MY THRTY SEVEN (37) WRITING = MOJ TRIDESET SEDMI (37) OPIS

     “Were there any foods you didn’t like to eat when you were a kid?”

My dear grandchildren, your grandfather “Babu” Milan will answer the question:

“Were there any foods you didn’t like to eat when you were a kid?”

Of course there were, and a few that I will explain the way I personally experienced it at the time. I am the child of a peasant mother, I was born in the countryside, I lived in the countryside, I did the hard work of which products we lived on, we lived off peasant products; there was no other choice for life in the countryside. We would only buy what we could not produce on our land, and that is, for example: sugar, coffee, clothes and shoes, artificial fertilizers and other necessities that we did not produce on our farm. We produced tobacco that the state controlled as its state monopoly. For us and our life in the countryside, tobacco was of great importance, because it provided us with the necessary amount of money to buy the necessary things that we did not produce. I am putting a picture of me

Friday, June 29, 1956 in tobacco. If you take a good look at the picture, you will see what the tobacco looks like in the field as it grows.

 We produced almost all the grain we needed for life, to mention just a few grains. Corn, barley, millet, sorghum, barberry, wheat, ect. I will briefly explain the purpose of the need for every grain we have used in the countryside in our lives.

1. Corn is the number one we used to survive. From corn flour our mothers would cook bread, pura (corn meal) often from corn flour would be given to pigs, poultry, sheep, cows, horses and other animals that we had for our living needs.

2. We used barley almost every day, mostly for the livestock we had for our daily needs for our lives. The barley bread was not tasty to eat and I was always opposed to eating that barley bread. Mom would always be angry and tell us kids that she had no other flour today besides barley.

3. Millet was only for the herd, but it often happened that my mother had no flour other than millet, so out of sheer necessity and need she would bake bread for us children from millet flour. That bread was tasteless, gluttonous. But, as the Croatian proverb says: hunger does not have eyes and when one is hungry he eats everything.

4. Sorghum is the same as the number (3) Millet, except the flour is black instead of gray or white. The bread was tasteless, and we kids didn’t like it.

5. Barberry (or broom, same thing) is one seed of almost yellow color, it grows almost a meter and a half. Only brooms are made from this plant. The seed is located on top of the plant. The seeds are given to the herd to eat and flour can also be made from it. Out of sheer necessity, our mother Iva Boban, Vićeka, your great-grandmother baked bread for us children from that barberry flour several times. The bread was not good. I would often throw it to the poultry and tell my mother that I ate everything. That was the slogan: manage …

6. Wheat was my number two (2) product. The wheat flour was white, delicious, the bread could not be better or tastier. Many, many and once again many times I ate only wheat bread and asked for nothing but bread because it was so delicious that I didn’t need anything else with it. Wheat flour was used to make various cakes for many different occasions; and even today the Pizza known to many is a product of wheat flour.

My dear grandchildren, your grandfather “Babu” answered the question above: “Was there any food you did not want to eat when you were a child?” In those 6 points I listed above, I think I answered you with my personal experience that I went through as a boy while growing up and living in my village Bobanova Draga.

Your eternal grandfather “Babu” Mile, Milan Boban.

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                                     Hrvatski

Dragi moji unuci vaš djed “Babu” Milan će odgovoriti na postavljeno pitanje:

“Je li bilo hrane koju niste voljeli jesti kad ste bili dijete?”

Naravno da je bilo, i to nekoliko koje ću objasniti onako kako sam ja tada to osobno proživljavao. Ja sam dijete seljačke majke, rodio se na selu, živio na selu, radio težačke poslove od kojih proizvoda smo mi živjeli, živjelo se je od seljačkih proizvoda; drugog izbora za život na selu nije bilo. Kupovali bi samo ono što nismo mogli proizvesti na našoj zemlji, a to je na primjer: šeđer, kafa, odjeća i obuća, umjetno gnojivo i druge potrebštine koje mi nismo proizvodili na našoj farmi. Proizvodili smo duhan kojeg je država kontrolirala kao svoj državni monopol. Za nas i naš život na selu duhan je bio od velike važnosti, jer nam je omogućio potrebnu svotu novca za kupovinu potrebnih stvari koje mi nismo proizvodili.

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