Fishmonger and milkmen

It seems to me that I posted something about this before, but just in case my senile mind is playing tricks on me again, here goes.

When I was growing up food was delivered to the door. Oh, we had markets (stores) where we could purchase food, and mom did, but there were those delivery trucks that seemed to be at our home several times a week.

Every Friday, the fishmonger would bring us fresh fish from the shore, and fillet and de-scale those fish right on the street. The neighborhood cats would get a feast. But the aroma wasn't too pleasant, at least for me.

Also, on Fridays, our neighbor, Tom Lodge, came by with his "fresh" produce truck -- never mind it was in the dead of winter and the "fresh" produce was up from Florida or out from California. However, in the summer we feasted on Jersey tomatoes -- they are really the best ever tomatoes and aren't grown any more. Big Boys have replace the good old Jerseys. We also relished Jersey corn. Jersey peaches. Jersey blueberries (I still try to find Jersey blues in our local produce store), local lettuce, onions, and even potatoes. I loved the summer -- still do -- for the fresh produce that was and is available.

One our family favorites was tomato salad -- made with cut up Jerseys, sweet basil leaves (fresh from mom's garden), onions and a little bit of olive oil (EVOO). Mixed together the salad produced just enough "juice" to be sopped up with day-old Italian bread. Yummy! I was probably the only child in the family who loved zuchinni the way my mom made it. She would cut up a zuchinni and saute it in butter and add some garlic for flavor. When the squash was just tender we would eat it. It was soooooo good. Even dad liked it. But when she made it the only ones to eat it were daddy, me, and my mom.

Also delivered to our door was milk, in glass bottles, which in winter would freeze, and the cream would become like a Popsicle on the top of the bottle. The milk portion would settle to the bottom of the bottle, cream would rise to the top, and basically we drank 3/4 and 1/4 (not 1/2 and 1/2). Milk tasted so much better when I was a girl. Now it tastes like watered down I don't know what. It doesn't taste like milk, anyway. Milk and other dairy products, like cottage cheese which came in aluminum cups, were delivered on Monday, Wednesday, and Friday.

Since I never knew that there was such a thing as non-delivery of milk, when we set up our home in Cincinnati, it took me quite a while to find a company that would deliver milk, butter, and cottage cheese to the door. The company finally stopped home deliveries in the mid-80s.

I would pay extra to have food delivered to my door any day rather than have to go to Kroger's or some other grocery.

And, dad's shirts were laundered, starched, and ironed by one of the local laundries, and his shirts were delivered, also on Friday.

Seems like Friday was a busy day.