Grandma Kept It Simple

                During this brutal winter in which “polar vortex” has become a pejorative term, I have had a chance to peruse and enjoy a number of gardening “how to” books. It’s been cozy reading by the fire. Quite a few of those books begin with stories about the authors’ grandmothers (and occasionally grandfathers’) who “came over on the boat” or “out on the railroad.” My sense is that there is a great affinity with grandma and gardening.

                My grandparents lived on one of those 100-acre self-sustaining, self-sufficient farms that still existed in the 1950s of my childhood. On that farm grandma was in charge of the garden. As I read the seed catalogs and “how to” garden books this winter I began to realize there was one major difference between my grandmother’s garden and these books and catalogs. The books are full of types of vegetables and varieties of those types whereas grandma grew only a few types of vegetables, but she grew those few vegetable types very well and in great quantity. In truth in my own little garden, I surely have twice the types of vegetable as she, a seasoned gardener, did.

                In terms of root crops, I only remember her raising two- onions and potatoes…lots of potatoes; I recall going down into her basement with her in winter to get some for a meal from what looked like a wagon-load pile. Besides potatoes, the only other member of the nightshade family in the garden was huge beefsteak tomatoes …no bell peppers, no egg plants. The only member of the cucurbit family she grew was cucumbers…no pumpkin, no summer squash, no winter squash, no melons…just cucumbers.  The seed catalogs and gardening books are full of “greens” and brassica family members. Grandma only grew cabbages but she grew them well and in large number. In the legume family, grandma grew lots of peas and lots of pole beans. I remember the peas because her method of keeping boys out of mischief was having us sit on the porch swing and depod peas for a meal. On the north side of the garden  there was a long permanent row of asparagus plants that we kids thought looked like little Christmas trees…to the west side was a permanent row of Concord grapes. Both of these permanent crops probably also doubled as garden windbreaks. The whole garden amounted to maybe a half acre. There were separate blackberry and sweet corn patches…probably a quarter acre each.  By keeping it simple and specializing in these eleven crops, Grandma was not only able to feed her family, Sunday visitors, my uncle who worked the farm and his large family but she also sold vegetables on her “egg and butter” route through the west side of Evansville. I still recall her weighing out green beans and sweet corn on the spring scale they hung on the back of their black van truck. I recall too that the boxed blackberries were especially popular with the ladies on the peddling route.

                So Grandma grew large quantities of a few vegetables…but that is not my main point. My major point is that grandmas cooking did not seem to suffer from the lack of variety of vegetables; rather there seemed to be a certain seasonal succession to eating. First of all the ‘50s were the meat, potato and gravy days and on the farm plate there was always fried chicken, beef with dark gravy or pork chop with white gravy to go with the ever-present potatoes. There was also some variety in the potato serving since in addition to mashed potatoes, grandma also served them country fried with onions, baked potato wedges with ketchup ( think big French fries), boiled new potatoes, and best of all as German potato salad.  After the potato and meat were on the plate, all that was needed was an in- season side vegetable. The cabbages made wonderful Cole slaws in summer and fall and krauts in winter. In late spring there were asparagus and by early summer peas with baby onions. Next came fried green tomatoes; then came cucumber and onion sweet vinegar salad, followed by tomato-onion sweet vinegar salad, cooked green beans, and sweet corn with butter. Fill in this “seasonal eating” with a little canned corn, canned green beans, some pickles, homemade bread with black berry and grape jams during the week and grandma’s famous baked kuchens and chocolate cakes for the week-end meals and it is easy to see that the lack of variety in the garden did not affect the quality of grandma’s cooking. I never heard anyone complain and I did see Sunday visitors unhitch their belts at the table.

                There is a real marriage between gardening and cooking; learning to grow a few vegetables really well and keeping it simple makes good sense.