Grocery Shopping, Then and Now: The 80s, 90s, and Beyond, My Story (pt. 2)

Other ways we saved on groceries

Deals at the back of the shelf

I began grocery shopping for a family when some stores still priced their products with stickers. The age of scanning bar codes had arrived, but was not adopted in every store just yet. When I shopped at any of these price sticker stores, I would reach to the back of a shelf to find items that had been missed in the markups and still had the old price on them. It may have only saved pennies with each item, but every penny counted for us.

The age of the coupon queen

I wasn't a coupon queen, but I did pretty well with coupons for a small-timer. We had a store that offered double (common) and triple (rare) coupon days. I was getting $1 and $2 off coupons regularly, both in the paper and magazines. One double coupon day I grabbed all of my $1 off dry cereal coupons and headed to the store. I wasn't able to use every coupon, but I did come home with 18 boxes of cereal for a grand total of 37 cents. I was ale to do the same with powdered laundry detergent coupons, too. The real coupon queens were selling or buying bundles of coupons. 

Some coupon-ers picked up leftover newspapers from stores and libraries for the coupon inserts on Monday mornings. I had a friend who went to our local library when it opened evert Monday and was able to get the day before's copies of the paper, garnering 4 or 5 sets of coupon inserts each week. This cost her nothing but time on her way to drop the kids off at school. She then paired the coupons up with sales and rebates. Her garage looked like a little store, with shelves of products she had gotten not only for free, but manufacturers paid her to take the products through rebates. My friend would donate what she could to shelters and food banks.

Most of my local stores had trays near the entrance doors where a shopper could both drop off needed clipped coupons and pick up ones that were of use. Each week I would drop off the dog food, hair dye, cosmetics or cleaning product coupons and pick up ones for cat food, some packaged foods, and some paper products. Again, not a huge savings for me, but I was helping someone else out while saving some pennies for our family.

With help I taught myself how to make all kinds of foods in the kitchen

Just after arriving in our new town, my sister-in-law showed me that baking bread was not as mysterious as I'd previously though. I hadn't tried baking my own bread since an unsuccessful attempt in college. Following a good recipe and doing the kneading made all the difference in my loaves.

I also learned how to make yogurt. I've been successfully making our family's yogurt now for 12 years, all using descendants from the original starter.

Many years ago, my husband brought home a copy of Laurel's Kitchen from the free table at work. In that cookbook I found recipes for homemade flour tortillas and soybean sandwich spread, among others. I use those recipes to this day.

When peanut butter prices skyrocketed, my two daughters were in high school. Sunflower seeds were still quite reasonable in price. I used my blender to make sunseed butter. My daughters liked it well-enough for daily sandwiches for about a year in high school.

I used the local library to find many new recipes. The ones that my family really enjoyed I copied onto notecards to reference through the years. One of our favorites is for a country French marinated lentil salad. It's super frugal and a delicious way to serve legumes in the hot months of summer.

Keeping foods

Somewhere in our early years of owning our own home, we bought a food dehydrator and the first of our stand-alone freezers. We've since added another stand alone freezer, plus we now have our old fridge/freezer in the garage, for 4 freezer spaces total.

We've had stand-alone freezers for most of our marriage. We currently have 2 freezers and 2 refrigerator/freezer combos. I have kept some sort of vegetable garden every summer of our marriage. And all but one summer we've had fruit trees where we lived. We currently have 4 apple trees, 1 plum tree, 2 cherry trees, 4 pear trees, 2 fig trees, a strawberry patch, 8 blueberry bushes, 2 raspberry patches, several currant bushes, several rhubarb plants, a small buy growing cranberry patch, and a blackberry patch.We also have a lot of competition for all of this fruit, raccoons, bunnies, squirrels, mountain beavers, and coyotes (coyotes will eat low-hanging fruit if they're hungry enough). In addition to growing all of this fruit, we also forage for additional blackberries every summer. We have a couple of local spots that are good for this, one a park near a small lake nearby, and the other the grounds at the local elementary tare school. Summer of 2020, we saw a lot of folks foraging for blackberries. I can and freeze as much produce as I have energy to do each summer and fall. This last fall was not great for me for putting away produce. I hope this next fall will go better.

Where I shop today

Our house is about an 8 to10-minute drive to the major north-south highway that connects the cities of western Washington state. Every budget grocery shopping venue is along this highway. You can drive into the towns off the highway and find other grocery stores. But most of those tend to be more expensive. So, for the most part, I grocery shop along the highway. 

To our north, just next to Home Depot, there is an ethnic market where I find fabulous deals on produce. Closer to our house, there's Walmart Neighborhood Market (not a super center, but a grocery store). Walmart is in the same strip as Value Village. So I'll often hit one while I hit the other. Directly across the street is Grocery Outlet (a salvage store). In the same strip as Grocery Outlet is Dollar Tree. Dollar Tree is hit or miss when it comes to groceries. Package sizes are now quite small. But I occasionally find something I want from there. Boxed crackers at $1.25 are still a good deal at Dollar Tree. Since I'm usually going in to Grocery Outlet, a pop into Dollar Tree doesn't cost me anything but a few minutes of my time.

There are several Asian markets on the highway near the Walmart/Grocery Outlet shopping area. Asian markets are a great source for dried spices, specialty condiments used in Asian cuisine, some produce items, rice in large bags, whole tapioca pearls (I make tapioca pudding with the pearls, much less expensive than the little boxes of cracked tapioca sold in supermarkets) and tea. 

Further down the highway is Trader Joe's. I don't shop at Trader Joe's as much as I used to, but there are still some deals there, especially if you have particular dietary needs or want a particular pre-made food for a special occasion. I love Trader Joe's frozen croissant dough. They bake up into the freshest, crispiest croissants, a favorite treat for my birthday or Mother's Day. We had a Sprouts just across the street from TJ for several years. They went out of business at that location during the shutdowns. That was truly unfortunate, as I found a lot of great produce deals at Sprouts. 

