Memories Of Those Simple Sunday Night Suppers!! Oh, That Pressure Cooker!!
Yes, you read that right. Supper was what we called nighttime meals when I was a child, so many years ago. I'm guessing my older followers will be shaking their head in agreement. My younger ones, probably not because sometime along the way, dinner became the nighttime meal.
In our house supper was our biggest meal every night except Sunday. Sunday our biggest meal was at noontime, and lighter fare was at night. In summer as I have stated in previous blogs, we always had a huge garden, and our Sunday night meal often was one of my father's favorites. It simply was yellow beans, (he always planted yellow because he said you could see them much easier to pick versus the green against the green plants), diced potatoes, milk, a pat of margarine and saltine crackers, and of course his beloved salt and pepper. My mother made this dish several different ways. Sometimes she would cook the fresh beans and fresh potatoes together then drain and add the milk until heated through (see next paragraph for this method) Other times she might use leftover precooked beans and leftover precooked potatoes in some form or another. In those days she used no spices except salt and pepper which my father insisted on.
Today I thought I would recreate this idea with the fresh yellow beans from a local farmstand. As I was making it, I chuckled when I remembered my mother using her pressure cooker, which by the way was her main idea of cooking in those days. It was very common to walk in her house and hear the top dancing away. To say we had a lot of overcooked meals is putting it mildly. Appreciate your insta pot these days, at least it is silent.....
Today I added some Herbes de Provence for some color and added flavor.
You can even use well rinsed canned potatoes and beans if you so desire.
We had whole milk of course, but these days there are other choices.
I use butter versus margarine in mine and 1 percent milk.
I am not giving an actual recipe, this is all by preference, how you prepare the beans and potatoes, how much milk you desire, spices and butter choices. Today we even have choices in types of saltines, how the times have changed. I'm sure we all have what I like to call memory recipes that can stand some tweaking to make them just a little healthier in today's world. Bottom line, the memory trumps quibbling over whether a recipe is healthy or not every time or should!!
Conjure up a memory, Be Safe!
