"We only had canned vegetables in the winter growing up"

I'm sorry if that was true for you but please don't assume it was the case for everyone.

We all mostly grew up in different areas with different regional and climatic factors, under different family circumstances, under different socio/economic and demographic circumstances. All account for differences in home food practices.

Toby, the stores here didn't start carrying fresh broccoli until the 1970s. Lots of cauliflower, squash and cabbage in the winter months though. My Dad did the grocery shopping and made sure we ate whatever fresh vegetables were in season. We did eat canned green or wax beans in the winter, canned cream corn was one of my favourite things to eat until one day we drove by the smelly cannery and my brother told me when they made creamed corn they swept up the corn from the floor to make it haha no more creamed corn for me. We didn't eat frozen vegetables growing up because there was only a tiny box of a freezer in the fridge and that held the ice cream. Every night for dinner there was a wedge of iceburg lettuce, cucumbers with sour cream and onions, tinned rosebud beets. We always used locally canned and grown Heinz tomatoes in the winter, my Dad would make what he called red lead for Sunday breakfast with them. One thing I do remember and liked was when my Dad would bring home every now and then a whole canned chicken. We would stand around the kitchen counter and eat it once you scraped all the jelly off. I live within a short drive to rural farms that always have offered an abundance of fresh vegetables and now acres and acres of greenhouses where most of the vegetables are shipped to the USA market

Oly, I forgot about the onions, which are so easy to keep, even without a cellar. I don't recall my family raising carrots, but beets and cabbage were easy, and cabbage would last past the early frosts, until freezing weather, before it had to be harvested. I remember my grandmother tried to raise broccoli, but it was so full of worms she gave up--she hated worms and caterpillars of any kind, even the ones that turned into butterflies and moths.

As I understand the shortage is the tin not the vegetables or fruits. Cherryfizz, I remember Vernors gingerale which I can no longer find in the states. It was a favorite of mine.

Elmer J Fudd

"We only had canned vegetables in the winter growing up"

I'm sorry if that was true for you but please don't assume it was the case for everyone.

We all mostly grew up in different areas with different regional and
climatic factors, under different family circumstances, under different
socio/economic and demographic circumstances. All account for
differences in home food practices.

Olychick didn't assume it, but by your surprise at our comments, you seemed to assume that everyone had access to fresh and frozen vegetables. We're informing you that we didn't.

Now that we've put all assumptions aside, it's fun hearing which vegetables others ate in the past.

I do not think your experiences Elmer were what the majority of the Americans ate while you were growing up. Did you travel coast to coast, border to border to see what others were eating at that time? If you did then you have a better basis but time and again you keep telling people that their lives were lies because their lives were not yours.

Along with the thing that peoples memories are often clouded by nostalgia. This is especially true for boys/men because the did not spend every day, all day long with their mothers. America is a large country and many in the 1940s and 1950s did not have the money or the garden room to have fresh vegetables all year round.

Huh? I had to look way upthread for the rest of the quote "... all winter long before fresh (or frozen) were as readily available year round." Canning, drying and salting were common old-timey methods of food preservation. My grandparent's generation certainly didn't expect to eat fresh vegetables year-round, like we've become accustomed to. I think we're talking different eras.

I was at the grocery store this morning and the canned vegetable shelves were nearly denuded, same with the canned tomatoes. I didn't look for frozen vegs as I'd bought what we needed on my last trip to a different grocery.

I grew up eating all versions of vegetables (canned, frozen and fresh), I don't discriminate, I like them all (as long as none are asparagus).

I responded with the words you've quoted for me shown in italics above,
that her made up "fact" about how she thought the majority of Americans
ate was quite contrary to my own experience and I suggested applying her
own experience to "the majority" was probably not correct.

Elmer, your experience may simply mean that you were the exception. Most of the mid-century population likely lived where fresh vegetables can't be grown year round like in your home state. When I lived on the Central Coast in the 80s, they were harvesting broccoli in late December. How many people in the northern states grew up eating fresh broccoli in December?

Since you believe that olychick is "probably not correct" that the majority ate canned veggies, you can download the 1960 Census and divide the states into moderate growing climates vs. cold non-growing climates and total up their populations, if you want to get technical about it.

But then that leaves the question of how readily available frozen veggies were in 1960. More research!

