Oh, you brought back some memories with that! I can still feel the pain when my elbow (on the table!) was swatted with a serving spoon. Also different, was no reading at the table. We were asked how our school day was, what homework did we need to do, and a list of chores to do after the dishes were washed, dried, and put away. They are good memories. Thank you!
Mine too. I still don't put my elbows on the table and hate it when I see people using their 'phones while eating - especially in restaurants.
Did any of you get the "clean your plate, children in Korea are starving" lecture? I would happily have sent those kids the butterbeans, succotash, and sweet potato casserole with marshmallows on top. I still cringe when I see a man at a restaurant table, wearing a baseball cap, usually backwards. In addition to the no elbows/cell phones/hats rule, was SIT UP STRAIGHT! I grew up thinking that slouching was a deadly sin.
My mother was a big "eat your food, kids in China are starving" She used that one too many times on my oldest daughter when she was about 5. She looked at Gramma and told her to send it to them cause she didn't like it.
A few corrections. Ranji Smile, a famous NY cook was cooking with curry at some of NY's most famous hotels in the early 1900's. He was also giving cooking classes to women all over the country and contributing recipes to Haper's Bizarre. The word "pasta" was used in the US country as early as 1874. "Kebab entered the English language in the 1600's. Yogurt was introduced in US health sanitariums before 1910 and by 1929 was being delivered in the New England area by horse drawn wagons. By the 1950's, it was being presented as a health food. Soy oil was produced in 2000 BC. It was one of the most popular cooking oils in the US in the 50's. Crisco was a vegetable oil, not a fat and was introduced in 1912. In the 50's, my friend's mother made homemade pizza every Saturday night and my mother would make it on occasion.
All that information is good, but the article I posted was referring to the average person. No one I knew ever ate at a famous NY hotel, most women learned to cook from their Mom or Grandmother and Harpers Bizzare was an expensive magazine that the average woman had no use for, the word Pasta was probably heard in some places away from the posh eateries but where I grew up we ate either macaroni noodles or spaghetti noodles, Kebab was not on the menu at the average restaurant, Yogurt was not available in our grocery stores, never heard of Soy anything until it became chic in the recent past, the original solid Crisco was not a vegetable oil it was made from cotton seeds, the new liquid version is Soy Oil, the fat referred to was Lard and was far more popular than Soy until Crisco came along, the only pizza the average family had in the 50's came as a mix in a box from Chef Boyardee.
