10 Old-School Winter Kitchen Staples Getting Harder to Find in America

Every Christmas, Mama set out one glass dish of ribbon candy, and us children got one piece a day, let to melt, never bit. The company that made candy like that had been at it since eighteen fifty-six, and sold it to Walmart and Russell Stover. Then in twenty nineteen that factory shut its doors for good. A good deal of our winter kitchen went the same quiet way, and nobody rang a bell when it left. So I set out ten old-school winter kitchen staples that are getting harder and harder to find in America — the ribbon candy Mama kept up on the pie safe, the coal-oil lamp that kept the kitchen lit when the ice took the lines down, the souse and liver mush off killing day, the real mincemeat that had meat in it, the keeping apples she wrapped in newspaper down in the cellar, and the buttermilk that never once came near a store. For every one, I'll tell you where you can still get the real thing. Where a claim rests on food history or science, it's named on screen. Where it's just how we did it, I say so. Tell me down in the comments which one of these you miss the most, what your mama called it, and what county and state your family's kitchen sat in. I truly want to know. "You take care of yourself, honey, and keep that lamp filled." Historical and educational. This is one grandmother's memory of how we did things; the food-safety steps — canning meat in a pressure canner, pasteurized milk, and safe kerosene handling — follow the sources named on screen, so please follow them and not just my say-so. ⏱️ CHAPTERS 0:00 Intro — The winter kitchen that's disappearing 0:52 #10 Ribbon candy 3:08 #9 Coal oil (kerosene) 5:40 #8 Souse and liver mush 8:50 #7 Candied citron 11:45 #6 Oyster stew 14:44 #5 Milk in glass bottles 17:09 #4 Horehound candy 19:30 #3 Real mincemeat 22:23 #2 Old keeping apples 25:06 #1 Buttermilk #Appalachia #AppalachianCooking #WinterCooking #SouthernCooking #GrandmaRecipes #OldFashioned #NostalgiaCooking #DepressionEraCooking #CountryCooking #Buttermilk #Mincemeat #Fruitcake #VintageRecipes #ComfortFood SOURCES (named on screen): Abraham Gesner; U.S. Energy Information Administration; U.S. CPSC; USDA Census of Agriculture; National Center for Home Food Preservation (UGA); CDC; FDA; Creighton Lee Calhoun (Old Southern Apples); Tom Brown (Clemmons, NC); Paradise Inc. & Seneca Foods; Primrose Candy / Washburn ribbon candy; Hammond's Candies; Neese's / Jenkins / Hunter's / Mack's; Helms "Red Band" / Ratliff / Claeys; JD Country Milk & Kate's; None Such.