Melon or Fruit, Graham Cakes, Maple Syrup, New Pickles, Broiled Steak, Corn Oysters, and Cocoa

There can never be too many helps for those who, three times a day, must meet and answer the imperative question, "What shall we eat?" -Recipes Tried and True, by the Presbyterian Ladies' Aid [1894].

The first meal of the day is breakfast. And what a breakfast this is! After eating all of this, I felt ready to go work in the fields for several hours. Unfortunately, I have no fields. Alas. The cookbook was also short on the recipes for the menu items, so I drew from our old friend Fannie Farmer, whose cookbook came out two years later.

I visited my parents and made this meal there, and was granted access to Great-Grandma's Really Sweet China.


The plate is not part of Great-Grandma's Really Sweet China. It is part of Mom's Adequate Correlle.

Melon or Fruit


Graham Cakes/Entire Wheat Griddle-Cakes
1/2 cup entire wheat flour.
1 cup flour.
3 teaspoons baking powder.
1/2 teaspoon salt.
3 tablespoons sugar.
1 egg.
1 1/4 cups milk.
1 tablespoon melted butter.

Prepare and cook as Sweet Milk Griddle-Cakes.*




*Sweet Milk Griddle-Cakes ...Mix and sift dry ingredients; beat egg, add milk, and pour slowly on first mixture. Beat thoroughly, and add butter. Cook as Sour Milk Griddle-Cakes.**

**Sour Milk Griddle-Cakes ...Drop by spoonfuls on a greased hot griddle; cook on one side. When puffed, full of bubbles, and cooked on edges, turn, and cook other side. Serve with butter and maple syrup.


New Pickles
No recipe for this one in either cookbook, so I went with the one in my family for fresh pickles. It is as follows:

Fresh Cucumber Pickles
sliced cucumber
sliced onion
white vinegar
water
sugar
salt

Make a solution of one part vinegar, one part water. Add a couple teaspoons of sugar and one of salt. Do not worry. More or less will be fine. Put in the cucumbers and onions and refrigerate for an hour or two. Or 15 minutes. I don't care. Eat them.



If you want to be fancy, score the sides of the cucumber with a fork before you cut it. Then when you slice it, the slices will have an attractive edge like these ones. If you use red onions, after a couple days the solution will turn an attractive pink. You can also reuse the vinegar/water stuff, just throw in more cucumbers.

Broiled Steak


Corn Oysters
Grate raw corn from cobs. To one cup pulp add one well beaten egg, one-fourth cup flour, and season highly with salt and pepper. Drop by spoonfuls and fry in deep fat, or cook on a hot, well greased griddle. They should be made about the size of large oyster.



Breakfast Cocoa
1 1/2 tablespoons prepared cocoa.
2 tablespoons sugar.
2 cups boiling water.
2 cups milk.
Few grains salt.

Scald milk. Mix cocoa, sugar, and salt, dilute with one-half cup boiling water to make smooth paste, add remaining water and boil one minute; turn into scalded milk and beat two minutes, using Dover egg-beater.



Verdict:

Melon or Fruit: It is cantaloupe. And cherries. These and the new pickles really went well with the other, heavier items. This meal had a good contrast of flavors and textures.



Graham Cakes: The batter for these was reeeeeeeeeeaaaally thick. We had to add more milk so it would come off the spoon. Much like partially set concrete. We didn't add too much though, so as to be true to the recipe. As a result, these turned out medium-rare, with a seared outside and raw middle. The middle bite of mine oozed onto the plate. My dad said he liked them...

New Pickles: These are always good. They're a good old-fashioned recipe that is easy and refreshing. Try it out this summer!

Broiled Steak: You may notice the timing of steak being on the menu this week happens to coincide with the day I have access to my parent's freezer. Take no notice.

Corn Oysters: I thought these actually were oddly fishy. Which is weird, because there is no fish. Perhaps I was thinking too hard about the name as I was eating them. My mom liked them, and might make them again, although she likes regular corn better. She also hates seafood and doesn't think these taste anything like fish, so go figure.

Cocoa: I believe "prepared cocoa" here means baking cocoa. This was a lot less sweet and chocolaty than modern hot chocolate. It is more a light chocolate flavored beverage than liquid chocolate. Once you get past the fact that it is different, it is good. I think this would be less cloying in the morning than Swiss Miss.

Frozen foods lady

Awwwwwww. Also, this lady loves her Birdseye products.

White lemon cream

Do you remember "ENGLISH HOUSEWIFRY EXEMPLIFIED, In above FOUR HUNDRED AND FIFTY RECEIPTS, Giving DIRECTIONS in most PARTS of COOKERY; And how to prepare various SORTS of SOOPS, CAKES, MADE-DISHES, CREAMS, PASTES, JELLIES, PICKLES, MADE-WINES, &c." by Elizabeth Moxon [1764]? She who gave us Common Cheese Cakes? Yeah, those were not so good.

This is pretty good though!




To make white LEMON CREAM.