For another opinion, DH grew up in Washington state, within trucking distance from California, so surely he must have had fresh vegetables if they were available. He's also 76 so his experience goes back a decade further than mine. Post WWll, they were only eating canned vegetables. He never had fresh vegetables unless they came out of the garden.

He also remembers early margarine with a blob of yellow food coloring that you kneaded into the margarine to make it look like butter.

Just got back from the store and saw this on a few of the more popular canned goods. I didn't walk down the frozen veggie aisle.

My parents had a garden and we lived near several Upick orchards growing up. We had fresh fruit and veggies in summer and frozen and canned in winter. We ate a lot of whatever was seasonal.

Toby, I am younger than your husband and grew up in Seattle, and we didn't have fresh vegetables available in the winter in the stores. Just the ones mentioned before, potatoes, onions, maybe carrots? We ate canned spinach (which I loved) canned green beans, canned beets, canned corn, regular and creamed, canned peas, etc. I can't recall if we had lettuce in the winter, but other times it was iceberg. I think we had fresh cabbage in the winter because we always had corned beef and cabbage in March for St. Patrick's Day. Holidays there were yams but they were always canned, then candied. Oranges were only seasonal, we ate canned fruit in the winter, applesauce made from the plentiful apples - but I don't think cold storage was as advanced as now, so I doubt we had fresh apples long into the winter.I have a vague memory of when bananas became available more frequently than seasonal, but not sure of the season.

People in the country grew their food and had root cellars for longer storage, but that wasn't common in the city. My grandparents lived at Alki and grew an amazing garden - so fresh foods all summer, canned all winter. No root cellar.

My family would go to the ocean and dig razor clams - all the aunts and uncles, grandparents and all the kids. The women would grind then can dozens of quarts of razor clams we ate in chowder and clam fritters all winter. Canned in a water bath canner for something like 4 hours on the stove, I think! We all survived - amazingly.

"Elmer, your experience may simply mean that you were the exception."

In the absence of real information, draw no conclusions. That was my point, the generalization I disagreed with was based on one person's experiences. Followed on by more of the same but no real information.

Anyone looking for some real information and insights should read "Food of A Younger Land", a collection of WPA-type writings of government-employed writers during the Depression. What you'll learn is that prior to the interstate highway system and larger food processing companies, food habits and practices were regional and seasonal.

Everyone didn't dig clams and eat canned vegetables.

Just to add my n=1 experiences but not to generalize about everyone else, I knew no ancestors other than my grandparents on both sides. The families had always been city dwellers. No one grew food, stored food for the winter, or anything like that. Food was purchased fresh from the markets and not stored. My grandmothers on both sides ate little or no canned food and the same with my parents. I'm not going to impute that practice for anyone else, others should do the same with their own personal experiences.

That's what n=1 means. It's a sample size of one, no generalizations are valid from small sample sizes and no conclusions should be drawn.

i grew up in the San Francisco Bay Area, not in the country. However when we moved to the suburbs the first thing my dad did was plant a garden. We always had garden vegetables and fruit trees but there were plenty of canned vegetables and fruits served also . My grandparents had some land nearby and they too had a garden and even an orchard for a time but they didn't turn their noses up at canned vegetables and other convenience foods either. Food was love in our family and we all ate very well. My mother didn't can food at home but many of our neighbors did. I think Mr. "nobody did that" is once again showing what a narrow box he has lived his life in, despite how privileged he attempts to make it sound.

Oly, my sister lived in the Alki Beach area right after school--she was in hog heaven.

I grew up in Seattle and Portland and remember fresh vegetables mostly in the summer months, with a rotation of frozen peas, corn and canned green beans most nights. I'm sure the fresh stuff grown in CA was too expensive for us. Mom did go to U-Pick farms for corn in the summer and froze most of it herself. Man, was it sweet!

One year when I was a kid (living in a standard residential neighborhood of a large city in SoCal) my Dad decided to plant corn in a flower bed that couldn't have been any larger than 3x4 feet. He put the plants too close together so some in the middle didn't grow up fully but I do remember the corn was quite good.

