Home ec. or lessons for scratch cooking

[shootingstar]

It isn't laziness that keeps people from cooking and prevents them from being scorned by wealthy home cooks, it is poverty.

I never felt poverty or hunger as a child, living on a farm food abounds. Besides our crops we always had a garden and bartered what we did not grow with neighboring farms. But when I asked my Mom & Dad why we supported the UFW (United Farm Workers) since we owned a farm they replied something like "we are in the same boat. We earn about the same. The only difference is we own the land". So we were very poor, I never knew it.

We were urban poor, 5 children in 1-bedroom apartment in small southern Ontario city. (probably broke the fire code in maximum occupancy). My father was a restaurant cook in a Chinese restaurant his (not his own) his whole working life. We were just fortunate our mother was a full-time housewife who can't speak English..which probably limited employment opportunities (and caused other problems too complex to express here). Yes the food dollar had to stretch. No ethnic groceries (except for German stuff) in our city in the 1960's-1970's. But dishes still were 'Chinese' in taste and cooking technique for certain foods.

I dimly knew we were poor, perhaps by food because we were encouraged to eat whatever was on our plate. But didn't how poor until we moved into a 3 bedroom house later (where 6th child came later).

Sorry if I sounded clueless, but really that was not the intent. Depends on which context of "cluelessness". I disagree in some ways that poverty = possible lack of cooking skills. I have relatives who fell into the same income bracket for lst 15 years after immigrating to Canada. All restaurant or sewing factory workers. They bought food carefully in terms of saving money and cooked not to bad. (actually quite well, better than my mother). It wasn't access to local markets, but simply cooking with whole veggies and meats, habits probably carried over from growing up in Chinese rural villages where processed foods just wasn't the norm 40-60 years ago.


*Like cycling, you if you see a cyclist who maybe riding slow, that maybe that person already had cycled 100 kms. that day. Unless you ask, you don't know.