Mary stretched a dollar with frugal shopping and a liberal garden. Yet her main meals were abundant and varied. She cycled through a two week schedule, putting dinner on the table when husband Clint came home from work at 5:15. Saturday evening was more casual but supper was still early. Sunday dinner was served at 1:00 p.m., after church.
Weekday meals Tuesday through Thursday: Spaghetti and meat balls, chicken pot pie, beef stew, meat loaf, hamburgers (no buns) with gravy, chile con carne, roast chicken, fried chicken, stuffed peppers, cabbage rolls, vegetable soup, chicken soup, broiled steak, breaded veal cutlet, fried calf liver, creamed chipped beef, macaroni and cheese, navy bean soup, green pea soup.
Friday: breaded fish, fried tomatoes and white gravy, breaded zucchini, potato soup swimming in butter and dusted with paprika served with fried doughnuts rolled in granulated sugar, New England clam chowder, fried breaded oysters, crab cakes.
Sunday: roast beef, roast pork, baked chicken. (Son Clint called the roasts “boiled” when cooked in a pressure cooker.) Sunday evening--no cooking, a self-serve slice of pie or cake.
Monday: “leftovers” from Sunday.
Vegetables and fruit: nearly every meal had mashed potatoes with gravy for husband Clint. (He claimed repeatedly he could eat a mashed potato sandwich.) In season--from the garden—peas, carrots, beets, radishes, corn, green and yellow string bean, cabbage, zucchini, and leaf lettuce, apple sauce. Out of season, from the big chest freezer in the basement—yellow corn, green and yellow string beans, lima beans, succotash (lima beans and corn); or from the cupboard under the cellar stairs—canned tomatoes, bread and butter pickles, beets, and strawberry, cherry, and grape jams beneath crowns of white wax.
Constants at the dinner table included mashed potatoes (of course), iced tea with wedges of lemon, coleslaw, bread and butter (never margarine because of husband Clint’s aversion to it). Homemade butter rolls appeared on many Sundays.
Desserts peaked on Sunday. Cakes included lemon with lemon zest icing, white cake with boiled coconut icing, brown sugar with burnt sugar icing. Pie with flaky, tender crust ran a broad range of berries and fruit—strawberry, pumpkin, rhubarb, blueberry, cherry, peach, apple, lemon meringue. Coconut cream and pineapple cream were custard rich. Passing trends were shoo fly pie, pineapple upside down cake, Boston cream pie (from a box mix), jelly roll (thin sponge cake spread with home jam), lemon chiffon/buttermilk pie (a puffy concoction with a sweet-sour, melt in your mouth texture), cream puffs and éclairs, strawberry shortcake made from sweet biscuits and homegrown strawberries--in more frugal days topped with whipped evaporated milk.
Mary made butter cookies in various shapes extruded from an aluminum Wearever cookie press and garnished with multi-colored sprinkles, Toll House cookies, (Br’er Rabbit) molasses cookies, and at Christmas walnut balls dusted with confectioner’s sugar
Mary’s signature confection , of course, learned from Eva her German mother, was “torn britches:” an eggy dough rolled paper thin, cut in rectangles and slit two or three times, deep fried to a golden brown, and when cool sprinkled with confectioner’s sugar. Making torn britches took at least two hours.
Around 90, after planning, preparing, and cleaning up more than 20,000 meals, Mary decided she needed a few "cookless" days a week. Since then, on Tuesday and Thursdays she's allowed a frozen dinner for her and Clint.
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