So far so good.
I'm truly feeling it in my readings, BP and sugars super normal.
I was pondering today on groceries, how there seemed to be very little to actually "shop" for when I was growing up.
Below is an old photo of where the pub was at the end of the road I lived on. Around the corner to the left was the butcher shop, and across from it on the right was the local shop.
It has changed greatly.
Everything was delivered.
Milk first thing in the morning.
Along with the newspaper
Bread some time in the afternoon.
Mum usually walked down to the butchers (pushing a stroller) for the meat of the day which was always wrapped in newspaper and twine.
Dad grew a lot of our veggies but the small grocery store carried the basics of potatoes and onions.
Granny often brought in a "fowl" (turkey or chicken) and fresh eggs and "country butter" from her small holding. Carrying it on the bus where one of us children would meet her at the bus terminal.
All this information about meetings and Granny coming would be put on a plain postcard by Granny posted on the previous evening and arriving in our post the following morning. Two posts a day then. I wish we had saved all those postcards now, as Daughter is a postcardist. I was in my late teens before we got a phone.
There was none of this "stocking up". Our larder was very slender. Mum baked a few times a week, Irish soda bread, the odd fancy pastry or cake (anyone remember the infamous "Victoria Sponge Cake"?)
If we were feeling particularly festive Mum would send one of us down to the grocery shop to pick up a shilling brick of ice cream along with the free wafers which would be carved up between all 8 of us.
We had two "accounts" in Cork City. One at Cash's for clothing where a discount was offered on all purchases "on account" and the bill was mailed to the house once a month. And the other at a place called Macroom Dairies where Christmas toys would be put away and paid for weekly. No interest ever charged in these two places.
What do you remember about your childhood shopping experiences, if any?
Twenty miles from a decent sized town meant a Friday weekly shop, waiting forever in the car for my father to finish his pub visit and fish and chips cold by the time we reached home. The local store also used to send ordered things daily in with the mailman.
ReplyDeleteAndrew, for some reason my dad forbade any fish and chips from the chipper as he couldn't abide the smell. So we'd furtively buy chips and eat them on the road.
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Strollers were unheard of when I was small, or even when I had my own kids. I remember pushing my two in a big heavy pram through a snowstorm just to get some bread!
ReplyDeleteI used the word stroller loosely Chris, there was the enormous pram of course, but there was a smaller version and for the life of me I can't remember the name of it. Not at all comfortable but it did collapse for the bus. Damn, that drives me crazy now.
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Just thought of it, phew!, a pushchair.
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Pushchair and stroller are the same thing as far as I know. Originally strollers were quite large, like a stripped down pram, and foldable, then there was the years of the "umbrella stroller", now strollers and prams are huge again and just as unwieldy as always.
DeleteYes, River, I was trying to equate it with the North American term. I agree, they're gone back to ginormous again. Though I did love the jogging stroller I ran with Grandgirl inside. Moved beautifully.
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I remember if mom had housekeeping money left the day before payday she would stop at the butcher shop for a steak, There were four kids; I think we had a steak once or twice in a year.
ReplyDeleteI don't think I ever had steak growing up. Chops mainly, roast on Sunday. Meat pies (steak and kidney). Always a milky type dessert, tapioca, rice pudding, macaroni pudding. We walked and ran everywhere so none of us were what you'd call fat.
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No stockpiling. We grew what we could. Butcher's meat was a luxury. My father hunted for rabbit and for fish. Today rabbit is considered a 'luxury'. It still sings of poverty to me. Milk was delivered, as was bread.
ReplyDeleteAnd there were NO accounts. If we couldn't pay for something outright we did without.
Very strict EC, it was strict in my house too as my father's wages were stretched extremely thin I think. We never talked money or sex for that matter. Fish on Friday and creative stuff with mince.
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I am too young for the deliveries at home, but I remember going to the market twice a week for live poultry (hens, doves and turkeys) freshly slaughtered rabbits and pheasants, fresh fruits and vegetables. Grocery shops - small ones, smelling from coffee and spice - on literally every corner. I could reach 5 by walking less than five minutes from my home. Bakeries, milk seller (bring the bottles back), buthcher's, fresh fish in the harbour shop, but never on a Monday.