Just a few blocks further is Chefstore, the restaurant supply. We discovered this restaurant store 25 years ago. At that time, it was one of few that would sell to the public. You had to pay cash, then. Only businesses could write checks there. Now, like every other place, they take credit from anyone. I shop at Chefstore about once every 3 months. It's where I buy pizza and block cheese, cases of raisins, 25 and 50-lb sacks of grains/flour/sugar, 12.5 lb bags of popping corn, eggs by the 15-dozen case, 1-lb blocks of butter (not in sticks, but blocks), 25-lb bags of carrots, large canisters of spices, 2-lb bags of dried yeast, gallon jugs of vinegar, soy sauce, molasses, lemon juice, olive oil and vanilla flavoring, and in some years, 88-count cases of oranges. In the past, I've also bought bacon ends and pieces, 35-lb boxes of cooking oil, 5-lb bags of frozen vegetables, and ingredients for making a Greek dinner at home at Chefstore. Since we have never had a Costco membership, this business supply does what I'd want from Costco.

At the end of my shopping route is WinCo and the large seasonal produce stand, Country Farms. WinCo is well-known for its very large bulk bin section and general low prices on everything they carry. It's my favorite store for several items, not just because of price, but their quality is better on some store brand products than the same product at Walmart. And just after WinCo is Country Farms, the produce stand. I used to shop here weekly when my kids were in high school. It was right on that daily route. I probably only get down here once a year now, for their end-of-season sale on long-keeping produce items, such as cabbage, winter squash, and pie pumpkins. 

I also occasionally shop off the highway at Fred Meyer, a Kroger affiliate. Fred Meyer's store is cleaner inside than any of my budget options, but their prices are generally higher than my other stores. They do, however, send out coupons for free items one every month or two. I received another coupon for a free bag of salad just this week. If I have recently done a lot of shopping at their store (in November and December shopping for holidays, or during the gardening season buying supplies), I can rack up significant cash-off on gas for the car. We were recently in a nearby town that has much cheaper gas than ours here. We stopped in at the Fred Meyer there and used my cash-off of 30 cents/gallon and saved big for that tank of gas (savings on 30 cents/gallon plus lower gas prices in general in that town). I tend to spend more on non-food items at Fred Meyer than food. I buy stuff for the garden there every spring and summer. It's the only place nearby that sells chicken manure, and seed packets are always buy one/get one free. This is also where I get my potting soil in early spring for starting seeds and organic fertilizers to use throughout the gardening season. I tend to prefer Fred Meyer for garden stuff over Home Depot, which would be my only other nearby gardening venue.

I guess you could say that my car has become one of my greatest tools in saving money on groceries.

In September, we added a new place to get some of our meat, beef from a small-operation rancher. The beef is fabulous quality, supports a family and not a corporation, and is a reasonable quantity to be delivered at one time. However, it's a lot more expensive per pound. But, but, but . . .the quality is so good, I'm not sure we could go back to eating supermarket beef again,

My mother would occasionally make a stop at a produce market after doing her shopping at a supermarket, but she would never have shopped 4 or more stores in a morning as I have done. She used her time differently that I do. Part of that is I enjoy this sort of challenge, to save as much as I can on groceries. I don't think that aspect of shopping appealed to my mother in the same way as it does me. The other aspect is it's simply harder for a family to live on one income now (and in the last couple of decades) than it was for my mother's generation. And I fear it is becoming more difficult for this next generation. 

This isn't the end of the Grocery Shopping, Then and Now set of posts. My husband and I are now part of the oldest generation in both of our families. We've adapted to many new technologies.  For instance, my husband signed up for biometric identification shopping this fall to get a free $5 coupon at Whole Foods. To be clear, this wasn't the implant thing, but a wave of a handprint linked to your credit card. Yet, there have been other technological advances that we've been slow to take on. My kids are the ones who are trying new things. But their story isn't so straightforward. It's really the tale of two income levels, the wealthier and the less wealthy in the Millennials and younger. The divide seems to hit them at every turn. I'll talk about both poles of grocery shopping for the next generation in posts about my kids' shopping next week.

Grocery Shopping, Then and Now: The 80s, 90s, and Beyond, My Story, (pt. 1)

This will be a two-parter. Here's the first part. The second part will be posted some time tomorrow.

While my grandmother and mother focused on menu planning and shopping from those menus, I was all about the deal. Working hard at saving money would mean we could afford the American dream of home ownership sooner rather than later.

When my husband and I married in the late 1980s, we each had our own car. We also had a joint bank account, so there was no need for my husband to pay any bills for me or to give me an allowance. When I first began grocery shopping, I shopped once per week, just as my mother always had. At that time, you could pay for groceries with either cash or a personal check. The "teller's booth" near the front of the store disappeared sometime in the early 80s. Instead you would write your check at the cash register, holding up the line of multiple impatient people behind you. Many supermarkets adopted "cash-only" lines to ease tempers of the impatient. By the 90s, credit cards were accepted at most grocery stores, speeding up those checkout lines.

In my early marriage years, I was not nearly as organized as my mother or grandmother had been with their shopping. The luxury of having two cars meant I could run to the store to get something I needed whenever it was convenient for me. My shopping lists were very incomplete. I would often decide what I would serve for dinners that week, while in the store walking up and down the aisles. And then came the baby! 

Slashing our grocery spending 

When our oldest was a baby I discovered that I could save more if I read the weekly ads for all of the stores in the area and buy only the loss leaders at each store, often visiting 4 grocery stores in a morning. We had 6 grocery stores within a short drive of each other. Until this point, I had been spending about $70 per week on groceries and household needs for a small family of 3. 

The first week I shopped only loss leaders (and then built my meals out of what I bought -- dubbed the pantry principle), I spent $30. I went from spending $70 per week to spending $30 per week. And I maintained that low grocery budget for many, many years. I wasn't just buying enough to feed us for a week. I was stockpiling excesses with loss leaders. Our meals changed in content, but not nutrients. We ate more beans and whole grains and switched to the less expensive meats that were often featured as sale items. 

One thing I discovered in those days (80s and 90s) -- the more upscale the store, the better the loss leaders. The more budget-oriented the store, with overall low prices, the fewer stellar deals on the ad's front page. I balanced this by getting the great loss leaders at the upscale stores, then filling in around the edges at the budget stores.

Another thing about grocery shopping back in the 80s -- some stores still had baggers who would also push your cart out to your car for you. With a baby on my hip, having someone push my groceries to the car then load them into the trunk was an invaluable service.

The mega-supermarkets, carrying all kinds of house and garden items, in addition to groceries, were popularized about the time my son was a baby.

