Grandma's Frugal Meals - Easy tips, techniques and old-time dishes for healthy eating

Book excerpt: Grandma’s Frugal Meals - Easy tips, techniques and old-time dishes for healthy eating Table of Contents Introduction Grandma’s Tips for Food Substitutions How to Make Perfect Yogurt Meat Choosing the right meat To Buy Storing Meat Baked Meat Patties Meat patty Variations How to Cure Your Own Hams Other Food Found Outdoors Rhubarb Jelly Sassafras Jelly Dandelion Greens Luncheon Corn Making Traditional Cornpone Corn Cakes Vegetables How to Store Vegetables Preparing Vegetables for Cooking Steaming Vegetables/Meat Cooking Frozen Vegetables Cooking Canned Vegetables How to Prepare Salads Tossed Salads Cole Slaw Coleslaw Dressing What Is Salad Dressing? Potato Salad Potato Salad Dressing Traditional Mayonnaise Conclusion Author Bio Publisher Introduction Knowing what to cook was as important as knowing how to cook, for grandma. She also learned how to make the best of whatever was in front of her, from her grandmother, and so on for centuries. Millenniums ago, her ancestors when gathering in the woods for herbs and vegetables while the menfolk of the family trapped and hunted for meat, game and anything else edible and delicious. It was then grandma’s many times great-grandmother’s job to make all these ingredients into something delicious and healthy as well as palatable and nourishing. So she used her instinct and her creativity to make delicacies with the ingredients available at hand. Although science-fiction already has stories about scientists making complete little nutritional packages in the shape of pills that are going to take the shape of food in the coming centuries, we are very fortunate that we do not have to face that sort of blandness in our meals today. We still have the good fortune of going to the nearest market or the nearest organic garden and collecting fresh greens, as well as herbs. We have plenty of fresh meat at hand. And best of all, we have all the ingredients to make good wholesome food. We only hope, judging by the pleasure most of us get from eating, the preparation, cooking and serving of this nutritious food is going to be a human activity which is going to be around for a long time. But most of us cannot afford to have some of the more exotic ingredients, of which we dream. Either they are not available to us in our city. Or perhaps they are beyond our budget. Unfortunately, for a large percentage of people all over the world, budget constraints are the reason why they have to make do with makeshift meals instead of eating what nature intended for them – good wholesome, natural ingredients. Grandma was a frugal person. She lived in a time when the dollars earned by grandpa had to be stretched in such a manner that the whole family could be fed and fed well. Times changed and times of prosperity came along, and the eating habits of the whole family changed. Instead of two or three healthy meals in a day, there was food aplenty and the whole family could now afford to eat whatever they wanted, whenever they wanted, and in large quantities. This naturally gave rise to problems including obesity. Also, by not regulating the meal intake as well as the quality of the meals, the quality of the general health of grandma’s children deteriorated as time went by. However, the circle of financial constraints has gone and come around again and the time for tightening belts and looking at our budgets has become the top priority. A majority of us all over the world again are looking for ways and means in which we can get the proper nutrition in the form of proteins, vitamins, minerals and energy, which our bodies required to keep functioning in a healthy manner.