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This is a great point. My great-great-great grandmother lived in Martin County, Kentucky, most likely ate mostly cornbread and string beans in fatback her whole
by joe5150 11y ago
This is a great point. My great-great-great grandmother lived in Martin County, Kentucky, most likely ate mostly cornbread and string beans in fatback her whole life, and never saw quinoa or kale so long as she lived before dying in childbirth. I'm not exactly sold on this as a model lifestyle.
- grogenaut 11y agoKale was in heavy use in the 19th century (re Wikipedia and other sources). Kale and Chard are also heartier plants and can be grown late in the year, giving you those fresh leafy greens way after other stuff gives up. Given that Kale gets it's name from the Scott's Irish... and that That area was 57% english, 25% scott, 9% irish... yeah they very likely ate kale. Fatback too. Probbably whole parts of the hog. The corn for the cornbread, however, most likely went into whiskey depending on the age of your great^3 as up until prohibition, thanks to Andrew Jackson, it was one of the most efficient ways to move corn around (in barrels of distillate), as ~10 bushels -> 1Bbl of Whiskey. Quinoa, however, was much later, coming not from europe, but peru. (edited for tone)
- joe5150 11y agoLol...I take it you've never been to that part of the USA.
- grogenaut 11y agoActually my wife is from that area but sure I quoted links instead of anecdote so I'm obviously making it up. What's your data from that time period?
- joe5150 11y agoMy data is generations of my own family living in the same place, where I have also lived functionally my whole life, about which I think I'm allowed a little introspection in this casual discussion without having to cite some manner of study you'd approve of. Whether I'm off the mark about kale or not is far beside the point. The fact is that my great-great-great grandmother and my great-great grandmother and on down to probably no more than a couple of generations ago...none of them would have had reliable or easy access to the kind of fresh food I do today, and they wouldn't have been familiar with the bigger portion of what I can find in practically any grocery store anywhere. It's not about whether or not there was kale growing in East Kentucky.
- kragen 11y agoI don't believe you have much idea what your great-great-great-grandmother did or didn't have access to, or what she was or wasn't familiar with. I'm sure you never met her. Did you read her diary or something? Have you tried cooking from her recipe book? Or are you just assuming, based on no evidence, that East Kentucky in 1810 was basically the same as East Kentucky in 1920, or whenever your grandparents grew up? It's plenty likely that you and your own parents wouldn't have been familiar with the bigger portion of what your great-great-great-grandmother ate, either. And some of that was fresh food. East Kentucky had a lot more fresh plants in it back then than it does now.
- joe5150 11y agoI'm not very interested in what you believe, actually. My point—which is that the way people subsisted on the Kentucky frontier 200 years ago would probably not have been congruent with Pollan's idyllic notion of the good food granny ate in the old country—doesn't seem to be of anyone else's interest. I won't belabor it.