Aside from the first year of marriage, we've lived in the suburbs of a major city our entire time together. Suburbs come with lots of shopping choices. I've been able to shop at regular grocery stores, natural food stores, restaurant supply stores, produce stands, u-pick farms, farmers' markets, bakery thrift stores, ethnic stores, and now online to round out my budget grocery shopping. We also had a Costco nearby in the time when they would allow a non-member to shop by paying a surcharge on all purchases. We took advantage of this until they changed their policy. Neither my mother nor my grandmother could have imagined such an extensive list of places to shop as we have now. 

Movin' to the big city (or the suburb of a big city)

My husband suffered a 10-month period of unemployment /underemployment when he was laid off from his job at about the two-year mark in our marriage. The city where we were living was in a downturn. After a couple of months of job-seeking with nothing that would actually support our family of three, we decided to move to a part of the country where the economy seemed to be doing better. It would still take many more months for my husband too obtain a permanent job with benefits. 

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Finding free food

During these months of searching and waiting, we moved into a duplex that had several fruit trees in the shared yard. The other occupant had no interest in the fruit and neither did the owners of the units. That first summer we had more cherries, plums, apples, and crabapples than we could possibly eat. I canned and froze as much as I could. In September we discovered a large patch of wild blackberries nearby, and thus began our annual foraging for blackberries. That summer and fall I mastered the fruit pie. In July, breakfast was cherry pie and milk/coffee. In August, we ate plum pie twice per day. Beginning in September, we ate apple and blackberry pies, cobblers, and crisps daily. We barely heated our apartment that fall and winter. I kept a box of apples in a corner of our bedroom closet, up against an outside wall -- the coolest spot in the apartment. These apples kept through the beginning of February. I had a large produce bin in the kitchen fridge packed with more apples. Our fresh apple supply lasted until spring.

I began making jams and jellies. My stepmother and father came to visit mid-summer that year. My stepmother said she was done with canning and making jams, so she brought me a couple of cases of canning jars and rings. With all of this fruit, I hardly spent anything on groceries for that summer of little income.

When we relocated to this new area, we downsized our cars. We sold my car to pay for the move and shared my husband's car for a decade. We lived in a duplex that had convenient access to public transportation, taking my husband into the city and back every day. So I had free use of the one car for the entire week. This allowed me to grocery shop at numerous stores per week. Gas prices were decent back then, which meant I wasn't as concerned about traveling to stores further away if it meant I could save a bundle on food and household items. 

Our area of town was growing rapidly. New stores opened every year. With these openings came blockbuster deals. My son was a toddler and our daughters weren't born yet. With just one child in tow, I stood in line for all of the store grand openings. In exchange for my patience on these days, I received free packages of ice cream, bacon, hot dogs, cheese, eggs, canned tuna, loaves of bread, donuts & coffee. Stores were eager to quickly garner a large share of the market as the town grew. And I took advantage of every opportunity to save on groceries that I could. 

There was something of a grapevine in my toddler son's library storytime group. One week, a mother told me that a local grocery store would be putting all of their unsold pumpkins out for free the day after Halloween. Believe me, I was up and with my son before the store opened that November 1. We brought home four 10-lb pumpkins, all free. I cooked up the pumpkins, one every 2 or 3 weeks, making soups and more pies, plus freezing enough puree to serve as vegetable side dishes through winter. We would continue to collect free pumpkins every year right after Halloween for over 20 years.

You may be wondering, "why didn't she just go get a job so they could spend more on groceries?" I did work and have worked very part-time for our entire marriage. But my priority has always been taking care of the family and home. This was our choice as a couple. From the start we knew it would be difficult to afford what our parents could on one income. But we were up to the challenge. In fact, after 8 years of marriage, including an almost 1-year unemployment, relocation to another state on our dime, paying off school loans, and the birth of 3 children, we had saved up enough money to put over 40% down on the house we live in today. Sometimes I have wondered if the sacrifices we made were worth it. I think they were. We got to have the life we wanted, despite not having all of the luxuries our contemporaries had.

Stay tuned for part two tomorrow!

"Where flowers bloom, so does hope."

--Lady Bird Johnson

I'm taking a little break from writing Grocery Shopping Then and Now. I spent so much time writing the last 2 days that I got behind on my work at home. I wound up working much later than usual yesterday and am trying to finish the catch-up today. So, sorry about the interruption. 

What I did want to show you is an update on my primrose plants that I started from seeds last spring, posted about here. These were the seeds that my two daughters (lovely as flowers themselves) gave to me for my birthday. 

One of the plants began blooming in December. The blossoms are very pretty and much more peachy than I'd anticipated. I think I like these better than how I thought they would look. 

We're expecting snow in the next couple of days, and I wanted to show you what they looked like before the blossoms become affected with snow and frost.

There are more blossoms on the way. I'm very curious if they will have the same coloration or if they will be a slight variant. They should survive cold and snow just fine and will blossom a few weeks after this week's cold air goes away.

Be back tomorrow.

Grocery Shopping, Then and Now: The Booming 50s and 60s, My Mother's Day

My mother's experience as related to me over my childhood and younger adult years and my own observances

My mother was born in 1937. Most of her childhood memories were from the WW2 years and then the post-war boom. 

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When my mother went to college for the first time (she would leave to start a family and finish her degree when her kids were older), beginning in 1955, she was a Home Economics major. The study of homemaking included meal planning, grocery shopping and cooking in addition to budgeting and organization, sewing, creating a pleasing home, and rearing children. 

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Home Economics in the university was treated as a science, with researchers investigating the best way to do just about anything regarding keeping a home. This would affect how my mother grocery shopped, among other tasks.

My father and mother married in the late 1950s. They lived in the city for the first three years of their marriage. My father was furloughed several times, which necessitated them moving to other states twice, finally settling in California. My mother was a stay-at-home wife, for the most part. She worked a couple of jobs during periods of my father's furloughs. They, too, just had one car for their early marriage years. Because they lived in the city, my mother could drive my father to and from work on a day she needed the car for shopping. After those first three years, they bought a small house in the suburbs and lived in suburbia for the rest of their lives. 

Planning meals

My mother's cookbook, a wedding gift from an aunt in 1957

My mother was a fabulous planner (frankly, she was a fabulous homemaker in general). One day a week she would get out a pencil and 2 sheets of paper. On one sheet she would plan all of the meals and snacks for the week, using favorite cookbooks as inspiration and guide. 

With uncertain employment at times, my mother would rely on recipes which were deemed frugal. The Better Homes & Garden cookbook, © 1953, had pages of menus that were "money-saving." I remember a lot of these meals from my early childhood.

