Family Stories
Cooking and My Families
The idea for this particular blog started with a comment by my cousin Marie about her mother's style of cooking. That led me to some interesting research and this blog.
What you eat and how it's prepared is often very family and culture driven. Knowing that my maternal Grandmother, Ruth, was a pretty horrid cook, I wondered why...
My maternal grandmother, Ruth, was raised on Staten Island, New York. Hers was one of the old families, dating back to the Dutch settlement of New Amsterdam. The family name was, and I'm not kidding, Van Winkle. As near as I can tell, the family was at least upper middle class. The men of the family worked, but the women stayed home, mostly. Like all families of middle class status or above, they had servants. As Ruth was growing up, they probably had at least a cook, a maid, a kitchen helper, a man-of-all-work, and a gardener - most of which probably lived on site. The shift to staff living in their own homes largely happened after WWI.
Side note: Ruth married Vincent who was the son of (well to do) Irish immigrants. Ruth's mother, Kate married John Turnpenny (I can't make these names up) an immigrant from Yorkshire, England. John's family was mostly "in service" there (the men primarily as gardeners, which is no surprise). If you think servant class from the series Downton Abbey you've got it right. Kate's mother married an immigrant man from central England. Before that it was mostly descendants of the Dutch.
Ruth and Vincent married in June of 1914, just a month prior to the assassination of the Duke Ferdinand, which was the start of WWI. I believe Vincent was not allowed to serve in the military for several reason. He was married, with a growing family, and he was employed at the shipyards, getting navy ships ready for service in the War. The two of them had their own home on Staten Island, but move back to her family home (Ruth's journal note reads :Moved home with Mother September 1, 1915." This was about 3 months after the birth of their first child, Alice.
Ralph was born 2 years later, but he was a sickly child, not expected to live. Everett was born in April of 1919, after the end of WWI.
World War I brought about a big change on how people lived, at least for the middle classes and above. With the lack of men, the women had to fill in. By the end of the war, only the wealthy had live in servants. Middle class families still had servants, but they went to their own homes after work. Also there were less of them. Ruth's family, by the end of the War would have still had a cook, maids, and possibly a man servant to help with heavier jobs and gardening. Also, I suspect, based on Ruth's limited child raising skills, there was a nursemaid.
The end of the War brought about a sad chapter in the life of Ruth and Vincent's families. Ruth's grandmother died in November of 1919. All three of Ruth's children, including new baby Everett had chicken pox in April of 1919. All survived to come down with measles less than a year later. Ralph survived that to then deal with pneumonia.
But while Ralph was recovering there were 3 deaths in the family. It appears that Everett, Ruth's grandfather, and Vincent's grandmother (who raised him) all came down with the flu. This quite likely was the Spanish Influenza. That particular pandemic killed an espimated 3-5% of the world's population. It took both grandparents.
Ruth's mother had a stroke and died 6 days later. Son Adelbert (Del) was born 4 months later. The troubles continued. On Feb 1, 1922, only a year after the firth of Del, Ruth's father was knocke overboard on the dock of Kings Plaster Mills. He never recovered and died on July 13, 1922.
Marion was born 6 months later. But with the deaths, the entire older generation was gone. The house and other property belonging to Ruth's family was sold and the proceeds split up amongst her and her siblings. In May of 1926, Ruth, Vincent, and their family of 5 moved to upstate New York and their ill fated dairy farm. Ruth was pregnant during the move and gave birth to Louise only 2 months after their arrival.
So what does all that have to do with cooking? Based on what we know, Ruth was raised with servants. We know that she moved to the dairy farm with the ability to bake. But cooking? Cleaning house? Probably not so much. Eyewitness accounts state that Ruth's style of cooking was to boil everything. And I mean everything. She also didn't use spices. It made for very bland meals. She had learned to can at some point because my mom remembers not only canning fruits and vegetables, but also eating them. Ruth's oatmeal was, apparently especially bad and I have a story about that.
After the family moved to California, for a long time Ruth and Vincent lived in a small house behind the big, front one. I have some memories of the two houses. The front house was a Craftsman style with a big, stone front porch. The back house had windows along the dining room that opened out at the bottom. At the time there were no screens. When they were old enough, sometimes my Aunt Louise would leave her two kids to stay with Ruth and Vincent for a few weeks during the summer. One day, when my cousins were visiting, Vincent noticed that one area of the flower beds by the dining room wasn't growing right. He loved his gardening, like so much of the rest of the family. To his surprise, he discovered two piles of decaying oatmeal. It seems my cousins had, when Ruth was distracted, dumped their morning oatmeal out the windows for several days. Vincent laughed and discretely moved the offending cereal to the mulch pile. He knew how bad his wife's oatmeal was too.
Did Ruth's lack of cooking skills pass down the generations? Somewhat actually. Alice went away to college. She boarded with a family there and helped out-learning cooking skills along the way. She also spent her summers working at a resort at Tupper Lake. If she was working in the kitchen she learned valuable skills that she'd need with her future family of 6 kids! On those rare occasions when Alice was home, she would often volunteer to cool "To help mom out." The rest of the family was truly grateful. Ruth would sometimes wonder where the new spices came from after Alice left.
Marion continued the tradition of boiling everything. That's the story from her daughter that got me thinking about all this. Luckily Marion's children are all good cooks, so that tradition didn't continue!
I don't know about Louise. She lived with Ruth and Vincent until her marriage to Paul, but my mom doesn't remember Louise doing much, if any of the cooking. Knowing Louise, she probably took cooking classes and worked hard to be a good cook. I don't remember her meals being anything spectacular, but her pies...
My mom, as the youngest went into her marriage with almost no cooking training. I think living with Alice helped, but she was woefully ignorant. A copy of the best cookbook on the market at the time, "The Joy of Cooking" was a blessing. With that, the help and patience of her husband, and more than a few calls to her sister Alice, Joan became a decent cook. Her specialty, like mine, was that of decent meals that could be prepared quickly. Because of her own lack, my mom made sure that I could cook meals before I left home. I'm very grateful.
Now that we've looked at my mom's family and their trials with cooking, I want to look at my dad's side for a comparison. I don't know much about Harry's family, but I do know about Lucille's family and food. Lucille was born on the family farm that her mother Lildon's family owned. Minnesota farm family. And the stories I've heard about family dinners confirms that. There were no empty places for more food. Every possible place was filled with main dishes, side dishes, breads, jams, deserts, etc. Lots and lots of good farm food. It makes me hungry just thinking about it.
So that's the differences found with cooking and my families.
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