Cooking shows and all the electronic devices and “time-saving” methods for cooking have not replaced the delights that came from Grandma’s kitchen.

Way back before we worried about carbs and whether something was organic, she was producing cookie sheets (the big ones) filled with rolls that didn’t start out frozen and big jars filled with soft molasses cookies.

We never heard about calories or vitamins. All we knew was that everything tasted good and we were always told to clean our plate – it was good for us! There were no snack breaks. Back in the old days, especially, most of what was in the kitchen was also locally grown, including the meat.

Old-time school photos from that era reveal that obesity was a stranger and aside from childhood diseases of the day, kids were thriving on diets including many items we shun today. My mother, a grandmother many times over, always used lard (pure fat) to make piecrust, just as her mother had done. Today, the piecrusts are already made. You can buy them in a tidy package and simply unroll them. And they are delicious, too.

Decades ago, hot lunch at school was a misnomer. There wasn’t any such thing as “cold” lunch. All the cooks were grandma clones and they whipped up such meals as meat loaf and mashed potato, chicken with gravy on biscuits, macaroni and cheese (no boxes involved), stews, soups, baked ham with pineapple and always on Fridays, fish chowder or salmon loaf. The aromas of baking bread and whatever else was being cooked would waft from the basement kitchen, up the stairs and into the classrooms, tempting us to guess what was for lunch.

Toward the end of the school year, when the kitchen larder was being used up so as not to have unused food – everyone was very thrift conscious – a special treat would show up on the lunch menu. We thought this was wonderful, a slice of bologna with a scoop of mashed potato on top, it was called a Mexican hat. We never had bologna at home. Many years later, when I asked my son what they had for lunch at school, this specialty was still being served,

Just last week, a friend and I agreed that cooking is much easier today. Frozen breads and boxed mixes with ingredients premeasured correctly are actually less expensive that cooking from scratch, although I still make molasses cookies the way grandma did. Her handwritten recipe gives clear instructions: Make the batter stiff, so that a spoon will stand upright in it.

Stoves don’t have to be stoked with wood any longer. No guesswork about the temperature, no thermometers to test the “doneness” – yes, much has improved. But somehow, we are now dealing with obesity. We’ve hired nutritionists, and heart-healthy, locally grown foods are being offered in the schools. Let’s hope the taste buds of this today’s youngsters are as tempted as the ones of years ago when the grandmas of my generation were in the kitchens.

Kay Soldier welcomes reader ideas for column topics of interest to seniors. She can be reached by email at kso48@aol.com, or write to 114 Tandberg Trail, Windham, ME 04062.