Take a jill of spring water and a pound of fine sugar, and set it over a fire till the sugar and water be dissolv'd, then put the juice of four good lemons to your sugar and water, the whites of four eggs well beat, set it on the fire again, and keep it stirring one way till it just simmers and does not boil, strain it thro' a fine cloth, then put it on the fire again, adding to it a spoonful of orange-flower water, stir it till it thickens on a slow fire, then strain into basons or glasses for your use; do not let it boil, if you do it will curdle.



1 jill = 1/4 imperial pint
1 imperial pint = 20 oz.
1 lb. sugar = 2 1/4 cups



Verdict:
This makes enough for four glasses. It would serve 6-8 just fine. This stuff is stroooong. I wasn't sure what "well beat" egg whites meant, so I went for soft peaks. I suspect now she meant to beat just until it was foamy. This is pretty good stuff though! It turns out surprisingly thick, and is sort of like thick lemonade with foam.



Rejected:
To dress OX LIPS.
Take three or four ox lips, boil them as tender as possible, dress them
clean the day before they are used; then make a rich forc'd-meat* of
chicken or half-roasted rabbits, and stuff the lips with it; they will
naturally turn round; tie them up with pack-thread and put them into
gravy to stew; they must stew while the forc'd-meat be enough. Serve
them up with truffles, morels, mushrooms, cockscombs**, forc'd-meat
balls, and a little lemon to your taste.

*Forced meat is meat which has been forced through a sieve. Think pureed.
**Don't worry. That is a type of mushroom. I hope that is the kind she means.


I'm a cow!

Apple Soup, Macaroni met Ham un Kaas, Rozijen

This week's menu comes from the Prudence Penny Regional Cookbook [1954]. These regions include New England, the South, Pennsylvania Dutch, Creole, Michigan Dutch, Mississippi Valley, Wisconsin Dutch, Minnesota Scandinavian, Southwestern, Western, and Cosmopolitan. I sense a theme in the nationalities present in this list.




Roode Krentenbrig (Red Currant Soup)
Michigan Dutch housewives are famous for beautiful rose-colored fruit soups.

2 tablespoons barley
1 quart red currants
1 cup sugar
1/2 cup water
1 stick cinnamon
1/8 teaspoon salt

Soak barley overnight in 1 cup water. Wash and stem the currants, add sugar, water, and stick cinnamon. Cook over low heat for 15 minutes. Drain and put through a coarse sieve. Add barley with water and salt and simmer until barley is soft and juice thickened. Chill. Serves 4 to 6. Grape juice may be substituted for red currant puree.
BERRY SOUP--Red or black raspberries, huckleberries or blackberries may be used instead of red currants.
APPLE SOUP--Prepare as above using 1 quart diced tart apples instead of currants. Add red food coloring if desired.



Macaroni Met Ham En Kaas (Macaroni with Ham and Cheese)
Macaroni "met ham en kaas" is a great favorite in the Michigan Dutch Country.

1 (8-ounce) package macaroni
1/2 pound boiled ham, chopped
1 (3-ounce) package cream cheese
2 tablespoons butter
Nutmeg
4 eggs
1 cup milk
1 tablespoon finely chopped lemon peel

Cook macaroni in boiling salted water 12 minutes. Drain and arrange in layers in a greased baking dish with ham and cream cheese, dotting each layer of macaroni with butter. Sprinkle with nutmeg. Beat eggs, add milk, 1 teaspoon melted butter, lemon peel and pour over macaroni. Place in a pan of hot water and bake in a 350 degree F. oven 30 minutes. Serves 6 to 8.



Rozijen (raisins)
2 cups seeded raisins
2 cups water
Few grains salt
2 tablespoons cornstarch
1/4 teaspoon cinnamon
1 cup brown sugar

Wash raisins, add water and cook 10 minutes. Mix salt and cornstarch with 3 tablespoons cold water, combine with cooked raisins and cook until thickened. Add cinnamon and brown sugar. Continue heating until sugar is melted. Serves 6.



This was on the menu too, but I did not make it. We just had regular green beans.

Snijboonen (Cut Beans)
1 1/2 pounds string beans
1/2 cup salt (about)
Wash long, tender green beans well. Cut in thin slices diagonally. Place in an earthen jar in layers with 2 tablespoons salt sprinkled over each layer. When brine comes over beans they can be packed in fruit jars and covered with the brine. To prepare for serving, soak in cold water for a few hours and drain. If necessary, soak and drain a second time. Cover with fresh water and cook until tender. Makes 1 quart.

Verdict:

Apple soup: This was basically homemade applesauce with barley. Pretty good, actually. The barley added a little something to chew on. If I ever get my hands on currants, I might try this one out again for funsies.

Macaroni met Ham un Kaas: Macaroni met lemon-flavored scrambled eggs un chunks of cream cheese. Also with ham and a moat of melted butter floating gently around the rim. As it goes, it wasn't too bad. Besides the lemon, the flavor was pretty good, it just could have been constructed a lot better. The lemon was so strong that every time I accidentally got a little sugar syrup from the raisins on my fork, it instantly tasted like lemon custard with ham and macaroni in it. Odd.

