Just like last year, I know several people that are having ham for their feast on Thursday instead of the typical turkey. Since most of them are in their 20s, I assumed that it was just an example of the rebellious youth thumbing their noses at tradition.
But as you can see from the ad above for Sugardale Ham, which appeared in the Lorain Journal on November 24, 1953, this particular preference for pork has been going on for a long time.
The ad features our old pal, Sugardale mascot Hamlet all decked out in Pilgrim attire. As usual, the porcine traitor follows the directives of his corporate overlords by promoting the serving of his own kind.
The "Ham Hints" in the ad are kind of interesting. One includes a recipe for a white sauce that includes chopped peanuts (which potentially could be deadly to someone with a peanut allergy); the other suggests pan-broiling leftover ham and serving it on Melba toast with Welsh rarebit.
I wonder if the current generation of youth, who grew up eating chicken fingers and Lunchables, even know what Welsh Rarebit is?
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I've mentioned several times how the Bradys didn't have turkey on Thanksgiving when I was a kid. For many years, Mom made two birds: a capon and a duck.
Duck for Thanksgiving? Hey that reminds me of this great Daffy Duck cartoon!
9 comments:
We switched to ham when I was a kid more than a half-century ago after a tremendous argument with an elderly great-auntie and Mum over the "best" way to prepare a bird. Once she found out how much easier it was to prepare ham, that was all she wrote. We never went back to a full bird.
The great-aunt was on Mum's side of the family, thank goodness.
I can remember Thanksgivings where we had a turkey and a ham, a long time ago.
That ham and Welsh rarebit recipe is a perfect example of the unappetizing foods that made my youth such a culinary nightmare. Here is an article about the 1950s fad for encasing most everything but oysters in Jello:
https://getpocket.com/explore/item/making-and-eating-the-1950s-most-nauseating-jell-o-soaked-recipes
By the way - and maybe it's because I'm cranky - I dislike both turkey and ham. Chicken, please!
Buster:
As a Pennsyltuckian, I can tell you that, for certain, Jello is a dessert *and* salad *and* main dish. I mean, if you go to a pot-luck and there aren't -at least- a half-dozen different Jellos, then you're getting ripped off, plain and simple!
And one of them damn better well be lime Jello with shredded carrots or cabbage or both inside!
I looked at the article. Don't know about the shrimp. The liver... I'm gonna nope that one. Big time.
Don,
Yes, my forebears indulged in that Jello with carrots and cabbage specialty themselves. I didn't much care for it, and I particularly disliked the variant that added grapes.
It seems to me that Thanksgiving would be simpler if we would just encase the ham, turkey and what-have-you in Jello. That way, leftovers could just be retrieved from the fridge and served again on Christmas!
Possibly for years!
Laughing.
My gramma was the mistress of Jello desserts. It took me years to find out how she suspended the fruit so perfectly within the gelatinous mass. Turned out she’d partially fill the mold, tilt it, let it harden, and then put a layer of fruit inside. By tilting it this way and that she came up with all kids of patterns.
Her daughter just made the Jello and threw the fruit in it. Must have been a disappointment.
Now, I have a hankering for some J-E-L-L-O !!!
Don - I often wondered how they achieved that fly-in-amber quality but I didn't want to ask in case it gave them any ideas.
Buster - Just another (large) object to preserve in lime!
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