Born in 1945, I was a bottle baby. There were no commercial formula products.

[MineralMan]

37. We're so far removed from the time when most babies

were fed formula made at home that we have completely forgotten those days. The mothers who fed their babies that way are great-grandmothers now, or gone completely.

The commercial formula manufacturers have succeeded in selling the idea that nothing but their products are even safe for infants.

Obviously, that's not true, given the long, successful history of formulas like the one in my OP. BTW, the baby picture on that formula is the Gerber baby. Gerber baby foods were the next step, so the commercialization of baby nutrition was already well underway. I got Gerber baby food when I went off the bottle. I do remember that.

The medical profession also doesn't remember those days any longer. So, we get warnings, rather than informed information on how to deal with shortage of commercial infant formula products. That's stupid. Instead, detailed instructions on how to prepare a healthful infant formula should be in the news. But, that's not happening.

We are less able to survive these days when we can't get the things we need. We've forgotten how to survive, really. We've forgotten that things were not always like they are now and that people survived just fine, for the most part.

That is a shame.

A few years ago, we had an outdoor party for a bunch of my wife's relatives. I was the designated food preparer, so I decided to do something different. For about a week before the party, I went fishing for a couple of hours each day. I easily caught enough fish to feed the whole group. Everything else for the meal came from the local farmer's market. So, as the party came closer to meal time, I started dipping filets of the fish I had caught in seasoned flour and fried them all up in a big cast iron pan on the charcoal grill. I grilled corn on the cob in their husks, we had a huge salad from the farmer's market, with tomatoes from my little garden, along with some bread also from the market. I also made about five gallons of lemonade and filled up pitchers with it and ice.

I made a big batch of tartar sauce from my own very simple recipe.

The whole thing was a big hit. It was also very, very simple. Easy, too. Fun times, and simple times. Those folks were used to my normal cooking, which was a lot more fancy, but I decided to do something simple and basic that time. Old style outdoor cooking.