Speedy's Cafe - General Chat about anything you like!

[Pseudonym]

I have no idea how fridges or freezers worked around here back then, but I'm pretty sure we didn't have blocks of ice delivered and ice picks are not a thing. I'll interrogate my mother and see what she remembers next time I speak to her. If she is old enough to remember that is, I have no idea when fridges even became common place. Yes, I could Google it, but I'd rather just ask and get more personalised info.  

[Carol the Dabbler]

It's my impression (backed up fairly well by Wikipedia) that home refrigerators were coming into fairly common use before WWII, but then production of "non-essential" products was slowed by the war and took a while to build up steam again after (I would guess that was especially true on your side of the Atlantic).  So ice boxes (and home ice delivery) were on the way out during the thirties and forties.

[SherlockedCAMPer]

Early 1900s saw the start of modern refrigerators with the 1940s seeing a freezer unit attached.

[Carol the Dabbler]

According to Wikipedia, that's correct, but I was thinking more of when they came into common use, to the point where there was essentially no market for home ice delivery, and (at least around here) that was after WWII.

[Pseudonym]

That's exactly why I'd like to ask rather than just going by the dates. Perhaps the reason I don't think we got chunks of ice here is because it very rarely gets that warm. Apart from a few weeks in summer it's like a fricking fridge outside most of the time anyway. 

 

I remember having coal deliveries when I was little, I don't know if that seems archaic? We were one of the last houses on my street to still use a coal fire as legit heating.

[Carol the Dabbler]

We had a coal "octopus" furnace when we first moved to what's now Mom's house, and the delivery chute was behind an evergreen shrub. We soon got a fuel-oil furnace, but for a couple decades after that, whenever we would build a snowman, I would belly under the bush and find a few lumps of coal for his eyes and buttons.

[Pseudonym]

A snowman isn't a real snowman without coal eyes. :D

[Arcadia]

Hear hear!

 

I don't remember either ice or coal deliveries, although after a moment I realized the latter is probably because we lived in warm climates when I was a kid. No central heat until the mid-sixties, when we moved to snow country. And there, we had gas heat.

 

But I do remember getting milk deliveries. Why, I don't know, because we already had a fridge, and so did all my friends. Just tradition, I guess.

 

 

 

[SherlockedCAMPer]

The duplex I lived in when I first got married had a noticeable spot where the coal would have been. We had the original kitchen cabinets on our side. The countertop was updated to something from the 50s/60s.

[Carol the Dabbler]

... I do remember getting milk deliveries. Why, I don't know, because we already had a fridge, and so did all my friends. Just tradition, I guess.

Everybody got home milk delivery back then (which is to say, we did too). And bread. Several reasons, I think. Milk was pasteurized at a lower temperature then, so had a shorter shelf life. Refrigerators were smaller. And I'll bet bread didn't have half the preservatives that it does now. Oh, and many (most?) families had only one car, which was generally driven to work by the wage-earner, so grocery shopping was more difficult to schedule.

[Arcadia]

Bread, right, we got that too! But we had to shop for everything else, so it still doesn't make sense to me; why not just pick up the bread at the same time you get the eggs and cereal?

[Carol the Dabbler]

Because eggs and cereal keep better, even without refrigeration.  And if you can only go grocery shopping once a week (when the family driver is off work), then it's helpful to have home delivery of the more perishable, bulkier, more frequently-used items.

 

Odd that there wasn't meat delivery, come to think of it.  Maybe people didn't use as much meat then -- or else they would have, for example, roast beef early in the week, then hash later on, and beef-and-noodles after that -- since cooked meat keeps better than raw.  I do recall quite a number of leftover-meat dishes -- chicken and dumplings, canned chop suey with added meat, sandwiches (cold for lunches or hot with gravy for supper), casseroles, etc.

[Pseudonym]

With our milk deliveries blue tits would come along, peck through the foil top, and drink the cream that had settled on top of the milk. 

[Carol the Dabbler]

That goes back a ways, doesn't it? I remember home delivery of cream-top milk in glass bottles with foil tops (different color foil for different types of milk, cream, etc.) -- but ours had stiff pasteboard inserts under the foil. And we don't even have blue tits (*snicker*).

 

Then they went to homogenized milk in waxed pasteboard cartons.

[Pseudonym]

Snickering at our tits, how rude! :p

Yea, that's yonks ago. Then we went from glass bottles to plastic and soon after we just started buying it in the supermarket.

[Carol the Dabbler]

Yonks -- that's a new word to me. I take it that it means something like "ages"?

[Pseudonym]

Yup!

[SherlockedCAMPer]

Would yonks be British or Welsh?

[Pseudonym]

British I think, though not 100% sure.

[Pseudonym]

Do you have Jaffa Cakes in America?

 

 

If you do, how so you eat them?

[Carol the Dabbler]

Looks kinda like Moon Pies.

 

 

I don't recall ever eating a Moon Pie, but I would guess that one simply -- eats it.  Why?  Do you have some sort of ritual for Jaffa Cakes?

[Pseudonym]

Well, they're kind of like Kit-Kats in that people tend to eat them in different ways. I always nibble off the cake bottom, and then eat the little chocolate and jaffa jelly disc last. 

[Carol the Dabbler]

OK, I've read the description of Jaffa Cakes, and they're really nothing like Moon Pies.

 

Your description of the various ways people eat them reminds me of Oreos, though.

[Carol the Dabbler]

Your description of the various ways people eat them reminds me of Oreos.....

 

Odd thing -- that Wikipedia article says Nabisco came up with Oreos to compete with Sunshine's Hydrox cookies.  I always assumed it was the other way round, since Oreos taste so much better to me.

[Arcadia]

Got sick eating a bag of Oreos when I was a kid. Haven't been able to touch them since. :(