This cookbook also used a tiny icon of a piggybank next to recipes which were deemed frugal at that time. When I first lived on my own, my mother gave me this cookbook. I relied on some of these recipes to feed myself and roommates.

On the other sheet of paper for planning, my mother would write out everything she would need for all of a week's meals and snacks, down to the last apple or onion. With just one car and a couple of small children in the early years, shopping once per week made my mother's life simpler. 

Paying for groceries

My father gave my mother an allowance each month to pay for household things and clothing for herself and the kids. I recall grocery stores only took cash at the check-out in the early 1960s. If you were short on cash, you could cash a personal check at a "teller" they had set up near the front of the store. This teller was also useful for workers who wished to cash their pay check in the grocery store. In the end, though, stores began accepting personal checks at the point of purchase, sometime in the mid to late 1960s. 

Grocery operating hours

Most grocery stores in the very early 1960s were open Monday through Saturday from 9 AM to 6:30 or 7 PM, with occasionally a store offering evening hours one day per week. I can recall a couple of occasions when my mother would have been waylaid during her regular grocery shopping day in some manner, and she would have to pile us all (my brother would have been a baby then) into the car late in the afternoon to go out and do a last minute week's worth of grocery shopping before Market Basket would close for the evening.

By the mid-60s, grocery stores had a new competitor which offered longer operating hours -- the 7-11 (named for its original operating hours, 7 AM - 11 PM). The first 7-11 that I can recall opened in my area around 1967 or 1968. It was a real novelty to have a store open longer hours and on Sunday, too. It may have been what prompted grocery stores in my area to be open 7 days per week and hours later into the evening. We wouldn't see 24-hour grocery stores for my area until the late-1970s.

Alternatives to the grocery store

Living in the suburbs, my mother had a few more shopping choices than my grandmother ever did. Still, my mother preferred one particular store (Market Basket) for in-store, weekly basic shopping and supplemented with other sources of obtaining groceries.

Helms Bakery truck, sold donuts, bread, cream puffs

Living in the suburbs had its benefits in the 1960s. Several vendors drove through the neighborhoods weekly. Most families in the early 60s in our neighborhood had just one car. So milk delivery service or the bakery truck were popular with the housewives. The Helms Bakery truck would drive through the neighborhood and stop at houses that had a placard in their front window indicating they wanted to buy baked goods. Additionally, the Helms driver would pull on his whistle to call housewives into the street for their purchases. 

My sister was in kindergarten and first grade during this time, but I was home all day with my mother. When my mother went out to buy bread for the week, if I had been very good that morning, I might get a donut. Of course, this wasn't a given. But I knew that if I was naughty, there was no chance I would get a donut. Being able to get bread and milk brought into the neighborhood meant that housewives could throw together some sort of meal between what was in their kitchens and these more perishable foods. 

Around the time Market Basket adopted longer operational hours (about 1970), both of my parents had a car, which meant my mother had more flexibility for grocery shopping. I don't recall ever seeing the Helm's bakery truck again after about 1966. But my mother continued to have milk delivered to our house through my high school years.

Milk was delivered weekly to the doorstep in clear glass quart and half-gallon bottles. The milk man would come before anyone was awake for the day and leave our order of milk on the front porch. Each week, my mother would put out the empty and cleaned out glass bottles from the week before. The milkman would pick these up and take them back to the bottling factory. The empties would be scalded and reused for customers. At the end of the month, the milk man would leave both a bill (with envelope) and an order form to make requests for the next month. The following week, my mother would put the payment into the envelope with the order form and place this out on the front porch with the empty milk bottles to be picked up.

The milk was not homogenized. Homogenization keeps the milk fat from separating from the milk solids and water. In our non-homogenized milk, the fat would rise to the top. My mother would pour off this fat into a small pitcher, and this became our family's weekly supply of cream (mostly used in my parents coffee, but occasionally sweetened and poured over a bowl of berries or peaches for dessert).

drive-thru dairy -- customer drove in similar to a full-service gas stations of the time, the attendant came out a door and took your order, came back a minute later with your products, you paid and drove off. No getting out of the car.

In addition to shopping at the grocery store and having milk and baked goods delivered, we also had a couple of drive-through stores. The one I remember most was the drive through dairy that also sold ice cream! The drive-thru sold milk, cream, butter, cheese, ice cream, fresh orange juice (not from concentrate), eggs, bacon, and popsicles/fudgsicles. If we were out running errands in this part of town (the drive-thru was directly across the street from Woolworth's), my mother would stop and buy some frozen treats to take home.

How to save money in the 60s and 70s, housewife edition

My mother used coupons, mostly getting them from magazines. Some of the earliest coupons in my memory reflected a new age we were entering -- the computer age. These coupons were heavier weight than magazine paper, were inserted into the folds of the magazine, and had punch-outs across the coupon. At the time, I didn't know why my mother's coupons had holes. I just thought it was something space age-y or the like. Now, I assume it was for the product company's use to speed processing when it came time to reimburse the stores. The punchcard coupon was phased out sometime around 1970. My mother then began clipping coupons from magazine pages and the newspaper.

There were so many stores in the area and ways to procure groceries that stores began competing against each other, not through lowering prices but by offering trading stamps in exchange for your purchase. Trading stamps could be redeemed for hard goods. We had both Blue Chip and Green Chip stamps offered in our area. My mother preferred the Blue Chip stamps, only because we had a redemption store nearby. The number of stamps the grocery store would give to you depended on the amount of money you spent for your purchases. Stores also provided the booklets you would need for collecting the stamps. Once home, you would adhere the stamps to the pages of the booklets. (This was a Saturday afternoon kid-job.) There were larger stamps and smaller stamps. A larger stamp represented several of the smaller ones, so you would only need a few of these larger ones to fill a single page in the booklet. You would need several completed booklets to redeem for an item at the redemption store. A redemption store was a showroom-type store. You walked around the showroom looking at all of the items, which were priced in booklets needed not dollars/cents. Items my family "bought" with our Blue Chip stamps included a world globe (I still have this), a set of TV tray tables, games, puzzles and a lamp. It would take a year of grocery shopping to save enough stamps to redeem for something we would want. Gas stations also participated in trading stamp promotions in the 1960s, boosting a family's ability to save for something "good" in less time.

