I took home ec in the deep south. Before the feds ‘nationalized’ the school systems good and hard. WE made food.
Southern cooking food.
I’m sorry your home ec class was a ripoff. Your teacher should be horsewhipped. She was a failure. I think there was a design from on high bureaucrats to do this actually. There’s a huge amount of independence (financially especially) when you can prepare food quickly, economically and from scratch. And our feds have been anti independence for the peasants for a while now.
Home Ec stopped being taught in the rural south sometime in the 80’s. I had a cousin who took it 5 years or so after I did, with a new teacher (my teacher had been in her 70’s and retired soon after having taught home ec for fifty years...) and they learned to cross stitch and make biscuits out of a can. Unsurprisingly her grandmother and mother had to pick up the slack...and this cousin still eats out way more than she should because it’s ‘convenient’. Yuk.
I’ve never heard of putting ketchup and cheese on an English muffin and calling that anything but disgusting or male dorm college food. That sounds gross.
My home ec teacher would have perished at the thought. She was a 70 something little old black lady who ran that class with an iron fist. She lived to be 90 something and had a home based alterations business after she retired. She also altered my wedding dress when I got married. And, as most little old ladies will speak their minds, told me to lay off the drive thru food, it was making my waist too big. LOL.
We learned how to bake bread, and use that basic bread recipe to make loaves, cinnamon rolls, pizza crust and dinner rolls. We learned how to make meringues, cut up a chicken and then prepare it economically for a family of 6 (it was the lesson) and make fudge among other things. It was expected that we’d already know the basics, being teens with amall town southern moms and grandmothers. They didn’t teach us how to make toast or grilled cheese sandwiches LOL. Our class was just before lunch so we’d prepare a meal, invite the principal and assistant principal and superintendent. We learned to set a table and serve as hostesses for guests.
I also learned how to sew all my own clothes. Still do. Made most of my clothes in college and even when I was working in NYC. I remember fondly my 3rd year of home ec because that’s the year you were ‘allowed’ to select any pattern you wanted for clothing projects and Vogue patterns were allowed. Sadly I had same age female coworkers who didn’t know how to sew on a button or hem a pair of pants. I was shocked to learn they PAID someone $5 or $10 to do that for them! Highway robbery! I later learned that home ec stopped being taught in any useful manner in the NYC area sometime in the 50’s or 60’s. Home ec classes being a relic of an oppressive patriarchal society and all...Better to pay someone else to do a basic task and spend that money on expensive food!
I grew up in the midst of stay at home southern moms. My grandmother cooked southern but also cajun, they’d lived in New Orleans for about 20 years. My mom learned both. My grandmother took me into the kitchen with her to work when I was around 7 or 8. I’d been in there observing since birth LOL.
And I grew up overseas in Europe and Africa. There was a big expat Indian community in our African city of all things and Sunday dinner after church was usually Indian food. I still make curries frequently. Especially in the summer when we have fresh superhot chilis. I’m reminded to pester hubby to buy me some turmeric roots before it gets cold, I want to see if I can grow them in pots as houseplants.
My grandmothers, both, deprecated packaged prepared food. ‘Convenience foods’ indicated you were NOT a frugal housewife and on top of that were lazy and fed your family poorly. If they saw someone they knew in the grocery store (it was a very small town) with that in the supermarket cart she WOULD be ‘discussed’...This in the 60’s and 70’s.
Only when she was much older did my mom’s mom ever use a packaged cake mix. Then it was a matter of not being on her feet for too long. They both had huge gardens and canned long shelves full of yummy stuff every year. One of my favorite childhood memories is spending the night at my grandmothers house in the summer and the smell of freshly made pickles or some sort of jam or preserves cooking on the stove and the giant bowls and buckets of peas, beans and sweet corn waiting for the blanch. And a plate of homemade (much better than anything you could get at a fast food place!) chicken nuggets and fresh out of the pan french fries made from potatoes dug that morning. And the ever present pop pop pop of the pressure canner.
My grandmother made divinity every year for Christmas. Using the recipe and technique from HER home ec book (circa 1934) without a mixer OR candy thermometer. She used a hand mixer and a cup of cold water with an ice cube instead. I admit I cheat and use the electric mixer.
If you don’t think southerners have their own cuisine I invite you to crash any family reunion you see at a state park in MS, AL, GA, LA, during the summer/fall etc and see for yourself. Bring an empty stomach...and loose clothing LOL. For the most part the little old ladies (50+) still cook that way. And some of the rest of us cook that way too. I don’t recall having ever seen soda at my grandmothers after my youngest uncle moved out. We don’t, generally, keep it at my house either. It’s spendy...and mostly empty calories.
I cook mostly from scratch right now. For a variety of reasons. Cost and avoiding unnatural additives mainly. But mainly cost. You can make a whole pan of homemade ORGANIC poptarts for the cost of your organic sugar and flour (and a bag of those will last and last) if you’ve got the strawberries growing in your backyard. And still come out cheaper per tart than the boxed crap variety with a list of ingredients that reads like a chemistry stockroom inventory.
Black Agnes
Your Home Ec teacher sounds alot like my(black) music teacher. A very strict(not mean) no nonsense teacher who demanded your respect.
I think I was the only kid in our county school system who ever got kicked out of music class for hitting the wrong keys on those children’s Xylophones. An honest mistake on her part as other mischievious chidren were intentionally plinking the wrong keys. However I wasn’t. I was earnestly trying to play correctly however I was and still am hopelessy “tone deaf” (please don’t ask me to sing)
I took Home Ec but didn’t learn anything. That wasn’t the fault of the teachers but the result of good parentage.
On cold rainy days when it was just too miserable(even for us kids) we boys would drive our mom nuts so she got us into baking cookies (a natural for kids who loved sweets) Best part was the licking the bowl clean(as well as sneaking a finger full of batter when possible) This lead to other things like cakes then frying bacon, hamburger, french fries and so on until by the time we graduated high school all of us boys could cook(not reheat) any meal we loved.
So Home Ec was an easy A and a way to meet the chicks(grins)
Divinty was one of the many specialities my granny made us during Christmas.
Of course you had to wait for the weather to be right(cold and dry or the Divinty wouldn’t set up right but instead puddle into a pancake of goo)
And we grew a large garden, so big that we wouild have the whole family together on certain days set aside to can the crops as they come into season.
From the great grand children(us)three families(my cousins), to my two living Great grand mothers, two grandmothers, our mothers and my father shucking corncorn(both on the cob and cream style) shelling peas, cooking jellies,tomatos, etc. etc.
And sharing family stories and of course the latest gossip, of course.
Alas those days are gone. I’m afraid that part of Southern life is dying as few of my nieces or nephews even know how to cook(Not REHEAT) a proper meal.
Too busy at work is the reason.
I didn’t really appreciate what we had. At least not as much as I do now that it is gone.
The world got busy and “modernized”
Mores the pity...