[ravenmaniac]

I am not feeling well today so my husband made breakfast.

When I walked into the kitchen to pour a glass of diet 7-up I saw a piece of toast sitting on a plate on our counter. A memory of my grandmom saving toast from breakfast came flooding back to me.

We grew up sharing a back yard with my grandparents. When I was little I used to love going into her kitchen and seeing if there was any "cold toast" on the counter. She would gladly give it to us.

My grandmother grew up on a farm in Canada with 13 brothers and sisters. Nothing was wasted.

I can remember her re-warming leftovers and they tasted so good. My grandpop would galdly eat them too.

My grandparents never wasted anything.

One time my grandpop went to the Pantry Pride to get tuna for 10 cents a can. He was so proud of himself. He bought 4 cases and gave each of his "kids" a case. Only problem was it was cat tuna or cat food.

He was so excited to see the sale on "tuna" he didn't read the whole ad. My mom and Aunt's still laugh about that.

My gradmom would come home from shopping and my grandpop would complain. She would say, "Oh Roy, it was a good buy." He would say, "Yeah, goodbye money." It was his favorite saying.

Boy do I miss them!

 

[Drgnfly423]

Awww...I love that story. =)

The leftover food on the counter reminds me of my Grandma, too. She would always leave leftover fried potatoes on the counter next to the fridge for us to eat if we got hungry after dinner. There was definitely no waste in her house! I haven't thought of that in years.
Thank you. =)

 

[frugalfranny]

My gradmom would come home from shopping and my grandpop would complain. She would say, "Oh Roy, it was a good buy." He would say, "Yeah, goodbye money." It was his favorite saying.

Boy do I miss them!

I LOVE THIS!!! That sounds like something my gramps would say too.

It is really neat growing up with grandparents close. I had one set that was really close to the school. Spent many of lunch hours at their house......with whatever friends wanted to 'tag along' and we were all wecome. Made sure I hit it on cinnamon roll day! NO ONE made better cinnamon rolls than grams!

 

[pollypurebred39]

My grandmother always had a plate of bacon on the stove top! There never was any waste at my Grandmothers.

I remember my Grandmother buying canned food that had no labels. There was a shelf full of canned food with no labels at our local market (I can't imagine why now, where did the labels go???) anyway they would just be a few cents and my Grandmother would scoop them all up every time she shopped. It was so much fun watching her open the cans to see what she had. You never knew if you were going to get beets or creamed corn with supper, or if that can she hoped had tuna in it had cat food instead. Good thing she had a cat!

 

[mauimagic]

What wonderful stories and memories!! Mahalao for sharing them!!

 

[LuvMyHubby]

Oh boy does the talk of grandparents bring back memories. Not sure if my story is as frugal minded but here goes:

My mom, brother and I lived with my Grandmother (my dad was where ever he was ) We actually lived there since I was quite young, after my grandfather passed as neighbor offered to be nice to the little old lady and her daughter and buy the farm and land because there was no way two tiny women could keep up a farm.......uh-oh.....wrong thing to say to......needless to say, I understand from the story, he was quickly aware that his input was not needed, those womenfolk could do quite well thank you.

As I grew up we never lacked for food that is for certain and with a farm with meat and chickens/eggs and a huge garden, which I detested weeding, grocery shopping was pretty quick to the point and frugal.

I don't ever remember them buying bread or any kind of goodies, I had never had a packaged cookie until I was much older. My grandmother used to get up very early every Saturday morning and bake several loaves of bread, cookies and some kind of turnover (usually apple or mincemeat) and sometimes brownies.

I am sure there was more but can't think of any right now. Thanks for this thread, it has made me very nostalgic since both of these feisty women are gone now.

 

[Hamada]

One of my grandmothers kitchen always smelled of vinegar once the dishes were done. I always thought it was from the PA dutch dressing she always made. Mom never used vinegar to clean things.

Also remember her putting some small piece of meat in the freezer or taking it out and making a really good beef pot pie with it. Plus there were always slice hardboiled eggs in it. Can't find that in the freezer section.

Oh yea, whenever I see a kite I am reminded of her. She would run around trying to get the kite in the air so the grandkids could see. She was well into her sixties doing that.

My other grandmother always had Tang in the house. I thought it was the best orange juice there was. At the time I did not know it was tang. Imagine my surprise when I finally bought tang.

 

[Minner77]

I don't have stories of grandparents (we lived too far away), but growing up with my own folks was enough of a lesson in frugality. Dad was the original stockpiler; I remember his buying 50 bars of soap one time -- lasted forever, even in our household of 7. Mom cooked everything from scratch, and to afford to serve us something expensive like pork or special cuts of beef would buy one or two servings' worth each time it was on sale until she had enough to feed us all. (She also sewed as many of our clothes as she could.)