My DH raves about the corn his family grew when he was young. The stalks were tall and the kernels were yellow. So even today after 50+ years of farmers breeding corn for bigger, better, sweeter ears, DH insists white corn is no good, bi-color is barely acceptable but only if its fresh, and only yellow ears can achieve greatness. My reaction: whatever. As long as the kernels are fully developed I don't care what color they are.

eta: Elmer, I always thought corn took alot of work to grow, so I never tried. Kudos to your dad!

Corn that's not overripe on the stalk is full of sugar. The sugar begins a process of having its sugar turn starch after its picked and as a result the corn loses its sweetness. For the sweetest possible corn, cook it as soon as possible after picking it. Or dunk it in ice water and refrigerate.

I remember when my grandparents started growing Silver Queen, which has given way to newer, sweeter, varieties. My grandmother would start the pot boiling before we went to the garden to pull the ears. She always added a pinch of sugar to the water, but Lordy, they added sugar and bacon grease to almost everything. ;)

I remember white sweet corn as a kid, too. The kernels were much smaller than the yellow variety and so sweet. What I find today at the farm stands or markets just isn't the same.

I buy a yellow corn called Incredible. Boy, I'm getting hungry for sweet corn now.

Early varieties of sweet corn were sweet because of the action of a sugarinducing gene (su) located on a particular chromosome in its genome. Several new mutants have been identified in recent years that improve upon the desirable effects of the su gene. These include the se (sugary enhanced) and sh2 (super sweet) genes.

The se varieties of sweet corn, also referred to as Everlasting Heritage (EH), contain considerably more sugar than do the su varieties. Therefore, they remain sweet several days longer after harvest. Sugar is still converted to starch once the corn is removed from the plant but, since there was more sugar to begin with, more sugar remains several days later. Consumed immediately after being harvested, the se varieties are an eating experience almost too delightful to describe.

The sh2 varieties of sweet corn have several advantages over the previous two types. In addition to being three times sweeter than su sweet corn, the conversion of sugar to starch in varieties carrying the sh2 gene is negligible. Thus sh2 varieties start sweeter and stay sweeter than normal (su) sweet corn.

The Search for Sweeter Corn

Being a barbarian and having a field of corn growing in one or two of our fields I find most sweet corn lacking in corn flavor. There have been some improvement from the for me overly sweet candy type sweet corn of my youth. Also since it was a treat I wanted those big ears.

I find yellow corn to have more corn flavor and white corn to be more sweet.

Trader Joe's Super Sweet Cut White Corn is the best frozen corn. It almost tastes like fresh corn.

Sweet corn started showing up at local farm stands this past weekend. I prefer Visions corn over the popular peaches and cream corn.

People had and still have backyard gardens in San Francisco also. I suppose Elmer considers that a rural farming community too. Some people just can't help themselves. LOL

While I realize that most people love it, I'm not a fan of sweet white corn; I like yellow corny corn that tastes like corn. But, yellow corn is getting more and more difficult to find, so I am adapting.

I'm also thinking about getting some heirloom yellow corn seeds and planting a corn patch so that I and hubby can have our beloved yellow corn that tastes like corn. :-)

Dawn although you can plant a few seeds at one time, for best pollination a block of plants 10 feet by 10 feet was recommended. There was a discussion if it was best to plant 6, 8, or 12 inches apart. Some seed sellers will give instructions or look on the back of a package.

Thanks for the info, maifleur. That's good to know for when the day comes that I'm ready to plant a corn patch. Until we no longer live in deer/raccoon/bear, etc., country, I doubt that I'll even bother. But, the day is coming when all that might change.

My mother was born and raised in Seattle WA and loved fresh vegetables/fruits, because they were available only in season. She grew up on a farm on Kingston Island and her best friend as a Seattle teen, lived in Port Angeles, WA.

I'm 69 and was born/raised in urban Chicago, IL. Fruits and vegetables were ALWAYS seasonal. When asparagus came into season we ate it every day for 5-6 weeks.

Boy, even when you love something, you can sure get sick of eating it every day, LOL! But my mother would serve it because once it was gone, that was it for the next year. Canned asparagus is only good for soup - although my grandmother would eat it; she had no teeth.

Canned veggies and fruits were standard items. Everybody bought them. When Birds Eye first came out with frozen veggies, hardly anyone bought them because they were EXPENSIVE. Much more costly than canned veggies!

