate at home in the 1950s. (The advent of eating out will be saved for another day.) Shortly after my parents moved from the city to Ingomar and WWII heated up, they planted a Victory Garden on their second acre of land. They created an orchard with about a dozen fruit trees, a berry patch, and in the rest, lots of beans, cabbages, corn, cucumbers, and tomatoes. Posters (right) had encouraged planting by those on the Home Front to lower the price of produce needed by the War Department to feed the troops, thus saving money that could be spent elsewhere on the military. According to U.S. historians, nearly 20 million Americans answered the call and produced up to 40% of vegetables consumed nationally (1943-44).

My mom had grown up a Logan in the wilds of Pine Township and really relished tilling the soil; my dad was a city slicker from the North Side—read “clueless but dedicated farm laborer.” Their garden’s bounty went toward great Corn Roasts in the backyard for relatives and friends and later, much preserving of jam, apple butter, tomato juice, and bread-and-butter pickles.

By the 1950s though, the garden had shrunk to just beans, tomatoes and cukes. The fruit trees, no longer sprayed, required major worm removal. Corn now came from trips to the farm stands on Wexford flat (Shenot’s, Brooker’s) or Brandt School Road (Soergel’s). Mom was reluctant to go “in the highway” to the supermarkets that began to appear, since the village of Ingomar always had either a general store (B. Dale Dixon’s) or what would later be known as a mom-and-pop’s (Flanek’s) before Shop N Save arrived in the 1960s.

Roy, the Otto Suburban milkman, delivered our glass bottles of milk and coffee cream. The best butcher (between Cole’s in Wexford and Shindel’s in Perrysville) was John’s, just a half a block from us on Ingomar Road—home of the area’s best chipped ham. When real baked goods were required, we had to drive in to Vogel’s in Perrysville before Barcus’ arrived at Pine’s Plaza. At least one Ingomar ATWT classmate remembers the Vogel cupcakes I brought to school for my birthday—each topped with a sugary frosting rose.

A scan of the Ingomar Woman’s Club cookbook suggests the inroads convenience foods were starting to have. I wasn’t surprised by the number of ways lime jello and Philadelphia cream cheese could be combined (often with crushed pineapple) into sweet treats—I confess, that was about all I knew how to make until I graduated from college. Other name-brand standby’s mentioned in the book: Bisquick, Miracle Whip salad dressing, Campbell’s Condensed Tomato (or Mushroom) Soup as the binding to hold casseroles together, Eagle Brand condensed milk, Marshmallow Fluff, Mother’s Oats, and of course, local favorite H. J. Heinz tomato ketchup, mild mustard, vinegar, and pickles.

Recipes with multiple versions included tuna noodle casserole, Rice Krispie bars, chiffon pies (Knox gelatin, eggs and heavy cream), and desserts laden with dates, raisins, or bottles of Maraschino cherries. Shortening (such as “Spry”) was the fat of choice in baking, although a couple of times recipes mentioned “Oleo” as a substitute for butter. A recipe of Mrs. William B. Rodgers called “Sailors Duff,” sent me scurrying to the dictionary where I learned it was “a stiff flour pudding boiled in a cloth bag or steamed”—when I’d thought it was rather unappetizingly just another name for a butt—as in “Get off your duff.”

The Ingomar ladies no doubt only contributed their special “company fare” to the cookbook not deeming to mention everyday things like iceberg lettuce, Velveeta cheese, Reddi-wip, Bosco (chocolate syrup to add to milk), Chef Boyardee spaghetti sauce, or that GIs' fave brought back from the war, Hormel’s SPAM (which stands for Shoulder of Pork And HaM and has been immortalized by the Monty Python sketch, worth looking at again by clicking on this You Tube link). My frugal grandma had her own version of SPAM that I dearly loved. She made stuffing from onions and the stale ends of Braun’s bread, placed several spoonfuls of stuffing between pairs of thin slices of SPAM, tied them into neat little packages with kitchen string, and fried these gourmet gifties in bacon fat. Yum! (The best part for a kid was sucking on the string afterward and gnawing the little tidbits that clung to it.)

After 1953 on bridge nights, my mom sometimes resorted to those amazing aluminum trays of Swanson TV dinners (turkey with gravy, cornbread dressing, frozen peas, and mashed sweet potato with a square of butter was the original combo), which cost 98¢ and took 25 minutes in a 425° oven. By 1958, a lot of convenience foods were added to supermarket shelves, among them: frozen French fries, Ruffles potato chips, Rice-a-Roni, Sweet ‘n Low, Cocoa Puffs, Lipton’s instant tea, ramen, and the breakfast orange drink Tang (later sent into space and used by me to make "Russian Tea" or to clean the dishwasher, as Heloise suggested).

We were well on our way to an addiction to time-saving, consumer-targeted processed concoctions that Michael Pollan refers to as “industrial eating," in his latest book, The Omnivore’s Dilemma (Penguin, 2007), about Americans’ approach to the politics, perils, and pleasures of our nutrition. I was not too surprised recently to come across a website “Revive the Victory Garden for victory over global warming” (click here). It suggested planting the vegetables you will consume in a season amongst the flowers in the front yard, put tomatoes in containers on the patio and sprouts on the kitchen windowsill. Hmm. Cucumbers next to the tiger lilies (also edible)? I’ll have to think about that.

P.S. For those who were disappointed by the small group photos in my last posting about ATWTs, I've now remedied the problem with a link to a web album. See below. Also check out the three comments by clicking on "Comments."