By Veronica MacDonald Ditko
An Accidental Anthropologist
Meal preparation often falls to mothers, and has been so since the dawn of hunters and gatherers. Call her Mom, Maid, Nanny, Grandma, Oma, or Tita, as my friend called her Filipino aunt– I’m sure these women have had to get a little creative with picky eaters.
School lunches in our house are pretty predictable. This is partly because neither of our two boys is too keen on eating a sandwich, which has only been in existence since the mid-1700s, thanks to John Montagu the 4th Earl of Sandwich. And some things I’d love to pack don’t travel very well. This makes me wonder what kinds of traveling lunches people have had throughout time.
The Ice Man nicknamed Ötzi, the most well preserved Copper Age human ever found in the Italian Alps back in 1991, was carrying two mushrooms on a leather string on an apparent journey, but researchers think they were for medicinal purposes. Indications show he died in springtime. Dried berries were found next to his body and in his stomach and colon were red deer and ibex meats, bread, and sloes (blackthorn berries), which he must have dried the previous fall when they were ripe.
Around the same time, Lake Dwellers in Switzerland were found to dry just about any fruit available, be it blackberries, elderberries, strawberries, or apples. I suppose these were early versions of Craisins. Nuts too were stored in their houses built on stilts in lakes, such as native hazelnuts. These people were not known to travel much except to trade, but I’m sure they could make traveling lunches in a pinch.
What about the times of Little House on the Prairie, circa 1875? Well, you can forget about Snackables. When the Ingalls family prepared for their pioneering trips across the Midwest, they made hard, dry cakes out of cornmeal. They also packed preserved, salted meats such as pork and fish.
Some people carry their food with them in more than just a pouch. The nomadic Massai people of Kenya worship cattle, the same animals that feed them with milk and blood as they wander the Serengeti together. They have done this since time immemorial.
As for me, friends know my favorite lunch is a cheese sandwich, always has been. Maybe it’s my Swiss roots. Or maybe I’m just lazy. It takes two minutes to slap together a few slices of bread and a few cut pieces of cheese. Which begs a few more questions: did ancient peoples care about getting to work or school on time? Does time pressure kill food creativity? I bet the answers are no, yes!
What’s your favorite traveling lunch? Any tips for harried parents of schoolchildren?
Veronica MacDonald Ditko is originally from the Jersey Shore, but married and settled in northern New Jersey. Her journalism career started a decade ago after studying Psychology and Anthropology in Massachusetts. She has written for several newspapers and magazines including The Daily Hampshire Gazette, The Springfield Union News and Sunday Republican, Happi, Chemical Week, The Hawthorne Press, The Jewish Standard, Suite101.com and more.