I loved my Nana very, very much. She was my paternal grandmother and, in my very young, impressionable eyes, was the final authority on the culinary arts.
Of course, this was the early to mid-1960s, and Nana was a product of the times. And, let’s be honest, those were some dark times in the American food scene.
It was a landscape dominated by meat-based gelatin molds, a heavy reliance on mayonnaise as flavoring and a somewhat cavalier attitude toward overall food safety.
I have fond memories of attending family events at her home and seeing the dining room table covered with an array of appetizers and finger foods. Many of them were garnished with large dollops of mayonnaise.
There would be deviled eggs, shrimp cocktail and celery sticks stuffed with cream cheese.
They were all laid out well ahead of time and left out until the last guest had departed. That meant a lot of perishable food was sitting in a warm room slowly congealing for hours at a time.
The notion of it presenting any sort of food-borne illness issue was never even considered.
I know now what I did not back then — just because my grandmother did it and we survived does not mean eating hours-old, warm deviled eggs is a good idea.
Today more and more people are seeking the simplicity and hands-on control that comes with raising and processing their own food. They want to get back to the methods used by our grandparents.
Even the unsafe methods.
Their mantra is, “Our ancestors did it, and they were fine.”
Yeah, the thing is, not always. Things like salmonella, Hepatitis A, E. coli, Cryptosporidium, Cyclospora and botulism are real and can be very deadly.
It’s a big reason a lot of our ancestors had shorter lifespans than we enjoy today.
There was a time when the best way to store a surplus of chicken eggs was placing them in a glass jar and filling it with a mixture of water and pickling lime. Some people today look at that and see a bounty waiting to be eaten.
I look at a jar of eggs floating around in cloudy liquid and all I can see is salmonella while-you-wait.
It’s called water glassing, and it’s a process that can promote the growth of a bacteria so deadly that only a handful of laboratories in this country even possess the protocols to research it.
Proper canning is a great way to preserve fruits, vegetables and even meats. Not so much for dairy products. But because our grandparents canned milk and butter, I hear people insisting it’s fine.
Nope, just, no.
Research has shown there is no safe way to can milk or butter. Once again, the risk is botulism.
The fats in butter actually protect the botulism spores from the heat generated during the canning process.
Speaking of canning, our ancestors were the original reuse and recycle crowd. They often did not have the time or the ability to run to the store for new canning jars and lids, so they used what they had on hand.
That’s okay, to a point.
Canning jars can be reused one season to the next as long as they are free of cracks or chips. Modern lids on the other hand are good for one round of processing and one only.
Your grandparents probably used those pretty canning jars with metal-hinged tops. Stay away from those.
For them to seal properly you need a new rubber gasket to place under the lid. And even if you can find one these days, it’s not the most reliable seal.
And never, ever use an old spaghetti or other sauce jar that looks like a canning jar — they simply are not made for that.
Leaving cooked food out for hours at a time was once the standard way of dealing with leftovers.
I remember my own mother covering what was left of a roasted chicken or turkey with foil and sticking it back in the oven overnight or longer.
I now know that any leftovers should be immediately packed up in sealable containers and allowed to cool by putting them in the refrigerator. It does not take long for illness-causing bacteria to develop and breed otherwise.
Listen, I understand wanting to emulate the things our beloved grandparents or great-grandparents did. They did a lot of things really well. It’s just that food safety was not one of them.
I don’t blame them at all, they were working with the knowledge and tools they had at the time. I get it.
The generational fascination with meat or seafood salads encased in gelatin or meatballs swimming in a grape jelly-based gravy? Those still elude me.