You and I share a lot of memories, good and bad! I too had the responsibility on occasion to make sure that whatever was first chosen didn't go back in the pile for a second choice, as well as breaking up fights when someone set down their C-Rat box for a moment and someone else switched they H&LB ration for theirs!
Some of the memories you mention aren't necessarily welcomed even now. I too like baby limas, but the large ones are absolutely unfit for consumption or any other good purpose I can think of. But good grits and cornmeal mush (or just about anything else made from or with ground corn) are good memories for me. I'll always choose the cornbread over other choices, especially if it's what I call the real stuff and cooked in something cast iron. And fried cornmeal mush always tops pancakes or waffles for me! I had some cornbread and sweet all Jersey creamy milk many a night before bedtime and after supper to tide me over till morning light! Sometimes I had to sneak and hide a chunk of the cornbread at the suppertable in order to do that since I was in competion with some brothers who also liked to do the same thing!
Thanks for the memories! PS: Just thought of another memory ... when in the field, sometimes in order to have a "hot" meal, they'd set up the field kitchen with heaters in galvanized garbage cans and fill them with water and heat 'em up. Everybody had to take their meat ration and drop the can in the heated water for a bit to warm them up, then line up and take whatever the cooks fished out of the can. What a disappointment when you had something you kinda liked that you dropped in and then received by random choice a can of H&LB's! The only time I ever dropped anything in the can was when my original ration was H&LB's. Nothing to lose then and maybe a chance of getting something better!!
Ken: The immersion heaters in garbage cans filled with water were very useful for several chores. Heating canned rations, providing everyone with some hot water for bathing and shaving, and cleaning weapons. Heavily fouled rifles and machineguns could be disassembled, suspended on a hooked wire, immersed in the boiling water, then the water evaporated completely as soon as the piece was lifted out into the air, and normal cleaning and lubrication could be completed with much less effort.
In the field I was pretty popular because my family kept me well supplied with summer sausage, hard salami, cheese, canned Danish hams, and other goodies that could be carried without concerns of spoiling. Some of us also carried sacks of rice which can be boiled up pretty quickly, then C-rat entrees added in with Tabasco sauce, and the troops could really fill their bellies. Most of us carried packages of Kool-Aid powder to mix in our canteens and take away most of the taste of the water.
My mother and father grew up during the Great Depression. I was born on a farm, but we later lived in town. Choices of food were understood to be what could feed the number of mouths necessary, but at the lowest possible cost, and those habits did not change when the Depression was over. We ate a lot of beans, rice, potatoes, cornbread, sauerkraut (homemade), and home baked bread. I remember envying other folks who regularly ate store-bought bread, although now I dream of baking days and the way the house smelled when bread for the week came out of the oven! That aroma could lift me out of bed and carry me all the way to the kitchen without my feet touching the floor.
We always had a large garden. My mother canned vegetables and fruits, we froze fresh corn for use all winter. My dad brought home beans and rice in 100-lb. bags. We made pickles in crocks filled with brine and spices. My dad always did two or three crocks of sauerkraut in the cellar. Like many folks we rented a locker in a freezer plant (not everyone could afford a home freezer), our beef usually bought by the side (butchered and wrapped in freezer paper), pork came from a hog we picked out at someone's farm and took to a packing house for slaughter and processing. About the only things we regularly bought at the grocery store were milk, coffee, salt, sugar, etc. Eggs came from farms in the area, fresh and in need of a good washing before use (although for several years we had our own small hen house and enclosed chicken yard, in those times we were the ones selling to neighbors).
Us kids got to share a bottle of pop, once in a while (certainly not every day). Candy was an infrequent treat. We begged for nickels and dimes when we heard the ice cream truck coming down the street, music blaring. For several years my older brother and I raised rabbits, which we slaughtered and dressed, then sold to a butcher shop in town, and the skins were picked up a couple of times per year by a man who sold them on to clothing makers. A nice fresh 2-lb. rabbit brought about 75 cents, and the skins (fleshed, salted, and stretched) brought a dime each.
A box of .22 shorts cost 27 cents at the local hardware store, a little higher at the gas stations. My brother and I hiked the countryside on a lot of cold days chasing rabbits, squirrels, quail, and pigeons with an old single-shot Winchester. Spring and summer days frequently found us at a creek catching catfish, sunfish, perch, bluegills, and an occasional turtle. At night we gigged frogs, usually bringing home enough for everyone to have for breakfast (battered and fried with bacon grease in a cast iron skillet, which required a lid to keep the legs from jumping out).
Lots of memories. We never thought of ourselves as poor because just about everyone we knew lived the same way.
