I’m sharing a WPA Great Depression era story from Connecticut about a May breakfast tradition found in the America Eats folder located in the Library of Congress labeled “Notes, Reports, and Essays,” on Connecticut. At the center of the story is Elizabeth Phelps Brady the leader of the Mother's Day Breakfast Brigade. I have produced the content in a paraphrased format when necessary to make them legible and indirect quotes as often as possible.
Canned preserves served as the centerpiece of her breakfast menu. Brady’s fruit cellar still contained a wide variety of jellies and preserves, many of them put aside at the time of their making, for this particular event. The wild strawberries, preserved in the glass jars by the heat of the sun’s rays, for instance, were a delicacy which the family enjoyed only on special occasions. Eight jars waited in the darkest corner on the shelf for the May morning when they would be unwrapped in the church kitchen, and a delightful aroma would be greeted by a course of ohs and ahs!
