Programming note

There's a new item in the links ...

I don't often add new links to the list over on the left, but there's one that I have decided is worthwhile: Food ... have you eaten today? For those of you whose primary interest is sailing, it might be disappointing. It's the blog of a retired schoolteacher in Ohio, and it consists mainly of memories of the past, especially as applied to food, and especially as applied to the years when she was growing up, the end of the Great Depression and the beginning of World War II. Times may have been tough, but she was too young to know that.

She was one of three children of a single mother who worked in a factory. The family was never starving, but they did all have to work to get the most out of the food that they had. Many of the techniques they used were very similar to what I've heard my mom's Arkansas relatives describe from that same era. The food may have been dictated by austerity, but it still had a wholesome quality about it.

Her most recent post was about the little grocery store in the neighborhood in Dayton where she grew up. (No, it's not the one in the picture above; that's a grocery featured in a wonderful assembly of WPA photos that was published in the Denver Post not too long ago, that Patty's blog post immediately brought to mind.) I could easily imagine my dad's Ohio relatives visiting such a store -- my grandfather's German family would get the sauerkraut and pumpernickel bread, but my grandmother's Irish family would definitely go for the Wonder Bread.