My Thanksgiving cookery - The Three Sisters 11/25/21

Two of the three recipe's I am going to type here were given to me by friends. It goes without saying that if you can make these dishes with fresh foods, like fresh potatoes or carrots, you SHOULD! But I am giving you these because they can be made from canned goods. And while I am on that subject let me say a THANK YOU for canned goods! So many things about our modern world are worh hoting and being grateful for and canned goods is certaily one. A diversion - a family memory: When I was in my teens, my family had moved from the red brick canyons of South Philadelphia. In our New Jersey development, we had a big backyard beside a farm field where the farmer still grew corn. My parents had just been through World War II and their families had survived thanks to the Victory Gardens grown in the patches of field still remaining where the sports arenas and airport was finally built. So, my parents got rieght to work making a big garden. My father grew cucumbers, corn, carrots, potatoes, beans, squash, and of course, New Jersey's most famous fruit the TOMATO! They were so successful that they took up preserving. They bought cases of BALL jars and rubber washers and studied the safe procedures for pickling and preeerving. My father built a food pantry beneath the staircase to the second floor and after steaming days of late summer harvest, the shelves were filled with jewel colored jars of spiced tomatoes, pickled cucumbers, and preserved everything else.

I can still remember my poor mother, in the evening in the summer heat, in her apron, standing over the boiling pots of jars being sterilized. She spent a lot of time standing over boiling pots, my mother. I remember her boiling the glass baby bottles she used for my brothers and sisters, born in the new development of New Jersey. Those were the days of diapers which had to be rinsed, washhed, hung out to dry, and no air conditioning in the houses yet. She stood over those steaming racks of boiled jars, and over the huge pots of boiled vegetables night after night. I am not sure when they stopped, but I can understand why - it was just too much work and you could buy it all and we had plenty of money and the stores had plenty of products. The days of scarcity were over.

Some yeqrs back, Dr. Mehmet Oz was featured in a cover story about the safety of canned goods on the cover of a popular news magazine, Maybe Time, maybe Newsweek. Anyhow, he maintained that although canned goods were not as nutritious as fresh or frozen, they were certainly safe. That was good news becaue I think there had been a scare about the storage of food in metal cans. Apparently the metal in modern canned goods is safe. Anyhow the following recepice's are all from canned goods which mean you can buy these cans aghead of time, store them in a cupboaard and in snow, or bad weather, or anytime you don't want to go shopping, you can make these soups with canned goods!

From Pam Enticknap, a a former college and art friend who was from New England and made this oup with fresh ingredients but it can be made with canned: 1 can of potatoes whole or sliced 1 can of creamed corn 1 can of whole sweet golden corn That's it! Put them in a pot with a few tablespoons of Earth's Promise olive oil based butter substitute, then do a little mashing with a masher or an immersion blender and you have a sweet creamy soup on a cold day! At present, we have a salmonella scare on onions from Mexico so this is a safe alternative to the fresh onions version.

From Ann Horton, a former poetry friend 1 can red beans 1 can black beans 1 can white beans 1 can of corn 1 can of spiced diced tomatoes 1 jar of Slasa Again, just open them, put them in a po and cook! I put a tablespoon of chili in too and I serve it over brown rice (which you can buy frozen and microwave) and with lime flavored tortilla chips. Needless to say, you can make all that fresh with a pressure cooker and I have done it, but the canned goods make it a half hour prep experience!

Finally, my own discovery. In the 'foreign foods aisle of my ShopRite (where they have Chinese foods and Goya products) you can find canned lentils. 2 cans of lentils 1 can of cut carrots Again, I repeat, you can cook your own lentils and peel and cook your own carrots and I am certain it would be more delicious, but this is from storage on a day you are out of fresh produce and don't want to go to the store. When I make these things I like to think of the places in the world they come from and how old thee grains adn beans are in our history. The Three Sisters are the foods the Indigenous people used as their basic diet and which they offered to the first pilgrims to save them through the winter when they arrived: Beans, Corn, and Squash.

So pick up the canned goods on some can can sale day and put them in the cupboard and when winter and snow trap you indoors - you are all set to cook and enjoy and be warm! Happy Thanksgiving. Again, please do't bother with the comments on this web site p it is entirely polluted by robot scam stuff, if you want to reach me, use my e-mail wrightj45@yahoo.com Happy Trails! Jo Ann, by the way I enjoyed New Jersey cider with my meal!