Mother loved the frozen veggies better than the canned, but there just was not enough $$$ in the food budget on an everyday basis. This was back when the terms "spring chickens" and "spring lamb" actually meant something.

Winter veggies from October to the beginning of May were turnips, carrots, parsnips, rutabagas, and cabbages. Forget fruit in winter; unless you liked dried dates, raisins, or apples, canned or jarred was all there was.

This is why if you look up older recipes for trifle, a popular dessert if you were being lavish for the holidays, the ladyfingers are spread with jam. Fresh fruit simply wasn't available in winter.

One funny anecdote - no, two:

1) My intro to CA was moving to SoCA in high school. I was amazed to discover a fruit vending machine on campus. For a dime I could get a huge, sweet, juicy navel orange - in December! I couldn't believe it (my previous HS looked like a prison, complete with guards at the doors and roaches in the cafeteria). I think I ate an orange every day for the next seven months! I felt like a Cratchit kid in Dickens' Christmas Carol story.

2) Having now been in CA for almost 50 yrs, it's always something of a culture shock when I visit back East. About 7 yrs ago we were on a NY-Boston road trip. This was just around the first couple of days in May.

We made reservations at a well-regarded downtown Boston restaurant near Boston Common. Lovely place, very sophisticated service and food/wine menus. Very similar in decor to Quince/SF, but with the chef's take on American cuisine.

The whole "farm to table" idea was becoming popular - but unfortunately we were too early for even asparagus or peas to show up yet.

Our choices of veggie sides were butter-basted turnips (alas, Tokyo turnips hadn't appeared on the scene yet) or cabbage. Remember, it's May already. Asparagus season had already come and gone in CA.

We were fine with cabbage; we both like it. In addition, you won't find most CA restaurants EVER offering cabbage. So we ordered our a la carte entrees, plus the side of cabbage.

Imagine our surprise when we were served a nice meaty steak for Spouse, a handsome grilled chop for me....and a dish of cabbage with a giant hunk of braised pork shoulder in the center. It must have weighed a pound, if it weighed an ounce!

We were so startled I recall us just staring at the table, speechless.

"I don't think we'd see that in San Francisco," I finally remarked. We didn't laugh out loud, but we couldn't help chuckling over it.

Nowhere on the menu did it say the veggies come with their own meats. I guess I could have saved myself the cost of the pork chop [wink]!

Interesting observations, jakkom. Your take on asparagus made me laugh. I hated asparagus as a child and imagine that we had the same experience of binge eating things that had a short season. Once when I was in my early 20's I went to some kind of function (don't recall what it was) at the Olympic Hotel in Seattle, at the time the most posh hotel in the area. We were served a salad with a piece of canned white asparagus on it. I decided to try it and loved it; it turned around my disdain for asparagus - who would have thought canned asparagus could do such a thing. I started buying it that way, then eventually branched out into fresh, which I now love.

I sometimes purchase canned hearts of palm for salads and they remind me very much of that white asparagus on the salad.

I have a different recollection and understanding of fruit seasonality and I don't think it is a function of my location. Fruitless winters definitely ring with a thud. Give your memories a rewind and consider this:

Apples and pears are harvested in the fall and are stored and released to market for much of the year.

Many types of citrus - oranges especially, have a December to mid-spring availability.

Bananas are available year round and long have been. Picked green, shipped green, treated with gas once they arrive at their various US market locations to stimulate ripening.

Etc.

On the subject of asparagus. Much earlier this year I took something to a friends house and they invited me for lunch. He is an adventuresome cook so I said yes. He served canned asparagus. It was not the mush that I remembered it being. Thinking it was a fluke I purchased a can thinking he had added something beyond leftover chicken broth that had firmed the flesh. The canned stuff was firm and not the stuff that my mother would occasionally purchase which I remember as being stringy, slimy, and down right nasty. I saw South American asparagus at the store the last time I went but at $4.99 a pound with the smallest bundle being over two pounds I passed.

maifleur03 I think all three versions of asparagus have their place. Commercially canned doesn't have to mean soggy and limp. The process has evolved to maintaining the freshness. Yes canned asparagus is softer but it has it's place as a quick side dish. It is also excellent served chilled. I also think in the past people were more apt to boil things to death which is why some have memories of mushy, tasteless vegetables. My favorite asparagus are the frozen ones packed to be steamed. Fresh asparagus is a gamble. I like it for grilling but haven't had good luck steaming it without it retaining bitterness sometimes. Just a wee bit too much time and it goes bitter.