Sometime in the 1970s, grocery stores dropped the trading stamps and began offering products for free or to be purchased at a small cost in exchange for spending X amount of dollars. My mother collected an entire set of almost-free, blue and white patriotic dishware just in time for the 1976 Bicentennial in exchange for shopping only at Ralph's Supermarket. You could also buy the dishes by the piece for the full price. I'm sure that Ralph's counted on many well-intentioned housewives filling in a few gaps with purchased pieces to make their complete dish set.

Keeping foods

Sometime in the mid-1970s, my parents bought a stand alone freezer for the garage. It was your basic, tall upright freezer. With this, they bought a side of beef. My mother also froze fresh produce and sometimes stocked up on special breads when her shopping would take her the 30 minutes away to a favorite bakery. 

My paternal grandmother was a single mother of 5 children and worked as a bookkeeper during the day. My father had been in charge of the family's victory garden when he was a kid, having to coax younger siblings into doing their share of the work. He really grew to dislike keeping a vegetable garden. As a result, my parents never had a vegetable garden. But they did have some citrus trees at a couple of the houses where we lived. We had fresh-squeezed orange juice and fresh grapefruit every morning during those years. 

on CSU's Extension page for what not to do when canning -- using paraffin wax seals

My mother canned some -- mostly high-sugar or vinegar products. During her day, paraffin wax was an acceptable lid for a jar of home-canned jam. One of my earliest memories of my mother was sitting on a stool across the counter from where she was making plum jam. I watched her pit and chop plums, cook them with sugar, while simultaneously melting wax in another saucepan to pour over almost full jars of hot plum jam. When you went to "open" a new jar of jam sealed this way, you dunked the edge of the wax round into the jam and pulled it out by the edge that popped up. To reseal the opened jar, my mother used a square of waxed paper and a string tied around the top of the jar. 

To bake from scratch or not

My mother became a housewife at a time when packaged products exploded on supermarket shelves. She used a lot of convenience foods, by my standards. But that was the norm and was considered a good use of time, as it would free up valuable time for other homemaker pursuits, such as sewing all 5 of us matching outfits for our family vacation. (I'm glad I don't have that photo to show you!) My mother only baked yeasted bread a couple of times in their early marriage. And she said she preferred the texture and reliability of cake mixes over scratch cakes. She also bought canned soups instead of homemade soups most of the time. And my father preferred instant mashed potatoes over fresh potatoes boiled and mashed. My mother was either insulted or amused when I bounced into the house exclaiming loudly, "did you know you could make mashed potatoes from regular potatoes? Stephanie's mom is making mashed potatoes and squishing them herself!" 

My mother's use of these boxed and canned products was what I think was part of a greater emphasis on learning from experts (as in the Home Ec as a science) instead of learning to cook from your mother and her mother. The boxed cake was more reliable.. The canned soup always tasted good. That line of thinking. In many ways, buying mixes and prepared products saved money, too. No need to buy special cake flour if you're only baking one cake in the coming months. Cake flour, like any other flour, can get pests. Unfortunately, product labeling requirements in the 50s and 60s was not as extensive as it is now. A homemaker might not know that the can of soup contains cheap fillers. The tide would change drastically for a sector of Americans (the counterculture) in the 1970s, with a rejection of mass-produced foods. Anyone here have a copy of Laurel's Kitchen?

Throughout my mother and father's marriage, my father always gave my mother an allowance that covered groceries. They never had a shared bank account. I thought this was standard practice until I talked to other friends as a young adult. At that time, I discovered that while some partners choose to have separate banks accounts, some also choose to have joint accounts. I can see the merits in doing it both ways. My parents both experienced some humble beginnings in life. I think this shaped their approach to financial planning. Even when my father's career was successful and furloughs were a dim memory, they were still frugal. My mother continued to clip coupons and shop at what would be considered the discount supermarket in their town, even when it was probably no longer financially necessary. 

My mother passed away 2 years before I was married. In my first year of marriage, it was my father who told me stories about their very early marriage meals. Hotdogs and fish sticks came in packages of 10 pieces at that time. They ate hotdogs and fish sticks often those first few years. When they had hotdogs, my father would have 2 and my mother would have 1. After 3 meals, that left 1 remaining, which my mother would slice and add to a stew of sorts. When they had fish sticks, my father had 3 and my mother had 2. This worked out perfectly for the package size, 2 meals and no leftovers.

Stories of my parents' experience of financially-lean years in early marriage really helped me when my husband and I dealt with the same. I went into marriage knowing that we might be relatively poor at first, but if we worked hard and were frugal, we could save enough to buy a house and the life we have now.

Stay tuned for my story . . .

Grocery Shopping, Then and Now: Post-WW2, My Grandmother's Day

I was thinking about how much grocery shopping has changed since my grandmother's day, piecing together tidbits of information from the recesses of my memory and wanted to write it all out. These are my family's experiences and may not be what your family has experienced, with relation to grocery shopping over the last 75 years.

Because my recollections for my grandmother's early years of grocery shopping were largely drawn from my mother's stories and my vague memories from early childhood, I only have bits and pieces for the years between when my grandparents married in the late 1920s until the end of WW2, when my mother was grammar school-age. I started this writing journey with the post-war years, when my grandparents moved back to their home state after moving house 6 or 7 times between the years of 1942 and 1948. (My grandfather worked for a government contractor during the war and was relocated frequently.)

My Grandmother's experience, as told to me by herself, my mother, and from my observations when visiting plus the two years that I lived with her

My maternal grandparents bought a house "in the country" at the end of WW2. "In the country" at that time and place didn't mean living in farm country, but more an area removed from the city but without the amenities of the suburbs, such as street lighting, sidewalks, and convenient shopping. Even so, there was a grammar school within walking distance for my mother. 

My grandparents had one car, which my grandfather drove to and from work in the city each weekday. All stores and markets were closed on Sundays. The nearest market was too far to walk to and carry very much back. Walking to and from the store would also use up valuable time my grandmother needed for keeping the home and caring for children. So, she did what many other housewives in that area did at the time, she ordered her groceries to be delivered. 

How grocery delivery worked back then

flickriver.com

Twice a week my grandmother would phone in an order for next-day delivery. (By 1950, 61% of American homes had a telephone, according to statista.com.) The store clerk would shop her list for her, box it all up, and the delivery man would bring the grocery box to her house the following morning. Roles for the market employees often overlapped. The store owner might pack it all up and deliver it. Or, the delivery driver might also work as clerk and a stock boy, ringing up sales, restocking shelves, unloading new items, etc. The owner might also function as the butcher, helping customers at the meat counter. The market owner's wife likely helped with all of the lighter work, such as cashiering, bookkeeping, packing boxes, and dusting shelves and tops of canned and boxed products. The market where my grandmother bought her groceries was a small one. 

