We three Caywood kids drank hot cocoa every morning winter and summer. I despised plain milk and that was the only way I could handle milk. We ate oatmeal sometimes and eggs and bacon when we had some available. Since we never butchered, we relied on store purchased meats, which was very seldom. Most of our groceries were purchased on Saturday. I well remember the excitement during the war years rationing when white oleo came into being. It was mixed with packets of color added to a block of white lard looking substance to make it yellow. It came out striped, if we did a bad mixing job. We usually made our own butter, but used the oleo when we ran low. We ate a LOT of fried potatoes and onions. It is still a favorite of Wayne's. I cut the potatoes into small cubes and fry them as usual. The grandchildren love them fried that way best. They think of them as small French Fries. Our wash day was "Pinto bean day" for us. Mama also baked bread that day to utilize the heat from the old cook stove that was used in the winter to heat the water. We kids often begged mom to make pancakes for supper. She never liked to make them for some reason. She used an elongated cast iron griddle that could cook eight good sized pancakes at a time. Mama gave the griddle to me when our children were small. I still have it. Mama and daddy picked wild sand plums each summer and made many jars of plum butter and jelly to last until the next year. The same was done with the culled peaches that were small or not used for canning. Daddy always torched the web worms that made webs in the plum thickets earlier in season. Otherwise, we had to sort out the wormy ones. Mama also canned many jars of peaches and blackberries that grew on our farm. We took homemade bread and peach or wild plum jelly sandwiches in our syrup pail dinner buckets to school. We were as poor as church mice. Wild plums were plentiful in pastures and along the roadside where we lived. Now, they have been killed off and are harder to find. Many pastures still have them around this part of Oklahoma. Plum thickets will take over a pasture in a few years and have to be controlled. Wayne said he and his siblings took fried chicken almost every day to school. Mom Guffy would go out to the chicken house, catch and kill a chicken then fry it. I always let the meat chill a while before I cooked it. Very few people take the time to cook the old fashioned way nowadays. 
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Created December 20, 2020
Updated: 14 June, 2021
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