Posted on 12/02/2015 8:53:52 AM PST by Sean_Anthony
Americans don’t understand the concept of the starving goose of socialism who was kept pacified and faithful by feeding her one kernel a day, just enough to prevent starvation
People have asked me why I never really enjoyed gourmet cooking nor was I interested in developing such talents beyond feeding my family an inexpensive meal. As a woman, mother, and wife, that is anathema to a failed human being. How can you not be interested in providing the most delicious, appealing, and nutritious meals for your family?
To understand where I come from, you must walk in the shoes of women and children under the communist regime where I grew up, women with children in tow who had to stand in line every day at an early age if they wanted to buy bread and basics. Moms sent their children to stand in the bread and milk lines, and they stood in the meat and fresh vegetable lines and canned veggies in winter. Fresh was a stretch even in summer time, we had to contend with wilted seasonal spinach, green beans, and peas and shriveled potatoes and apples. Meat meant choice cuts of fat attached to bones with which mom used to make soup. Refrigerators were rare and expensive and freezers did not exist for us, window sills doubled as such in winter time. Crows loved our storage system.
“Unbelievably, the next day after they give thanks for what they already have, they pull each other’s hair out fighting for a TV that was probably cheaper a few days earlier.”
She nailed it.
As to farming, collective farms mostly produced staple crops (e.g., grains), but virtually all of the produce came from "assarts", which were small (e.g., about 1 acre) plots the peasants were allowed to farm for themselves. Without those plots, food supplies would have been far worse.
Yes, communism was a disaster. But I’m rereading the Little Prairie books by Laura Wilder and it’s amazing the joy they took from cooking - even when they were on the point of starving as in The Long Winter. But, I suppose they were free in mind and body, and that’s what makes the difference.
Well I would say that this lady is missing out on enjoying the finer things in life which everyone can do sometimes even if not every meal.
Mr. GG2 once said I could always make something good out of nothing. And I can do survival cooking. But until the grid goes down or we are standing in the lines for wilted beans (we won’t as we grow our own) I still like to do a really fine meal at least once or twice a week. Its chickensoup for the soul. :-)
That's my plan for Christmas vacation - just got them all from Amazon! I haven't read them in decades - looking forward to traveling back to a simpler (even if difficult) time (while in front of a warm fire with a big box of Cheeze-its!).
Food availability, rationed though it became, was a double edged sword. I had Hungarian friends in Canada during the Cold War who had Hungarian friends who had emigrated to the West successfully, then turned around and gone back to communist Hungary.
They could not handle the unaccustomed stress of living in a society where it was possible to become unemployed. In Hungary, they were guaranteed a job of some sort and were so terrified of losing their means of sustenance in a free world, they gladly went back to communism. So the fear of the inability to get food drove them back into scratching for food.
I miss editors.
That's my plan for Christmas vacation - just got them all from Amazon! I haven't read them in decades - looking forward to traveling back to a simpler (even if difficult) time (while in front of a warm fire with a big box of Cheeze-its!).But I am rereading the Little Prairie books by Laura Wilder
I recently got Prairie Girl by Laura Ingalls Wilder from the library. I found myself attracted mostly to the copious footnotes.The editor explained that Laura was a retired newspaper columnist in 1929 when, apparently as a reaction to the death of Mary Ingalls, she started to handwrite Prairie Girl, the title she chose when she wrote her memoir. Her daughter Rose Wilder Lane was a prosperous novelist at the time, and had just built a house for her parents to move to while she stayed in her childhood home. The Depression reversed Rose’s fortunes, and she had to scratch to sell books and her investments, instead of doubling as she expected, crashed.
Praire Girl was never published as such, until now. The editor who did publish it, with much commentary which was the fruit of considerable research, says that we would not now know of Laura Ingalls Wilder or of Rose Wilder Lane, but for Laura’s writing Prairie Girl and giving it to her daughter to try to get it published. The Little House series, of which Big Woods and Farmer Boy were the first two, eventually put Laura and Rose back on solid financial ground. Prairie Girl was adult nonfiction. The Little House series was not.
Love Laura, Rose and especially Ma & Pa. The writing is simple, elegant and evocative. Those books should be forced-fed to children of liberal parents!
I can’t remember what happened to poor Mary after she went blind.
If you like cooking, the Little House on the Prairie Cookbook is a must. It is a very serious study of the foods that the family ate.
So interesting! Reminds me a bit of the Oliver Sacks story of a blind woman who could not handle the results of her restored sight. Some folks cannot take change - I’m one of them, lol!
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