Small markets had small staffs, often just the owners and a couple of additional employees. As such, my grandmother had the opportunity to get to know the owners and employees well. The owner might make recommendations or offer a special item to her. He would cut meat to order, especially useful when my grandfather's boss and his wife would be coming for dinner. When the store introduced a new product, the owner sometimes would include a sample (meaning full-size product) with her order. These samples would be free of charge for her to try, if the owner felt it might be something my grandmother might like. Whoever delivered her groceries, they would come into her kitchen and put her perishable items away in the refrigerator for her. Everyone knew her by name and she knew them by name, as well -- no employee-name tags needed.

How she paid

flickr.com

My grandmother's groceries would be charged to her store account. At the end of the month, my grandfather would go into the market and pay off the account. By the 1961, they each had their own car. (The second car came from my grandmother's father's estate after he passed away.) With this addition, my grandmother began marketing in person. Their financial arrangement must have changed at this time, as well, as she paid for her groceries when she shopped and no longer carried a balance on an account. Just to note, she always (even in later years) paid cash at the grocery store, never brought a checkbook when that was an option.

alamy.com

Despite my grandmother's small grocery market experience, many housewives were enjoying a new way to shop. The 1950s ushered in the widespread appearance of suburban supermarkets, with larger stores boasting numerous aisles, shopping carts replacing hand-carried baskets, mostly self-service meat departments, and an abundance of new brands and products from which to choose. All of this meant parking lot sizes increased, too. 

Supermarkets changed the way many suburban Americans shopped. The shopping carts encouraged customers to buy more at a time, so housewives would need to shop less often. Menu planning beyond 3 or 4 days would be necessary to ensure a household would have all they needed for a 7-day week. These early supermarkets experimented with extending operating hours, staying open into the evening perhaps one day per week. Yet most held to the closed-on-Sundays tradition.

Keeping perishables

similar to what I remember from my grandmother's kitchen in the 1960s and early 70s

My grandmother never had a stand-alone freezer. The only freezer she had was a small compartment in the fridge. She did just a small amount of canning to preserve food, relying instead on commercially-canned and boxed products for pantry staples. While she and my grandfather lived "in the country" for many years, they were more flower gardeners than vegetable gardeners. Yet, they did have some fruit trees.

Her later years

Even after my grandmother moved to a smaller house in a suburban neighborhood in 1970, she still preferred to shop in a particular grocery store that was smaller and gave her more personal attention. She was less concerned about finding the best deal than she was about buying higher quality. She had preferred brands from which she would not stray. She also chose to shop a couple of times per week in order to serve the freshest of produce and meat products. I don't think she ever stocked her freezer with meat. The refrigerator section had a meat bin/drawer, where she would keep 2 or 3 days worth of fresh meat. 

In her later years, my step-grandfather and she would shop together. He would do the driving, push the cart, and keep up his end of the conversation, and she would select items, ask him questions about meals and preferences, and interact with the butcher in the meat department and the cashier at the check-out. Grocery shopping had become a "date" of sorts for this sweet, elderly couple. 

Return to some grocery delivery

My grandmother did begin to have milk delivery at some point in these later years. After my step-grandfather passed, the milk delivery order grew, and she shopped in-person less. The dairy service offered milk, cream, cheese, butter, bread, jello salads, eggs, and other foods. My grandmother would shop in a store to buy canned and boxed foods plus some produce and meat every week to 10 days and supplement meals heavily with what would be delivered by the milk man. If there had been full-service grocery delivery at this point in my grandmother's life, I know she would have chosen that option to procure her food and household needs.

My grandmother was born just after the turn of the 20th century and lived until the early 1990s. For the majority of my grandmother's grocery shopping years, natural food stores were considered "fringe," Costco warehouse stores weren't everywhere, and there was certainly no internet shopping available. Yet, she witnessed many changes in grocery shopping, from in-city specialty markets (butchers, bakeries, and produce shops from her childhood years), to small grocery markets with home-delivery, to the introduction of large supermarkets. She may have thought she was living in "modern times." Little did she know what would be right around the corner, in regards to shopping for food and household items.

Stay tuned for my next set of recollections from my mother's grocery shopping years.

Does anybody here celebrate Epiphany or Three Kings' Day?

a bit overdone --
I'm still learning with my new shortbread pan

In our family, the Christmas season goes until January 6, Epiphany (Three Kings' Day). We keep the tree and other Christmas decorations up until then. On or around the 6th (usually the Sunday following Jan. 6), we have a nice meal together. 

In recent years, we've made this meal a winter tea. This Sunday my family will enjoy another winter tea in the afternoon. Here's my planned menu so far:

• homemade scones with an assortment of spreads
• cookies (perhaps finishing off the Christmas cookies or more of the above-pictured shortbread cookies)
• cranberry-chicken salad on beds of greens
• tea cups of cream of broccoli soup
• lots of tea, of course
• there will also be some hidden chocolate coins (for "gold") tucked into each folded napkin

We have our tea at the dining room table, complete with Christmas tablecloth and the dining room decorations. We'll play instrumental Christmas music in the background on the Roku TV. We'll use an assortment of fine tea cups and dessert plates. And we'll have our best manners during tea. This will be our last Christmas meal using Christmas table linens and dishes for the season. And then the tree can finally come down and decorations put away.

The shortbread above was made with another gift to me, this shortbread pan. My family knows I like to bake. I overdid the first batch. I know now to move the oven rack up one slot and bake for a minute or two less. But I do think the cookies are pretty anyway.

Do you do anything for Epiphany or Three Kings' Day?

"These Are a Few of My Favorite Things": The Beginnings of My New Pajamas

I absolutely love it when one of my family members saves some money when buying a gift for me. I love it even more when I can put this gift to use in a way that saves me money.

Every couple of years, I sew myself a new pair of flannel pajama pants. 

Christmas of 2021 one daughter bought me this beautiful grey and white flannel fabric for the pajama pants that I have worn for the last 2 years. 

It's now time for me to add a new pair of pajama bottoms to the rotation. This time I mentioned that I'd like a pink print in flannel and actually picked one out online and showed it my daughters. I also mentioned that they could save some money by shopping that week, if this was a gift they wanted to buy for me. The fabric was on sale for $3.99/yd, and my daughters now know that I always need 2 yards of fabric for pj pants. They saved themselves about $12 total compared to the regular price. So they bought a gift for me that was exactly what I would like, and by shopping at the right time, they saved themselves some money on the gift.

