What was common though, back in my growing up to get big years, was my fathers lunch special “cheddar cheese on crackers”. This consisted of toasted saltine crackers arranged on a plate to be two four by four matrices stacked one on top the other and mortared together by the industrious Campbell’s cheddar cheese soup. The remaining outcasts of saltines would be dealt out like cards to sit as kings on top the mountains of cheese.
So now skip forward twenty years or so and I am ready to pass on my childhood tradition to my kids. I copied everything to a T except I was a bit sloppy on the cracker layout given our dish style was not condusive for the proper matrix.
Afterwards I had Buddy call gramps to tell of what he had for lunch. He did but wasn’t able to convey the message it was cheese on crackers instead of cheese and crackers.
Thinking all these years this was a concoction of my dads I thought I would reassure myself and ask if it was his dish.”No” he replied “my mom used to make it when I was a kid. It’s called a Welsh Rarebit but sounds more like Welsh Rabbit.” Ah-ha I thought as the tradition deepen one more generation. COOL!
So being a little curious about this dish I Wikipedia’d it. I found that it was called the Welsh Rabbit but bad etymology led to Rarebit. Also it was know as a poormans dish, and the name is because in Wales cheese was poormans meat and in England rabbit was the poormans meat. So when you do the math it would be the Welsh poormans meat labeled as and with the English poormans meat. Somewhere in the mix the original toast got swaped out for saltines. My guess is that probably happened during the Great Depression.
