It didn't seem depressing at the time

Ok, so I'm old - or at least no longer young.  I remember stuff -  I remember a time when "butter" came in a white slab accompanied by a little package of yellow stuff.  It was my job at about 2-1/2 years of age to stand up to the table on a chair and mash that yellow dye into the white chunk until it looked amazingly just like butter!  Heaven knows cause I certainly don't what went into the yellow additive - probably some awful chemical that was never intended for human consumption.  But I was very proud to be an integral part of getting food ready for the table.

I remember that as time passed and I got older I was allowed to ride my bicycle to the farm up the street and pick up the milk and cream.  I don't know if my parents paid for it with actual money or if they traded off for garden produce or what.  I do know that part of the job was to not jiggle the bottles too much because when I got them back to the house my mother would skim the cream off the top of each bottle (it always rose to the top - just like cream is supposed to) and use it for coffee or even whipped cream topping for the chocolate deserts she made on special occasions.

As time went on I remember the Badger's Creamery truck that used to come every few days to pick up the empty milk bottles and leave whatever my mother had on the ordering slip.  We were really stylin then!  On a good day the Cushman Bakery truck would come too and that meant my mother didn't have to bake for a couple of days.

Holidays were very traditional in the home where I grew up - heaven help the person who even considered anything but a turkey for Thanksgiving and another one at Christmas.  I remember the main dish was always accompanied by the same side dishes:  squash (squashed alone - no fancy additives), mashed potatoes (with butter, not milk), boiled onions (and I mean boiled until they were well and truly boiled!), carrots, cranberry sauce (home made) and stuffing.

Ah, that stuffing:  made from a recipe that to this day no one but my son and I use.  It now is known by the younger generation as Depression Stuffing and is viewed as only marginally eatable at best.  I love it and so does my older son - I  don't think that any of the naysayers have actually tasted it - it was condemned out of hand just looking at the list of ingredients!  One of my granddaughters college friends even wrote an ode to it that was tastefully written and, if I remember correctly, presented in it's own little booklet.

What I'm not sure that people realize is that back in the day we/they used the ingredients that were available - which a lot of the time did not include things that we take for granted in today's world.  Now something that grew on another continent and in another time zone pops up on the produce counter at the local Market Basket or Shaws within an incredibly short time.  So if you want some exotic fruit or novel ingredient for a recipe you can pretty much count on finding it fairly easily.

So that stuffing the younger generation delights in dubbing "depression stuffing" probably actually was the child of necessity.  To me that makes it that much better cause my mother took what she could actually lay her hands on and made something yummy.  And it's not that I eat it as an exercise in self discipline - I eat it because I like it.

That's my story and I'm stickin to it!