What is happening in this world? Last week, I bought groceries for the two of us (four counting that twenty-five-dollar bag of dog food) and the bill was over two hundred dollars. Of course, I got home without the coffee filters and the ice cream. If I go back to the grocery store for those two items, it will cost me thirty dollars. That’s because I will not just buy coffee filters and ice cream. I will get some bananas, some cream cheese, and vanilla wafers. That’s if I already have the pudding mix.
If I don’t hurry up and get that done, I’ll have to go get some milk… which will set me back another fifty because I need to get those hamburger buns that were on sale and the cantaloupe wasn’t in the basket at checkout, after all.
Buying groceries is a never-ending chore. I think my refrigerator has a leak. Give it a few days, and that carton of eggs will be empty, the butter will evaporate into thin air, and the tomatoes will rot. Was there ever a time when the “larder” was full?
What did our grandmothers do about food? They lived miles from town, shopped for a month at a time, and stored the flour in a cloth sack. Of course, they didn’t have to buy eggs, milk, bacon, or coffee filters. They didn’t have to worry about the cheese getting mold… they just trimmed it off and stuck it back in the crock. I guess the dog ate the mold.
I must give full credit to our grandfathers who did most of the hog killing, the deer slaying, and the manufacturing of smoked hams, aged bacon, and pickled pig’s feet. (Is there really such a thing?) There were no video games, cell phones, or social media sites to check. So, kids had plenty of time to help out around the place. Not much choice. Even city kids had to help fill the larder. But did it stay filled.
Our grandparents spent a great deal of their time “putting up food.” They canned vegetables, dried beef and pork. They stored jars in the cellar, potatoes and onions under the house, and hams were hung somewhere safe. I’m not sure where it was hung after it was smoked, but I’m sure they had to hide it from teenaged boys.
When my children were little, grapes never made it to sundown, bananas never got old, and good cookies never dried out. I was tempted to buy persimmons and eggplants and Brussel sprouts just to have something in the refrigerator in case some social worker-type looked inside. We did, however, eat a lot of hamburger, wieners, and chicken. We ate green beans and corn.
Of course, I could feed a family of four and one healthy Labrador on about fifty dollars a week. That was last century, and everything was cheaper. Furthermore, our big trucks were on the move, gasoline was cheap, and there was no Covid lurking around. I never had a garden or chickens or a dead cow in the freezer, but we made it on that fifty dollar’s-worth of groceries.
I looked over the receipt which had totaled two hundred dollars last week. I must admit, I splurged on some things I would not have bought had I been buying for that family of four back in the 1980s. A box of individually packaged potato chips, a large package of small candy bars, veterinarian-approved dog food, and two cartons of namebrand soft drinks… those items probably wouldn’t have made the cut. I probably would have forgone the read-to-eat salad and the bagels.
So what? I may cut back on new shoes, but I’ll keep buying groceries. I guess it’s cheaper than keeping chickens in the back yard and growing tomatoes in the 109-degree heat.
We could eat out, but I don’t think two hundred dollars would go very far at McDonald’s.
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