Old-Time Housewifery

Dear Mothers,

Yesterday as I got back from the store and I pulled into the driveway, I saw our neighbor pulling in. John is a young father of three children under 5 and a precious wife Molly. "I bet the children are all excited about Christmas," I yelled to him across the driveway. "Are you all staying home for Christmas?" And John, tall and so handsome, told me that his family would go back to Texas. "Well, actually they will stay in Texas as I have been called back to Iraq. I was there once but I am being called back." We talked a bit and I told him about Jimmy, our son. I wondered if Jimmy would be called back, even though he is 40 years old. John told me that he was 30. I told John, "I will pray for you. You can count on it, John. I will pray."

Dear Kitchen Saints,

This morning I am making bread. I had bought this apple cider at the store on sale? Well, it's gone to hard cider? So it has some of its own natural yeast. This stuff gets my creative mind going. So for my liquid in the raisin bread I am using the cider. I just made up a loaf of bread, and it is rising. I imagine it will rise like crazy. That cider shudda been tied to a post with a strong cowboy rope. But that's beside the point.

I just read my writings to Jim this morning and he added some things. He is sitting here at the table beside me writing, too.

Jim was from a family of 13 children. He told me that his mother made bread about 3 times a week. And she made a dozen loaves of bread each baking. Then in between the days, when the bread was gone, she made biscuits and pancakes. On the weekends she made 2 or 3 cakes or 3 or 4 pies, or both.

Good Morning, Dear Domestic Mothers, Keepers at Home, and Tenders of the Fire,

This morning I am making a Winter Spice Bread. I just made up the recipe as I went along.

I am up and about, getting ready for the day with Baby Rose. Yesterday we were to have her but David didn't have to work, so I didn't have her, after all.

Jim and I went to the garden shop and I found some feverfew. That is an herb and, if you have a headache, it is supposed to help you. You are supposed to chew the leaves. When I had it before, I chewed the leaves in with some spearmint gum. It is a perennial and looks like daises. I hope to get a good patch of it goin' in my herb garden.

Well I am not up early. It's 6:00 am. But thought I could write about pickles while I visit with Papa. You would be proud of me. I have a pickle recipe in front of me. But I have made enough bread and butter pickles in my day to not need a recipe anymore.

Ok, you need about 5 pounds of cucumbers and a few onions and green peppers. Just take a big pan and put cold water in it and slice the cukes up in it with the onions and peppers. You don't have to peel the cukes. Just wash them good and slice the cukes with the peeling on them.

Some of the farm mothers during the Depression era were able to feed their families well. They had nothing but food. They had their own chickens and saved their vegetable seeds from year to year and planted huge gardens. They started pots and containers of every kind with seedlings in the winter for spring gardens. The city mothers didnt fare nearly as well. I have seen cartoons in old books of fat naked farmers. Well, naked for then -- they had their pants on. But the point the cartoonist was trying to make was that the farmers and their families had plenty of food but nothing else.

A few days ago, Jim told me that he would like some sour dough pancakes. I really didn't think he knew about sour dough. I thought maybe he was talkin' about a mix he had seen. I said to him, "Well, Honey, you have had the real sour dough pancakes?" And he said that all the housewives in his neighborhood had a sour dough pot, and they made all kinds of baking with it. Jim said back when he was a boy, if a woman didn't have a sour dough pot in her kitchen, then she wasn't worth much.

I wanted to start writing a bit about the nuts and bolts of homemaking. Some of you pretty much have things worked out, so don't pay any attention to me if I cross your schedule.

The old time Mothers were like scientists. They learned from their own mothers how to set up a kitchen and how each brew, like their pots of vinegars or cheese, would attract certain yeasts out of the air.

My own home, for some reason, is just full of certain yeasts in the air. I could make a glass of water turn into wine ... just kidding. (I wonder if it's because Jesus lives here.)

We all know that yogurt starter is a different yeast than bread yeast, or that cottage cheese needs a dfferent starter than a bread yeast. You can use bread yeast to start your wine or vinegar.