What We Can Learn From Our Parents and Grandparents in the Kitchen

There's wisdom in the clever, thrifty kitchen practices of our elders

Our elders’ ways with food are etched into our identity, in memory if not in practice. Shutterstock

My Auntie Rae was single and not much of a cook. Frugality ran through her veins, a vestige of her Depression-era teenage years. When my sister and I slept over at her Los Angeles apartment in the early ‘70s, we usually ate a modest dinner out: at a deli or International House of Pancakes (pre-IHOP days). Occasionally, she’d broil lamb chops and boil vegetables until they practically dissolved.

I’m not sure when I first noticed the Manischewitz Borscht jar in her refrigerator that contained, instead of beets, a murky, dull green liquid, but it was best that I waited until adulthood to ask about it. As a kid, if I’d known she drank this leftover broccoli cooking water as a sort of chilled tonic, I would’ve turned that same shade of green.