A quick memory from Mom's cooking from scratch: she always brought homemade goodies to school for birthdays and for the bake sales, and we used to wish she'd do like a lot of the other mothers and buy packaged cookies, etc., from the store. It just seemed more impressive to our unknowledgeable minds. What did we know?

Mom also washed and reused foil, and she and a friend who did the same had a good laugh when they overheard people talking about another woman who was so frugal she "even" reused foil.

My folks were Depression-era, and I learned a lot from them. I am forever grateful.

 

[joyofsix]

I have so many frugal memories but two from my grandparents. My grandma had a can on the stove she saved meat drippings in to fry other things. Potatoes fried in meat drippings were the best.
My grandpa ate coffee soup and called it lunch or supper. He broke up bread in his coffee cup and sprinkled sugar on top, poured coffee on and at it with a spoon. He said he grew up on it.

 

[Imarachne]

I have really enjoyed reading all of these posts. My family was frugal and my grandparents lived on a farm. Like you all said, nothing was wasted and my folks learned from them and so did I. I had gotten away from those gems of wisdom but now am striving to revisit their ideas. Loved reading about all the grandparent influences in your posts. I'm a grannie and hope to inspire my grandkids and greatgrandkids in that way !

 

[ladytoysdream]

I know my Dad's parents had a small dairy farm and also raised vegtables to sell at the big market. I just remember it was fun visiting them. Did not eat there though. We did however get to enjoy the big nut bowl they kept on the dining room table.

My mom was one of 7 and when her real Dad passed away, her mom remarried a man who had 5 kids. He started a new job and was killed the first day on the job. So her mom ended up raising 12 alone. I am not sure how she did it as I don't remember my mom talking about it very much. I do know my mom quit school in the 8th grade to get a job to help the family out.

My parents had a dairy farm. The expression *poor as church mice* always makes me shake my head. Church mice had it better than we did.
We got hand me downs from the uncle's kids. We used to think it was Xmas whenver they brought bags of used clothes to us.
Dad raised a few pigs to help keep food on the table. As well as a old cow every once in awhile made it into the freezer.
If the water heater quit, we hauled hot water from the barn to the house, to do the dishes. Clothes were done in a wringer washer that was not hooked up. So we hand loaded the water. Then dumped it via the hose back into pails, and headed it out the back door. Hung clothes up year around. We never had a clothes dryer.
In the winter, we hung the clothes upstairs. Big old wood furnace in the celler. We also had a small wood stove in the kitchen next to the electric stove. Mom liked to keep that going in the winter to keep that room warmer. Quite often she would hand us 5 gallon pails, and we would have to go out and scronge the yard, and hedge rows for small pieces of wood she used for kindling in the kitchen stove. Usually we had to stay ahead of her, with several pail fulls. She also liked to burn the paper trash in the little stove. I can only remember one chimney fire. They had to call the fire department and we kids had to go sit in the cow barn for awhile till the smoke cleared.

We had chickens for awhile. Quite a few fruit trees. When Dad planted veggies, it was a lot. I remember the one year he put in about a thousand tomato plants. Oh my. He thought of the idea of making us kids ride on the cabbage planter to get them in faster.
I don't remember mom canning much. But she must have because she had a canner. I ended up with it and every so often I dig it out and use it. I know she did her share of scratch cooking. We had one old cookbook that we kids about wore out. I know I had some of those recipes memorized because we used them that often.
We had one TV and one phone and it was on a party line. I even remember the number to this day. We were very rural and our school bus ride was 9 miles each way. Mom did not drive and if we wanted to go visit friends, we either walked, rode bikes, or the horses. Parents only got paid 2 X a month when the milk check came in. One check was bigger than the other. We only went to the big town like once a month. If we ran out of something, we had a small corner store than was just over a mile from the farm on a main road.
How my parents made ends meet is hard for me to figure out. I just know they did. The bills and taxes all got paid. I remember my mom complaining a lot that the barn / farm got the money invested into it, because that is where our income came from. The house always came last. We went without a lot.
I know Dad's dad used to feel bad for us. He gave Dad 2 cars after he was done with them and upgraded to another one.
I learned a lot growing up. It serves me well today.

 

[Hamada]

I just remembered another memory. My dad was definately a depression baby. So any time he got something for free he thought it was the greatest. One time he got a free zip up fleece jacket. He loved it. Wore it so long that the arms were partially cut off because something happened to the cuffs. It was pretty pathetic looking. But dad loved it. One day my young nephew saw it and said it was nice. I looked at him and said one day it will be yours. Everyone laughed. The poor kid was to young to understand and just sort of looked at me. To this day he probably has clothes given to him for x-mas still in their original packaging in his closet.