Stage Left - Reflections: Your Baby's Ration Card

I am an anal retentive sort of fellow. I am also quite the sentimental sort of fellow. So it should be no surprise that I took great pleasure in organizing the last bit of storage space in my old house, above the garage, where ancient artifacts have laid in boxes unopened through many years and many moves. Much of the stuff was junk of course, gift certificates to Fortunoff and the like; but there were some treasures as well.

For instance, I found my grandmother's old Better Homes and Gardens Cookbook. I remember it sitting up on the shelf in my mother's house. I remember learning how to make brownies and cookies and cakes from scratch when, in the latter years of my junior high school experience, my parents went through their Weight Watcher's phase. This had caused them to stop buying desserts; which draconian measure I battled on my own behalf with the aid of Nana's dog-eared cookbook.

I have had a more recent version of the book upon my own shelf since 2005, when I received it as a Christmas present. Until last month, I had forgotten all about the 1941 edition in the old box in the attic. Last week I decided to look up a recipe for eggnog both old and new, to see what had changed. The new recipe eliminated the salt (just 1/4 teaspoon per quart) and was much diminished for it.

But what really struck me was a page inserted in the front. You see, the old BH&G cookbooks were in a loose-leaf binder so that industrious housewives could cut out articles and recipes from Better Homes and Gardens Magazine, which BH&G formatted specifically to fit neatly inside the binder. Each kitchen's BH&G cookbook was a living document, ready to accept your home recipes and notes as well as constant updates from the homemaker's favorite magazine. Brilliant, eh?

This article, that my grandmother had placed so prominently in her copy, stopped me in my tracks. Obviously, she had cut it from the pages of the magazine and kept it for guidance. It seems almost unfathomable to me that in 20th century America, my own parents lived through a time where people had food ration cards for their babies, that it could be so matter-of-fact that tips for the management of it appeared in Better Homes and Gardens, that it was so necessary and relevant in my own grandmother's middle-class home in NJ, USA.

It makes me think of that greatest generation and the generation before them (of which my grandmother was a part) and the America they worked so hard to build. I don't have any great lessons to draw or large philosophical points to make. But I'm reminded to be grateful for the blessings I have today and to be grateful for the sacrifices of those who came before us to make those blessings possible. It also fills me with great hope that we can get through whatever lies ahead. I wanted to share those feelings with you this holiday season.