Are you planning on a traditional Easter Sunday dinner of ham?
These days, traditions seem to be dying out. I remember last year at Thanksgiving, there were more people at my work planning on having ham on that day instead of turkey. A few said it was just too much work to prepare the traditional stuffed bird.
But ham is different. With the popularity and availability of the spiral-sliced, pre-cooked variety, I don't think it's going away as the definitive Easter choice anytime soon.
Seventy years ago, ham was the featured item in several local grocery store ads. First up is this ad for longtime Lorain grocery store Fisher Foods. The full-page ad ran in the Lorain Journal back on April 2, 1953.
It's quite a meaty lineup. Besides the whole or shank ham, there's oven-ready turkeys, stewing chickens, fresh pork sausage, fresh ground meat (beef?) and oven-ready ducklings.
And if you prefer your ham from a can, there's Armour's Star Cooked Canned Ham. Here's a full-color 1954 ad for your viewing enjoyment.
Here's the second full-page local grocery store ad from Easter 1953 with the emphasis on ham. This one's for the IGA chain and ran in the Journal on April 2, 1953.
Like the Fisher Food ad, IGA ad promotes a carnivorous Easter menu, with rib steaks and pork sausage. And that's no baloney (which is also featured in the ad for 45 cents a pound).
There's a nice listing of the various IGA stores at the bottom of the ad, with Arti's, Ridgeview, Jay's (on Oberlin Avenue), Pazder's, Carl's, Central and Mischka's (in Amherst).
One last thing. I know it's in bad taste (my observation, not the ham), but the rabbit in the ad kind of reminds me of World War II-era caricatures of, uh, Hitler. He's missing his trademark mustache, but that big lock of black hare hair... oh, forget it.
Continuing our Parade of Ham, here's an ad for Polansky's, a favorite repeat topic on this blog, since I shop there once in a while. The ad ran in the Journal on April 2, 1953.
4 comments:
The Matrix can't figure out what rabbit tastes like, so it's kind of like chicken.
Actually, not really.
A pen-raised rabbit is a lot like chicken, but is a little "meatier."
A wild rabbit tastes a lot stronger than chicken 'cause their diet is uncontrolled.
Some folks say we should switch from beef to rabbit because you can raise far more meat in the same space with the same amount of food and water. The ratio's five to one or something like that, I think.
That's not accounting for the "Bugs Bunney Effect," however...
I've had rabbit a couple of times, I can eat it, but it's not something I 'd seek out on my own. Also tasted raccoon and possum, the less said about them, the better. I've known people who had to trap or shoot such critters for table meat, and I 'm grateful that I never did.
Stuff that isn’t raised to eat can be highly variable.
I’d have to be pretty hard up to eat raccoon or possum. Those’re “varmints” to me.
But, like deer, if it’s eating corn from a farmer’s field it tastes far different than one that chewing up acorns and pinecones.
Duck, too. Some eat plants, other eat fish. Way different taste between the two.
Believe it or not, there's a thing called "rabbit poisoning". If you try to live on rabbit meat exclusively you won't live 2 weeks. You'll literally die from it. They are too lean. Turns out our bodies need good ol' fat after all.
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