A comment from Rocky Mount on the "Living Healthier/Cost More" blog got me thinking. This person has a valid point...if beans and frozen veggies were all I ate. But I found myself thinking more and more of my mom and how she grew up in the Tidewater area of Virginia. Seven kids and not a lot of money.

Most days all my grandma had were beans, peanut butter or oatmeal. I laugh every time they tell me this story, because the rule was, if you don't want what is put out for you to eat, then you just don't eat. My mother got tired of those three staples and she grew up the skinniest of them all, because she decided she wasn't going to eat. Well, she vowed that when she grew up, she would never have those staples in her kitchen.

Now, I come along and I love beans, peanut butter and oatmeal, but I didn't know how much I loved it until I went to grandma's house, cause it wasn't available at mom's. What I'm trying to say is -- these types of staples, along with greens and cabbage -- were available to the poor. T-bones, pork roast, asparagus, artichokes, duck, salmon, pomegranates, certain fresh berries and year-round citrus, etc. were not. And if you grew up on a farm, you had your rich creams and butters and knew darn well there was no such thing as substituting them for margarine. That was a sin.

Now, my grandma is living a wonderful long life and all her faculties are working. My mother is strong, but with so much health facts available now, she's re-evaluating what should go into her cabinets. She now knows the value of beans and oatmeal, so I can find those when I go home. I'm not sure she's gotten a hankerin' for peanut butter yet, but if you tell her it is the cancer fighting food of the week, she might pick up a jar.

If I were forced to eat oatmeal or [plain] cheerios everyday and a peanut butter and fresh fruit marmalade sandwich at lunch with a hot baked skin-on yam and beans for dinner, and made to walk three miles to school in the snow, up a steep hill to and from (I could never figure out how they went up hill both ways, but it made the story good, didn't it?) I'm willing to bet you, there would be no diabetes, hypertention or those other blood illnesses to worry about when I'm older.

But dang it, it took all day Sunday to clean those beans and greens. And to tenderize the meat that sometimes went with it. And there was no such thing as instant oatmeal, so that took time too. WHERE DOES A WORKING MOM TODAY FIND THAT TIME?

And here comes fast food, instant grits, instant oatmeal, the microwave, the waffle in the freezer and so on.

Well Rocky Mount, if I want to save money and go back to basics, my mother's childhood staple foods would be the way to go. Thanks for the memories, as I finish up my beef burgundy and new potatoes, with a succulent apple-cranberry crisp dessert, all from a frozen microwaveable meal.