Remembering childhood mealtimes
Kath Williams has worked in sales, education, social work and programme writing. She is currently living in Nelson, New Zealand, with her partner, Peter, and works in mental health.
The Kitchen Prayer
God Bless my little kitchen, I love its every nook.
And bless me as I do my work, Wash pots and pans and cook.
And may the meals that I prepare,
Be searched from above,
With thy great blessing, And thy love,
But most of all, thy love.
The apron
Every Mum had one of these. They came in all shapes, sizes and colours; some long and some short, but guaranteed that if you went in to the kitchen, you had to put one on. I am of course talking about the apron, or the “pinny”. As one lady recalls, “They were always worn in the kitchen back then and came off in a shot if a car pulled into the drive or if someone knocked at the door... those were the days!”
I found a delightful poem that epitomises the many uses of the beloved apron:
Grandma's Apron
I don't think our kids know what an apron is.
The principal use of Grandma's apron was to protect the dress underneath, because she only had a few, it was easier to wash aprons than dresses and they used less material, but along with that, it served as a potholder for removing hot pans from the oven. It was wonderful for drying children's tears, and on occasion was even used for cleaning out dirty ears…
From the chicken coop, the apron was used for carrying eggs, fussy chicks, and sometimes half-hatched eggs to be finished in the warming oven.
When company came, those aprons were ideal hiding places for shy kids.
And when the weather was cold grandma wrapped it around her arms.
Those big old aprons wiped many a perspiring brow, bent over the hot wood stove.
Chips and kindling wood were brought into the kitchen in that apron.
From the garden, it carried all sorts of vegetables.
After the peas had been shelled, it carried out the hulls.
In the fall, the apron was used to bring in apples that had fallen from the trees.
When unexpected company drove up the road, it was surprising how much furniture that old apron could dust in a matter of seconds.
When dinner was ready, Grandma walked out onto the porch, waved her apron, and the men-folk knew it was time to come in from the fields to dinner.
It will be a long time before someone invents something that will replace that 'old-time apron' that served so many purposes.
REMEMBER:
Grandma used to set her hot baked apple pies on the window sill to cool.
Her granddaughters set theirs on the window sill to thaw.
They would go crazy now trying to figure out how many germs were on that apron. I never caught anything from an apron…But Love. (Author Unknown)
Mealtimes
Back to the family dynamics. Meals were always eaten at the dinner table with all the family. No elbows on the table, no rude noises and no talking, unless you were being spoken to. However there was this one time (isn’t there always?) when my girlfriend and I broke two of those rules. And yes, punishment followed.
I was having tea at my girlfriend’s place one evening and we got the giggles for no apparent reason. Well, two giggling 10 year olds at the tea table was not the right behaviour at all. So our punishment? We had to go and stand to eat our tea at the kitchen sink, which made us giggle even more. So, no more tea or pudding for us, and off to the bedroom we were sent for the rest of the night.
Mum ran the house like clockwork. Meals were always eaten at the tea table. One of the children had to set the table and that included a table cloth, knives and fork, salt and pepper, dish with jam in it, a butter plate, sugar bowl and plates.
We had breakfast at 7am, morning tea at 10am (on the weekends), lunch at noon, afternoon tea at 3pm and dinner at 5pm and supper at 9pm, unless it was a school night, and then no supper.
Mealtime had its own unique set of rules:
1. Wash your hands before eating.
2. Do not put your elbows on the table. Or as Brian mentioned, “Uncooked elbow joints off the table.” (Cliff mentioned that we were never allowed to leave the table till we had eaten all of our food. And we could easily sit there for an hour or two not eating. The worst was junket for pudding, because the longer you left it the worse it got.)
3. You always had to ask permission to leave the table. “May I please leave the table?” was often followed by, “Only if you have finished everything on your plate.” And this was always hard because, as Cliff said, “If you got served tripe or broad beans, you were at that table for a very, very long time.”
4. Use the correct cutlery and you never used a pudding spoon for soup, always the soup spoon.
5. We were always expected to be back home for the traditional Sunday roast.
6. We all got dished up the same food whether we liked it or not. There was NEVER any “what would you like for dinner?” or different foods for them and us! Mum would say, “It's not a restaurant.”
7. We always had to say thank you for the meal after we were allowed to leave the table.
8. No pudding for anyone if you didn’t eat your main meal.
9. Do not talk with food in your mouth.
10. Close your mouth while you are eating at the table.
In one family, if they didn’t eat their main meal, they got it served up for breakfast, cold the next day and every day until it got eaten. They learned very fast to eat what they were given.
Oh how harsh the rules were. But we learned to eat everything on our plates and not become fussy eaters.
“Grace? Who was Grace?”
I remember when I was old enough to sit at the table, we had to say grace at granddad’s house. Granddad said, “Who would like to say Grace this evening?”
Well I didn’t know any different and thought I was so clever and said “GRACE” in a rather loud voice. My brother started giggling and got glared at by Mum. Granddad said, “Anyone else?” trying not to laugh I might add. And then he said he would do it. I looked around and everyone had their hands clasped together in their lap, heads bowed and eyes closed while Granddad said the grace for the evening meal. I kept opening one eye to see what they were doing.
In a lot of households, grace was said before you ate. Ours was very simple, “For what we are about to receive, may the Lord make us truly grateful. Amen.” Then we were allowed to eat our meal.
Others had the more basic grace: “Two, four, six, eight. Hog in, don’t wait.” Frances recalls the funniest one was the one her brother Colin found, "Some have meat and canna eat, and some hae meat that want it. We hae meat and we can eat and sae the Lord be thank it.”
Share your childhood memories of mealtime in the comments below.