My 5th grade teacher (mid 1970’s) told our class that it was common for restaurants to keep a box or bucket near the kitchen entryway so that busboys could toss in large toss-able leftovers from patrons’ meals. Then the cook would dump it all in a pot at night and top off the pot with water; it would be left to simmer all night and be 'Soup of the Day" the next morning.
I recounted the story to my 8th grade food & health class, and the instructor noted (very quickly) that municipal health inspectors had generally made such a practice illegal in the 60’s due to mold/bacteria problems.
–G!
Fish: What are you eating? It smells like garbage!
Yemana: It’s traditional … let’s see…fish heads, mushrooms…fermented – Maybe it IS garbage!
—From Barney Miller (TV show)
You recall the Alka Seltzer commercials from the gritty 70’s that had “I can’t believe I ate the whole thing,” and “Mama Mia, that’s a spicy meetball!”
One of the forgotten ones had character actor Mike Kellin in a greasy-spoon diner, asking about the menu oddity “Beef-o Rancho.” “Tuesday’s hash with Wednesday’s gravy.”
Olla Podrida is a traditional Spanish dish, translates as rotten stew pot. In its true peasant form it was a pot kept on a low fire into which all the leftovers were thrown, a handy way to keep them w/o refrigeration. Mongolian Fire Pot has the same origins. And I’ve read of sourdough starters as old as San Francisco. Man, I love leftovers.
I don’t remember the name of the San Francisco bakery but I saw a show about it on the Travel Channel that said that the business kept the sourdough starter in three different, widely separated locations. So, if disaster struck, the starter wouldn’t be lost. It was supposed to be over a hundred years old, or close to it.