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Before Fast Food, TV Dinners And Processed Foods: Pure, Pure Earth

by Allison Carter
11/12/2007

Many young adults of this millennium couldn’t imagine a time when fast food chains didn’t exist or when grocery stores didn’t have 13 plus aisles to search through for the perfect foods. We are the generation of fast food, TV dinners and processed food.

However, just two generations ago, most families were still cooking meals from scratch. One of these families included Paul Farthing’s, of Newland, a small town in Avery County, North Carolina.

Farthing grew up in the Appalachian Mountains during the Depression, so his family just ate what they could afford. There weren’t three or four grocery stores just a short walk away from his rural home.

Naturally, since a grocery store was hard to come by, so were fast food chains.

“Never heard of such a thing,” said Farthing. “I don’t think there was a restaurant in town.”

Instead of the ease we have today with supermarkets and fast food chains, Farthing’s father would go ‘peddling’ to the nearest town. He would take potatoes and trade them for molasses. For cornmeal, the family would put some corn into a sack, take it to a mill, pay a toll and have the corn ground.

The only foods they purchased from a grocery store were coffee, sugar, flour, salt, baking powder and occasionally corn. Their meat was also purchased from a butcher.

Even the process of beginning to cook was much more difficult. The Farthings used a stove heated by a fire box which also heated the oven. He and his brothers got the wood and water. There was no thermostat on the stove or oven so the temperature was hard to control. A tea kettle was used to heat the water needed for cooking. It also served the purpose of humidifying the air.

Once the stove and oven were finally heated his mother and sisters would begin cooking the family’s meals. Preparation for breakfast began at 5 a.m. Many of the same foods were served every breakfast. The meal mainly consisted of biscuits - handmade by his mother - and gravy. Unlike today’s breakfasts, they didn’t normally have any meat.

“We generally ate fatback, maybe ham, and if we ate chicken, we ate chicken for breakfast.”

Some other meats they would have were rabbit and squirrel.

Even though there wasn’t too much variety, there was innovation. If they had sugar and cocoa, they would mix it with water to make chocolate syrup to pour over their biscuits.

Lunch preparation began around 11. The main meal was cornbread, soup beans and fried potatoes. During the summertime they sometimes had green beans or green peas. Just like breakfast, meat was rarely ever served for lunch.

The meal that Farthing most vividly remembers is dinner because it was like a family gathering. However, the meal was almost identical to lunch. Farthing said he was content, though, with having the meal a second time.

“It was during the Depression and we didn’t have all the food in the world.”

They would occasionally have greens for supper, which he loves still to this day. After dinner they would use cornmeal to make ‘mush,' which Farthing said is what we now call grits.

The food he remembers most fondly is the ‘fruit cake’ he would have after dinner. Farthing compared this more to a stack cake, but fruit cake was the name his family gave it. His mother would use cinnamon cookies to make the layers and apple butter to keep the layers stacked on top of each other.

“I would give anything in the world for fruit cake.”

But now it is 2007 and every aspect of food preparation and consumption has drastically changed. Farthing said that food has both changed for the better and the worse.

“Generally speaking, sweets taste better,” said Farthing. “The cakes were heavier, not nearly as light, and the frosting was hit or miss.”

He also mentioned that now biscuits and cornbread are much easier to make. You can just go to the store and buy mix, whereas his mother mixed the biscuits by hand and cut them with a condensed milk can.

However, he is concerned with the quality of food. Farthing likes fast food but worries about its cleanliness, and the preservatives in our food make him long for the good he used to have as a child.

“Back when we were raised it was pure, pure earth.”

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