Meghan - What was local food for my grandmothers growing up?

After my Day 2 post, Mary asked that I should talk to my grandparents about what it was like for them growing up and where their food came from, so on our next dinner night this week I took the opportunity and I had no idea where the topic was going to go, if they were going to remember or had even sort of payed attention while they were growing up. To my surprise my maternal grandmother told me all sorts of interesting things that I had never heard her talk about before and when I mentioned it to my mother, she indicated it was new to her also. So I must have just asked the question that had maybe never truly been asked for her to share before or maybe it was just my sincere interest that brought all the details of her childhood food sources back to life. 

Chickpeas in pods

Enough suspense already eh! My maternal grandmother grew up in Southern Saskatchewan and she told me that they had a huge garden where they grew; beans, tomatoes, cucumbers, peppers, zucchini and squash and I suspect much more. They had a cow to meet their dairy supply, which my grandmother started to share how her mother (my great grandmother) would have made yogurt. They also had chickens and even turkeys. My grandmother said that they had so many turkeys that they would sell them off to the neighbours and towns people. I guess my great grandmother was very good at raising turkeys. I asked my grandmother if they grew any of their own lentils or other grains for which she could not recall but given that Canada grows a significant amount of lentils I am sure they were not that hard to come by. My grandmother told me that they used to grow chickpeas and for a special treat her father would roast them over the fire for them to enjoy and it tasted amazing. Oh they sounded so good as she was describing this because I love chickpeas and I only which we could get them locally and then experience that warm toasted sort of taste that sounds amazing. I bet they would taste so much better then the dried chickpeas that I often enjoy as a snack. Don't get me wrong I love them, but this would elevate it to a new level. I will have to see if around here we could grow chickpeas and get on that. I had not given much thought to if they grew in pods like other beans but they do and just need to be harvested from small bushes just the same as soy beans (which I have brown in our yard, although that was several years ago). According to the Saskatchewan Ministry of Agriculture, Canada is one of the major exporters of chickpeas. Now that I know this I am going to be doing more research and find out how I can buy "local" (ie Canadian) chickpeas rather then from Turkey or Myanmar. Who knew we grew so much chickpeas!


I asked my paternal grandmother about the food she ate growing up and her response was very different from my maternal grandmother's. First I must way that there is 10 years difference between them with my paternal grandmother being in her 90s and my material grandmother in her 80s, so different times but also different locations. My paternal grandmother grew up just east of the Saskatchewan border in Alberta, first in a very small town and then they moved in Saskatoon. She is the second youngest of eight girls so her main memories about food was that she ate whatever her older siblings didn't want to eat which sometimes left her with not a lot of food. She does not recall having a garden or vegetables often at the dinner table but does remember a lot of potatoes and porridge as staples as a young girl. They had a neighbour, a bachelor, that worked his own land and often would bring by some of his harvest to my grandmother's family as my great grandfather was not around and their land did not produce anything. When they moved to the city, she recalls having exposure to more and different vegetables but sadly nothing sticks out in her mind other then her enjoyment of parsnips and turnips. Sadly I feel I may have started asking these questions too late but never the less, I will keep asking the questions in hope that each time she will remember a bit more and then I can piece together a bigger picture of what her local food looked like growing up in the prairies the 20s and 30s.  


I have yet to hear from my material grandfather so he is the next on my list to ask and I am sure his stories will be interesting as he was out on the open range with their grazing livestock for a large part of his growing up years and not at "home" having dinner with his family being the eldest boy. 


Source: Government of Saskatchewan website (http://www.agriculture.gov.sk.ca/Default.aspx?DN=e698460c-7eb1-4615-87ed-695f31e5483f)