ReplyDeleteThen I got older, the supermarkets grew and the small shops gradually closed. Now it's the same stuff everywhere with different brand names and prices.
And I remember post twice a day too, if you wrote to someone in your own city and wrote "here" on the envelope, you got the answer with the afternoon mail. And Sunday letter, make a cross ´from corner to corner and double the stamps would make the post bring out the letter even on a Sunday. Now we have post once a day (around 2 o'clock) from Monday through Friday. Nothing Saturday or Sunday, and minimum time for a letter is FIVE days!
Service certainly got worse Charlotte. I remember mum going to harbours when she got a chance and buying fresh fish off the boats. All regulated now (regulated, of course, being more profits for the wholesalers). I loved the smell of spices and fresh ground coffee beans. And the smell in the fruit shops downtown was indescribable.
DeleteWe have lost so much.
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I remember Victoria Sponge cakes, they're quite nice. When I was a child, Dad would come home on paydays and hand me a ten shilling note. I would go to the store around the other side of the block, pay two shillings off "the book", get three shillings worth of mild cheese, which the grocer would cut from a wheel with a wire, a packet of cigarettes for dad and sixpence worth of mixed lollies for me. Sometimes I would have to get a loaf of bread as well.
ReplyDeleteYes, it was a different way of using jam that was made over the summer in those sponge cakes.I remember buying "exotic" cheese for my mother downtown off a wheel by the 1/4 pound as a treat and "hazlett" by the thin slice, a kind of ham/pate. Those delicatessens were so exotic to me as a child.
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While my household has gone modern, I know quite a few who still do not store anything other than rice, dals and wheat flour and shop for fresh vegetables and other stuff evey day. They do not have a refrigerator at home!
ReplyDeleteNot a bad way to live Ramana, nothing like fresh veg and fruit.
DeleteI remember orange season in Ireland. Where the oranges could come in on the ships from Spain. Somehow everyone knew and there was a stampede for the oranges as just about everyone made marmalade.
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Food shopping has certainly changed since I was a youngster. I remember going with my mum to a tiny Sainsbury's, in the days when it was all queues for counter service and much fussing over giving you the precise amount of ham or cheese or whatever. And it was all very basic stuff- meat, eggs, cabbage etc. None of the avocados, aubergines, courgettes and peppers we're used to nowadays.
ReplyDeleteAlways basic Nick. I remember tasting spaghetti for the first time when I was about 16 and absolutely marvelling at how meat and tomatoes and cheese could be combined in such a fashion!
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I remember going to Horner's Music Store and my parents buying my first violin and bow for $35.
ReplyDeleteWhat a lovely memory Gigi. I was 14 when my dad bought me a piano. I got to pick it out!
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I have so many memories of shopping with my mom and dad at the Italian market in South Philly (made famous by the Rocky movies). My parents entertained a lot when I was young and went there all the time to load up on goodies, meats, etc., for their parties. It was great fun to walk around all the open-air stalls and shops. The smells, especially from all the bakeries, were just fantastic.
ReplyDeleteHow wonderful Elle. You reminded me of the English Market in Cork which was all indoors, so very old and the smells!! Everything was there and they had a restaurant in a gallery overhead so you could look down and watch all the action!
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My mother didn't drive, and the grocery store we used was miles away, on Dad's way home from work. He did most of the grocery shopping or took Mom when he was off work. At fourteen, I got my driver's license and took over the grocery shopping--where I met my future husband to whom I have now been married 51 years. I do remember that treats were not often included. We just couldn't afford store-bought treats. When I was younger, the group of children in our neighborhood would go round to all the neighbors and collect soft drink bottles to return to the little neighborhood grocery that stocked little beyond cigarettes, more pop, and snacks. We would pool our collections and decide collectively what we were going to buy, feeling so empowered by being able to make this decision for ourselves. Oddly, we sometimes chose a can of tuna and a loaf of bread. I'm pretty sure that was never my first choice, as I had a voracious sweet tooth. Our larder at home was thin enough, though, that I stayed slender, although never slender enough to please my model-thin mother.
ReplyDeleteYou are right, things used to be delivered. The milkman brought milk, cheese, butter, etc. and put them in a small milk box built into the brick wall of our home. That sounds like less pollution with one driver delivering to many homes, that would save lots of car trips.
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