Comments from readers: Entry: Teach a man to fish
Posted/Updated: 02/24/2009 05:06 PM
Russ (russellestes@hotmail.com)- Hi Marilyn,
That is great! I read a few of your articles. Very well written! I love
the latest article. I've always been one who wanted to know how things
work; not take it for granted that my car starts, where my food comes
from, etc. I think articles like yours will help those who really want
to make things stretch see that it's really not that hard. Just takes a
different way of thinking.
The part about having rice with your dishes reminds me of my
grandmother (mom's mom). I lived with her while finishing 4th grade
after we moved back from Washington state in 1983. I recall she always
had a pot of rice on the stove or counter and we were REQUIRED to eat
rice whenever we had food. So for breakfast, we either had our eggs we
gathered from the coop or had top ramen soup - with rice. For lunch, we
might have had fried bologna or spam - with rice. My favorite comfort
food to this day is a Filipino dish, hamburger with green beans in
tomato sauce - over rice:) I always hated getting to the left over rice
from the bottom of the pot because it is usually hard and chewy. So,
you guessed it, we had rice pudding...ugh:)
I'm glad my dad, who is not from that culture, grew up with poor food
too. His parents were dust bowl migrants to California. He grew up on
"Okie" food. I was very surprised when we visited my brother in
Mississippi, he was already used to eating greens, black eye peas,
"sweet pahtatah" pie, etc. My grandparents drank iced coffee before
starbucks 'invented' it. It was left over brew from that mornings
breakfast and was poured over ice (i'm sure with milk and sugar)
instead of throwing it out. I remember visiting grandma in Fresno one
summer. We had tomato sandwiches for lunch. I thought, "no meat!?" I
can still remember they were the biggest tomatoes I had ever seen. The
slice covered the whole piece of bread!
When we lived in Washington state, we had the hardest time. We lived
across the street from a Marine base in Tacoma. There were a lot of
personnel who lived off base in the apartment complex we lived in. Some
that we got to know received rations or had access to them. So we had a
pantry full of 'food' cleverly concealed in brown plastic bags and
green metal containers. I remember we had crab that we fished for one
time. I'm sure we had rice with it. My favorite dinner we had one time
while living there. The blackberries were in full season and just got
done picking bowls of them from along side the road. My folks didn't
know what do with them since there was nothing else in the house. My
mom said, "We have flour, some butter, etc" We got to have blackberry
pie for dinner:)
So, living on food stamps, food bank, and blocks of government cheese,
isn't bad when we need it. We pay for it when we are working! And I
always will remember what my dad says: "Everything was ok as long you
kids belly was full" and "home is where you hang your hat". Sure seems
like those sayings are coming back into fashion. I always thought it
was interesting to see how society has gone from a relatively
self-reliant one to one utterly dependent on consumerism, in such a
short amount of time (1 or 2 generations). So it's a good thing in not
letting your experience as a homemaker and many mouths to feed go by
the wayside. Keep it up!!!
Russ