On my end, I won't need to spend a single cent to sew these up. I have thread and elastic in my stash and the needed sewing pattern. I've been using this same McCall's pattern for 23 years. This will be my 8th pair of pajama pants made with this pattern. I like to get my money's worth out of patterns (ha ha). 

I've made long flannel pajamas, long lightweight cotton pajamas, and summer pajama shorts with this same pattern, some pairs for me and some pairs for both of my daughters. I know this pattern very well, now. It's an easy one to begin with, but also, being so familiar with it, I can sew up a pair of pjs in one afternoon. One day next week (after we've taken the Christmas tablecloth off the table), I'll get out my sewing machine.

When I was looking at flannel fabric with my daughters in early December, they asked what I was looking for. I mentioned I wanted something bright and cheerful that would feel spring-y to me. I wear flannel pajama bottoms until late May -- it's that chilly at night where I live. So something that looked less like "winter," but would still keep me warm at night was top of mind this time. I love that there are tiny tulips throughout this print. I think these pjs will say "spring."

I don't mind not being completely surprised when it comes to gifts that I receive. And I don't mind having to put in some work with the gift to "finish" the gift. I treasure the knowledge that my family members want to please me. In our family, we each come up with suggestions for the rest of the members to consider. Our family seems to prefer this method as opposed to trying to guess what everyone would like.

How do you feel about gifts? Do you like to be completely surprised, or are you okay with having a general idea what close family might give to you? As the gift-shopper, do you prefer to surprise someone, or do you appreciate a "wish list"?

"These Are a Few of My Favorite Things": 3-Ingredient Dark Chocolate Honey Mint Patties

Three ingredients, that's it. Just unsweetened dark chocolate, honey, and peppermint oil.

I like a piece of chocolate candy now and then ("now" meaning today after lunch, "then" meaning tomorrow after lunch -- so not as rare as "now and then" sounds). But I also am mindful of ingredients that my body could reject and make me sick. With just three ingredients, I knew these would be okay for me.

My daughter-in-law brought the non-mint version of these patties when they came over one evening in 2020. I thought they were amazing, especially considering the chocolate is unsweetened. I wanted to try the mint patties, as I'm a big chocolate mint patty devotee. I mentioned to my daughters that I would greatly appreciate some of these as a gift. My daughters made sure I received a bag of these from Santa on Christmas.

The mint version did not disappoint. They are so rich and delicious, and yet are a good choice when wanting a sweet candy treat. The brand is Heavenly Organics. They are not easy to find in stores, but my daughters did find them on Amazon. They are kind of pricey. But hey, maybe that will make them feel even more special to me as I indulge. 

Anyway, I know others here struggle with food ingredient issues. I wanted to share that there is a brand of chocolate candy that contains very few ingredients, in case that is helpful.

"A Few of My Favorite Things": A Dishwashing Brush and Solid Soap

On to another of my favorite gifts this Christmas, things that some folks may be curious about.

A dishwashing brush and bar of dishwashing soap

This is another one of those things I wanted to try but didn't want to spend the initial investment on, a dishwashing brush with bar dish soap. 

For a while now, I've wanted to get away from the plastic waste of bottled dish soap (the kind for hand washing dishes, pots, and pans). I really wish that the bulk section of stores would carry non-food liquids, such as dish soap, shampoo, cleaning solutions. Years ago, we had a co-op near us that did carry some of these non-food essentials. You would bring your own container in to the store, the clerk would weigh the empty container and give it a tare weight, marking the bottom of the continuer. Then after filling your container and doing your shopping, you'd take it to the register and the clerk would be able to deduct the tare weight from the total weight and calculate the price based solely on the product you bought. This store didn't last long in our area, sadly. Perhaps closer to the city, the same co-op chain's stores do better.

Even with not adding to plastic waste, shipping diluted liquids adds to the fuel consumption part of transporting items to market. A better solution, in my opinion, might be to use more dry or highly concentrated ingredients or cleaners.

In addition to the soap bar, I also wanted a brush that was made of natural materials and had a replaceable brush head. Surprisingly, there are dish brushes that don't have replaceable heads. So when the head wears out, you throw the whole brush away. This was something I wanted to avoid. And honestly, I think vegetable cleaning brushes should be made the same way. Our current vegetable cleaning brush is one plastic piece plus individual bristles. When bristles give out, I'll have to throw the whole brush away. For my next vegetable cleaning brush, I'll buy something like this dish brush that has replaceable heads.

To wash dishes, pots, or pans with a bar of soap, you need specific dish soap or all-purpose soap, not bath soap. You also need a brush, a sponge, or a rag. And you need a water-holding dish or container to keep the soap bar and brush between uses, preferably something without a lid, so the soap can dry out

How I wash dishes with a brush and bar soap

I do a quick rinse of the individual items to be washed, just before wiping with a soapy brush. I wet the brush head under the tap, then brush the head across the bar of soap a couple of times. I drip about 2 to 3 teaspoons of tap water onto the specific dish, pot, or pan, then clean it with the soapy brush. I stack the soapy items in the sink until the sink is about full. then I rinse it all quickly and place the items in a dish drainer.

It doesn't take much soap to clean most items. If a particular pot or pan is especially greasy, instead of loading a lot of soap onto the brush to begin, I will wash it with a small amount of soap, quick rinse, then rewash with a bit more soap. In addition, some pots or pans need additional scrubbing with a scrubby sponge to remove cooked on bits. The brush can "miss" cooked on spots on these pieces. Also, the brush head doesn't fit inside slim juice glasses. I still need to ash those out with a sponge or rag.

With silverware, we place all of the pieces in the dishpan with about 1 inch of water. We allow them to soak until enough accumulate to wash with the bar soap and brush in one go. Rinsing a handful of silverware at a time wastes less water than rinsing each fork and spoon separately.

It's important to allow the soap bar to dry well between washings. If the soap stays wet it will get soggy and too much soap will be applied onto the brush, wasting the soap. I keep the soap bar on a small plate next to the sink, with the brush lying to the side on the plate and not on the soap bar itself. When soapy water has puddled on the plate, I've used that liquid like I would conventional liquid dish soap, pouring a little of it off into a large skillet, mixing bowl, or pot for washing.

