Savti's Stories

When Dana's grandmother Florence AKA "Savti" was a kid, the kitchen and the way food was handled was very different.

Most people had ice boxes instead of refrigerators. In some apartment buildings, there were actually little doors opening from the back porch directly into the back of the ice box. Ice men would haul heavy blocks of ice up the stairs, open these little doors and put the ice inside.

Ice came from frozen lakes. Huge blocks were packed in sawdust and stored in ice houses for use during the summer.

Frozen food was just beginning to show up in markets in the 1930s. So salting was still an important way to keep meat from spoiling.

Pasterization of milk, to kill a variety of germs, was just starting to become the standard. And the government was just setting up rules for how vegetables should be canned. Food could be a very scary thing! So chickens and ducks were sold live and you picked your butcher by how clean his store was.

Here's a couple of fun links to give you some idea what shopping was like when Savti was little.

The Food Timeline

The Food Museum

This is a public service announcement mothers might have seen when Savti was a kid.