What many people don't understand is that the pick of the crop goes to processors. The fresh isn't really that fresh if it has sat on a truck and then in the warehouse before being put out. Nutritional studies have been done that have often shown that frozen and canned maintain more nutrition than fresh. Surprisingly some canned items have slightly edged out frozen items nutritionwise.

"What many people don't understand is that the pick of the crop goes to processors."

My understanding of how this works is quite different.

Your understanding is wrong.

I didn't realize you and I had something in common, for all the things you seem to misunderstand. But not for this, so maybe we don't.

Processors need certainty with their supply sources so they contract in advance with growers and coops for product. They don't go out to produce markets to forage with other buyers.

Premium growers, those who aim to produce top quality for the higher parts of the markets, may have supply contracts too or at least relationships with buyers of the best stuff (like the better restaurants and upper end retailers) as outlets to sell to. They too don't tend to produce for "the market".

It's been ... 45 years since the first & only time I had canned asparagus. Never in a million years would have guessed the canning process would improve, but why not? makes sense that food scientists could put some research into it. So maybe I'll give it another try sometime. Thanks!

Elmer, as an old friend of mine used to say, on the subject of fresh fruit availability in winter we're in violent agreement! It used to be much more limited than it is today. Bananas pretty much year round; apples and citrus from fall thru winter into early spring. But berries, melons, grapes, peaches, many other fruits you had to wait for. Today just about any grocery has a selection of just about all of those year round. (Peaches and stone fruits excepted.) Shipping from Chile and other southern agricultural regions is so cheap we see alot from there. My grandparents would be surprised, my great-grands would be amazed, and I imagine my great-great grands would simply not believe it possible.

Yes, production in and shipments from the Southern Hemisphere do make so-called "summer fruit" available year round. The fall/winter items we've both mentioned and more have been available year round in most places for a long time. There was less selection than in prime-summertime but an apple or pear lover, from March on, would say they long for fall and winter so that those favorites would be fresh again and not from storage.

wildchild the last time I had canned asparagus I opened the lid and pulled out a piece to taste because I had been told I needed to rinse the salt off. I wanted to know how salty it was. It was so soft that in attempting to pick it up it turned to mush between my fingers leaving a few strands of the outer layer. It was very mushy. Even as expensive as it was it went into the trash.

What I remember as a kid was how my mom used to boil the heck out of vegetables. As she got older, she learned that vegetables taste good when they still have a bit of crunch. I don't know why she did that - she was from Sweden, maybe that had something to do with it? Or she just didn't know different? Who knows. I just know that boiled vegetables were yucky.

Does anyone remeber having canned plums? I used to really like them but not sure I would now. In the 1960's when fruit wasn't in season we would have canned pears, peaches and plums, fruit cocktail, bing cherries, pineapple and many times frozen strawberries that came in cardboard boxes with metal at each end. I would eat the peaches, plums and cherries but was not a fan of canned pears or fruit cocktail. There was always dried fruit in our house - apricots, figs, dates, raisins, prunes. I remember we often had fresh pineapple, along with oranges, and grapefruit. I wish white grapefruit was still available because I used to love the bitterness. I also remember having grapes all year round. There used to be a specialty fruit store in Windsor where my Dad would go to buy fruits that were imported. Another vegetable item that wasn't available in stores until the late 1900s or early 2000s was avocados. I never liked stored apples because of the texture but my Mom would make applesauce or use them in pies. We sure are lucky now to have a wider variety and greater choice whether it be canned, fresh or frozen or hothouse.

I still purchase canned plums when I find them which is not very often. They are also always on the top shelf so depending on the store I will have to ask someone to hand them to me. When they realize what they are I sometimes get strange looks. Several years ago I planted a tree so that I could have them. Sadly the tree that was supposed to only be 10 to 12 feet tall is now over twenty and the first fruiting branch 10 feet from the ground. It looks like I am back to the canned fruit.

Wolferman's had a small produce and deli store downtown when I was a small child. I remember them having the imported fruit that you mention Cherryfizz. One of my favorite memories of it was being given one of the large dark purple finger grapes by one of the staff.