Some folks wash with bar soap differently that I do. They fill a sink or dish pan with hot water, briskly wave the bar soap through the hot water until the water looks a bit cloudy and is slightly bubbly. Then they wash dishes as one would usually do with liquid dish soap. This seems to work for them very well. For me, I prefer being able to wash a couple of dishes at a time as we use them and not fill the dish pan with soapy water. It also means my hands have less contact with the soapy water, which dries my skin. I still need to find some good cleaning gloves that won't irritate my skin (latex allergy).

Besides all of the above, here's a difference between bar soap and liquid soap. Liquid soap has been made to be gentle on hands and often contains moisturizers. These bar soaps clean really, really well, leaving plates squeaky clean. However, they can be a little bit drying to skin. It seems like I'm using more moisturizers on my hands these days. As I said, I need to find some gloves.

We've been using the soap bar and brush for about 1 week now. My verdict -- I really like this set-up. We are all more likely to wash up our own dishes throughout the day instead of leaving a huge pile for the end of the day. The process feels simpler, too. Wet, swish against soap bar, swish on dish, rinse. And the dishes feel really clean.

Will I continue when the bar soap is gone? That depends on how long a soap bar lasts us and how important it is to me that we reduce plastic waste. So, we shall see. What I do know is that there are less expensive bar soaps that work for dishwashing, such as castille soap bars and olive oil soap bars. The bar soap that I received was made locally by a small business. I like that this purchase supported someone running a business out of her home. So that's another consideration for me -- less plastic waste, less fuel used in transport to store, and on top of all of that, supporting a small, local home-based business.

Eventually I will need to replace the brush head. That's a simple job. There's a metal band just below the base of the brush head. I used a flathead screwdriver to move the band to just above the wood handle. This allowed the prongs to loosen enough to take the head out. Easy-peasy.

Those tan flat things in the top photo were also part of the gift. These are natural cellulose sponges that have been compressed. When you get one wet for the first time, it expands to regular sponge size and stays that way. I think they would make a fun housecleaning/housewarming gift, with or without a bar of dish soap and/or brush.

A side aspect of this gift that I learned -- this old dog can learn a new trick or two.

"These Are a Few of My Favorite Things": Christmas Gift Edition

Happy New Year, Friends!🥳

Sometimes the gifts we receive are wonderful and just what we needed, but don't have a lot of appeal as a conversation topic. Other times, the gifts have a bit of novelty to many of us. We find ourselves with a natural curiosity about these gifts that others receive. 

So this week (and next if I'm slow), I'll post a little about some of the gifts I received that may have interest to some of you.

A shiitake mushroom growing kit

For a couple of decades, I have wanted to try growing mushrooms indoors. I could never justify the cost of the kit as part of my grocery budget. Earlier this fall, I thought perhaps I might mention this sort of kit to my family members as a gift possibility. My family seemed to think this would be a perfect gift for me, as I'm constantly trying to grow more varied foods for my family.

My son and daughter-in-law bought this at a local farmer's market the weekend before Christmas and kept it in their fridge (to keep it from starting) until Christmas Day. It came packaged in a large plastic bag with a ventilation patch (like sometimes found on fresh produce bags). 

I started the kit on Tuesday. I  removed the block with spores from the plastic bag and rinsed it as recommended, then sprayed it all over using spring water (no chlorine). I set the block on a make-shift rack of canning jar lids (one of the recommendations from the kit company) set on a large plastic bin lid as a tray. The rack ensures good ventilation all around.

I placed a large plastic bag loosely over the top and have been spraying once per day since. (The kit company suggested either a large plastic bag or a cardboard box.) The company suggested to place the covered kit in bright, but indirect light. I put it about 8-10 feet away from a large window in one of the sunniest rooms in the house. Just note, a sunny room in the maritime NW in a house surrounded by tall evergreens is really not all that sunny for very long each day.

Above is what the kit looked like the first day, with one mushroom protruding from a side and lots of small white bumps all over.

And here's what it looked like Thursday afternoon. Until today, I didn't realize those white bumps were beginning mushrooms. But now I can see that's what these are. I should have a lunch sack full of shiitake mushrooms in a week or two.

Whoa! I guess I underestimated the growth speed of these little jewels. Here's Saturday's photo! I'll be harvesting a bunch in just a couple of days. The company recommends storing the harvested mushrooms in a paper bag in the fridge. The paper allows a good balance of moisture retention while minimizing mold growth. Stored this way, the mushrooms will keep for up to 2 weeks.

The kit company has a website which offered info on starting it, when to harvest the mushrooms, how to store harvested ones, and how to get the kit to produce additional flushes. The website was very informative and helped give me the confidence to get the kit started. I was a little nervous that I would botch the kit. Evidently, those mushrooms were ready and waiting, just needing a bit of moisture and room temperatures.

While my son and daughter-in-law bought this kit from a local company, mushroom growing kits are also available online to be shipped. I've seen indoor home consumer kits priced for as little as $13 on Amazon. I don't know if growing mushrooms indoors is a bargain or not compared to buying mushrooms from the store. However, the outdoor kits, also sold online, will recolonize and last for many, many years and may be a better "deal" for growing mushrooms than indoor kits. I specifically wanted an indoor kit, though, so I could grow mushrooms for our meals this winter. But I'll be thinking on the possibility of starting an outdoor colony someplace near my vegetable garden.

This is one very tasty Christmas gift!

My Daughters' Invention for Christmas Dessert: Peppermint-Chocolate Tofu Silk

 

I wanted to show what my daughters created for our Christmas dinner dessert. They basically followed this recipe that I blogged about in 2015. It's a melted-chocolate-chip-blended-with-pureed-tofu recipe. 

My daughters, however, made this into a layered parfait dessert, with about 2/3 of it a white chocolate-peppermint base layer, subbing some white chocolate chips and peppermint extract for the semi-sweet chocolate chips and vanilla extract, then swirling into the white chocolate-tofu some crushed candy canes. They topped the base layer with a small batch of chocolate-tofu silk, using silken tofu for both layers. For additional color on the chocolate, they sprinkled some red cookie decor sugars and added a peppermint-vanilla swirl cookie to each serving.

The desserts were creamy and delicious. Plus they looked pretty sitting on the buffet during our dinner. I served the parfaits with a large bowl of tangerines in the center of the table. The combination of eating something fresh like fruit with the creamy and sweet tofu silk was just the right kind of balance for us.