A Month of Hand-Me-Down Recipes
Lettuce and Sugar Snack
My maternal grandpa always planted a huge garden. In that garden, he grew leaf lettuce. I remember eating lettuce and sugar when I was little and not particularly liking it. My mom tells me lettuce and sugar was quite a special treat when she was growing up.
I couldn’t buy leaf lettuce in our little hometown grocery store, so I bought butter lettuce in order to take the pictures. I tasted it.
I don’t like it any better now than I did some 60 years ago. 😉
Until next time,
Kaye Spencer
writing through history one romance upon a time
We had lettuce and sugar as a treat in our household and that was 75 years ago. I always understood that came from my paternal grandparents who came out from Germany in the late 1800’s. My mother who was Scotch couldn’t talk my Dad out of it but she was not at all keen as she thought the sugar was not good for our teeth. Many years since I have tried it now.
My grandpa had a huge garden each year. He planted radishes, which I loved, turnips, which I didn’t love, but I could eat a couple of bites raw, among other veggies that he put up for the winter. He’d pull the carrots and then stick them back in buckets of dirt and put the buckets in the back room of his house where it stayed cold as a well pit all winter. Whenever I wanted a fresh carrot, I pull one from the bucket. It was great.
This lettuce and sugar snack was not great. hahaha
My grandmother showed me a current bush when I was between 3 and 4 at her house. She said I could eat the currents. Only from that bush, no other plants. I was completely thrilled to have a plant that would give me food! Without an adult! I didn’t realize that the currents would only come once a year, not every day. But I remember loving the plant and adoring my grandmother for showing me the plant and giving me permission to eat the currents.
Ahh. What a wonderful memory. I had a similar experience with a gooseberry bush, but darn they were sour. haha