My father loved canned purple plums with chocolate cake, so we ate a lot of plums. They weren't pitted, and I remember swallowing a pit one time. We also had canned apricots, but I never cared for them. When we lived in the Grand Valley in CO, we had apricot trees in the yard, and I loved them fresh. We shipped boxes back home to So.Ohio.

I used to love fruit cocktail, especially the mushy green grapes, and the maraschino cherry, but you couldn't pay me to eat one now.

The house I grew up in had 5 Italian prune trees (which they now call Italian plums, but they were prunes back then). My mom canned a gazillion quarts of prunes and we had them nearly every morning in the winter. I loved those things! I'm sure there was a heavy sugar syrup involved, lol. But they were a beautiful color and so flavorful. I don't eat canned fruit now, but if I did, that would be at the top of the list.

Sephia, I remember my mom always boiling home canned vegetables (and the clams I wrote about earlier) for a long time. I think it had to do with killing any botulism that might have arisen in canned food. I loved the clam nectar, but I wasn't allowed to drink it until it had been boiled a good long time. Maybe, if your mom was boiling commercially canned vegetables, it was a hold over from home canned items.

Did you heat up your canned vegetables? My family never did, because they're already cooked so why cook them again. Open can, drain, serve, done. DH's family always heated them because who wants to eat cold food -- well, who wants hot food all the time?

Currently on the shelves around here it depends on the store what's available.

In the smaller chain local market the fresh produce is pretty good- got big avocados on sale for rather cheap considering the time of year around here, the frozen section sort of wiped out- they just had a great sale on frozen last week and I went to the store before truck day. The tinned was rather depleted too, tinned soups was kind of sparse, but dry soups were more plentiful again. Tinned tomato product was looking more replenished. Canned dry beans was about average, dry dry beans were back on the shelves in limited varieties.

In the larger chain store the produce was pretty well stocked as usual. The price on their tomatoes was a bit up- kind of interesting since they have their own indoor grow facility for those and have them year round. The frozen section was looking OK. Tinned vegetables were pretty well stocked too, but the tinned soups was really depleted. Lots of kinds missing, and what was there really spread out to make the shelves look filled. Dry soups were good, but the bullion shelf was low. Tinned tomato product was very well stocked. Canned dry beans OK, dry dry beans in more plentitude and limited variety.

I've been working on getting my dehydrated and home canned goods up to stock for the year. This isn't new for me, it's a habit I've had for years. Got a couple kinds of jelly/jam, three kinds of pickled carrots, and a batch of homemade enchilada sauce dehydrated for powdering yesterday. Once the tomatoes really start coming in, I'l set up the grinder and start canning up tomato product.

That is something else I noticed the last time I went out too- lack of canning jars/supplies in a lot of places that are normally almost overstocked at this time of year. I wanted a case of wide mouth quarts and had a bit of a time finding them though normally they are common.

Asparagus - great in spring from the hills in my garden and popular with my friends at church - but not available to them this year.

Haven't canned it, but it's O.K. frozen, even if usually a bit soft on thawing.

ole joyful

I was able to shop my food co-op today for a few items and just for the heck of it looked to see if they had any canned vegetables. They don't stock a lot of them usually because most shoppers there prefer fresh, but they did have some canned organic green beans, corn and peas.

I wonder if there is a shortage of cans if producers will switch to glass? Probably not able to make that switch quickly enough for this year's crops, however.

I started cooking for my family as a teen in the mid '50s. We lived in central Illinois, and so fruits and vegetables were seasonal. We were able to buy fresh potatoes, onions, lettuce, and apples year round. But during the winter, we ate a lot of frozen vegetables. (Avoided canned vegetables except for corn or baked beans.) When DH and I moved to southern California in the late '60s from the East Coast, I was in heaven. First day, he took me to lunch at Taco Bell. This was a Southwest restaurant, not located anywhere in the East or Midwest. I thought I was in heaven. Then when I shopped for groceries, I couldn't believe all the lovely fresh fruits and vegetables. I am spoiled.

"got big avocados on sale for rather cheap considering the time of year around here,"

Wherever you happen to be, I believe this is peak avocado season for California avocados (where the majority of domestic avocados are grown). Maybe that's not where your area gets avocados from?