What Temperature Your House ?

[digitS']

I was a "health food store" kid.

Grandma might have always had a big garden. Big garden - Big family of kids and then, the Great Depression!

Mom didn't like gardening work. However, she was accustomed to garden food. Before the Depression, and while they were trying to make the transition to town life, her parents had a restaurant. Grandma was a cook ... and a gardener.

My dad's family, livestock ... his father with a team of mules and a field of alfalfa. Peppers for a cash crop. I got the idea that the team of mules played an important part of life and work. For Dad, it was tractors and trucks ... and, potatoes .

Beef and potatoes ... I used to search through the freezer trying to find something other than beef. Bread was often homemade and a break from potatoes. Sliced bread was for civilization and school lunches. Veggie vitamins were something special. Eat 'em!

Steve

 

[flowerbug]

Put salt on your pieces of eggplant. Allow juices to escape, end of bitterness. Or grow Japanese eggplant as they are sweeter and can be eaten raw. Personally I don’t have the problem (with my soils) of bitter eggplant.

Eggplant is a “good for you” vehicle to combine so you use less starches-mousaka, eggplant parm, etc. can’t get my family to even try because “it’s not normal”-mashed potatoes, fries, etc....people!

i don't mind anything a little bitter so i'd skip any pre-processing of it before eating it and since i don't salt much of anything i wouldn't like that added.

i've eaten a fair amount of eggplant when i lived down south and when i've done more cooking for myself. it soaks up the flavors around it very well.

 

[flowerbug]

I was a "health food store" kid.

Grandma might have always had a big garden. Big garden - Big family of kids and then, the Great Depression!

Mom didn't like gardening work. However, she was accustomed to garden food. Before the Depression, and while they were trying to make the transition to town life, her parents had a restaurant. Grandma was a cook ... and a gardener.

My dad's family, livestock ... his father with a team of mules and a field of alfalfa. Peppers for a cash crop. I got the idea that the team of mules played an important part of life and work. For Dad, it was tractors and trucks ... and, potatoes .

Beef and potatoes ... I used to search through the freezer trying to find something other than beef. Bread was often homemade and a break from potatoes. Sliced bread was for civilization and school lunches. Veggie vitamins were something special. Eat 'em!

Steve

Grandma's Great Depression foods were onions, potatoes, bread and bacon with the bacon fat used as butter on the bread (she also rubbed all of her bread with bacon fat on the crust). she had a small garden in the city, but her side of the family had a farm in the country. all of the kids had to work on that at times and none of them really like gardening much now (some of the wives/kids do now).

we didn't have a freezer full of beef that often at all as kids, but once in a while Mom would broil a steak for Dad until it was like leather. we'd have a few bites of that but none of us really liked it. then somehow Mom discovered rare steaks and it was so much better. Dad's method of grilling anything was burning it and dousing it with beer to put out the fire so everything had the burnt hops seasoning. it is still about the only way i like chicken (other than at the chinese place).

once Mom and Dad split up then i was often brought in to do the after school cooking that Mom would have made something and i had to put it in the oven when i got home. i also did a lot of experimental cooking of odd things that we had on hand just because being an active kid and being always hungry and having no supervision at all i could try what i wanted. even if it didn't quite turn out i'd still eat it. i'm pretty sure one of the first things i cooked on my own was fried bologna.

the kitchen was always busy for us and the main hang out place. i did a lot of helping Mom can things or a lot of other cooking prep work for all the things she makes. while i didn't do them completely myself that kind of familiarity made me fearless about cooking. i'd go on later to cook for myself without thinking it odd at all or worrying about what went with what or my ability to rescue mistakes if needed. not much of what i cooked was inedible and i rarely burned things because i liked standing over the pan/stove to see what was happening. then again, since burned was a common theme of Dad's cooking on the grill i don't mind some things like that now and it is probably where my liking of dark toast and torched marshmallows came from.

 

[YourRabbitGirl]

I hate sleeping in a hot house. I lower heat right before bed to 6 makes it hard to get out of warm bed on cold morning. When I leave for work I lower to 58 when I come home 69 till bedtime. If I turn on fireplace heat never comes on

The ideal temperature inside the greenhouse is about 80 to 85 degrees Fahrenheit, so the first and most important lesson is learning how to keep the internal temperature steady. Not suitable for sleeping though..