Rozijen: I like raisins. These were tasty, actually, but only for about two bites. After that, it was reeeeeeeeaally sweet. Raisins are pretty sweet by themselves, and with half their weight added in sugar, it was overwhelming. I ate a few bites and then had to stop. It would probably be better over cake or something.

Raspberry sugar and lemon shrub

Ladies, I do here present you (yet)
That which sure will well content
A Queen-like Closet rich and brave
(Such) not many Ladies have:
Or Cabinet, in which doth set
Jems richer than in Karkanet;
(They) only Eies and Fancies please,
These keep your Bodies in good ease;
They please the Taste, also the Eye;
Would I might be a stander by:
Yet rather I would wish to eat,
Since 'bout them I my Brains do beat:
And 'tis but reason you may say,
If that I come within your way;
I sit here sad while you are merry,
Eating Dainties, drinking Perry;
But I'm content you should so feed,
So I may have to serve my deed.
-Hanna Wolley, author of THE QUEENE-LIKE CLOSET Or RICH CABINET: Stored with all manner of RARE RECEIPTS For Preserving, Candying and Cookery. Very Pleasant and Beneficial to all Ingenious Persons of the FEMALE SEX [1692]

I, being a modern girl, believe that gentlemen, too, would enjoy dainties and perry*. Well, the dainties. I'm a teetotaler, so perry is right out.

To make Rasberry Sugar.
Take the Juice of Rasberries and wet your Sugar with it, and dry it in a
Stove in little Cakes; this will keep all the year, a little of it being
put into a Glass of Wine, will give it as good a taste, as you can
desire, and as good a colour; in this manner you may make Sugar of any
Fruit, Flower, or Herb.



Raspberries were not on sale. Strawberries were. So I used strawberries. I chopped them up and sprinkled a goodly amount of sugar on them to draw out the juice, then smashed some through a sieve to get out more juice. If I had a food processor, I would have chopped them in large pieces, left sugar on them for a while, then chopped them into smaller bits. That would have been easier. What would be really easy that only occurred to me right now would be to use frozen berries. Sigh. After that, I poured in sugar until it was the consistency of wet sand and packed it into tartlet tins. They worked great, but I bet silicone molds like these would be awesome. They air-dried for a couple hours, then I popped them out easily with a knife.

But what can you DO with this sugar, if you are not a wine-bibber? Put it in oatmeal, serve it at a tea party, lick it, or make a shrub. A shrub is a beverage that was popular in the 18th and 19th centuries, consisting of flavored vinegar, sugar, and water. Or rum. There were few teetotalers in the 18th and 19th centuries.

How about you, what would you do with these sugars?



Lemon Shrub
1 T. lemon vinegar
app. 2 T. sugar
ice water

Pour the vinegar into your glass, then add the sugar and stir around until dissolved. Fill up the rest of the glass with ice water.

Lemon Vinegar (from recipezaar)
35 oz. white vinegar
2 lemons
4 bay leaves

1. Pour the vinegar into a stainless steel pan.
2. Wash the lemons and pare the rind from them with a potato peeler.
3. Add the peel to the pan with the bay leaves and boil for 5 minutes.
4. Cover and leave to go cold.
5. Bottle, including the peel and the bay.
6. Leave for 4 weeks.
7. The vinegar can then either be strained and bottled or used as it is, depending on the strength you require.


Verdict:
Try these. I think the sugar is really pretty, and would look gorgeous at a party, wedding reception, baby shower, etc. The lemon shrub was fantastic as well. At first you think, "Yuck! Vinegar!" But give it a chance! Just that little splash of flavored vinegar in ice water is really refreshing.

The vinegar makes it sparkle in your mouth like a really mild soda pop, and the flavor is just like lemonade. Think of it, lemonade on tap in your fridge all year round! Just add sugar and water. Yum. With the strawberry sugar, it was like strawberry lemonade. Not terribly strawberry-y, I think it could stand to have a few slices of strawberry floating in it next time. Try it, try it, try it.


Rejected:

The Snail water excellent for Consumptions.

Take a Peck of Snails with the Shells on their Backs, have in a
readiness a good fire of Charcoal well kindled, make a hole in the midst
of the fire, and cast your Snails into the fire, renew your fire till
the Snails are well rosted, then rub them with a clean Cloth, till you
have rubbed off all the green which will come off.

Then bruise them in a Mortar, shells and all, then take Clary,
Celandine, Burrage, Scabious, Bugloss, five leav'd Grass, and if you
find your self hot, put in some Wood-Sorrel, of every one of these one
handful, with five tops of Angelica.



These Herbs being all bruised in a Mortar, put them in a sweet earthen
Pot with five quarts of white Wine, and two quarts of Ale, steep them
all night; then put them into an Alembeck, let the herbs be in the
bottom of the Pot, and the Snails upon the Herbs, and upon the Snails
put a Pint of Earth-worms slit and clean washed in white Wine, and put
upon them four ounces of Anniseeds or Fennel-seeds well bruised, and
five great handfuls of Rosemary Flowers well picked, two or three Races
of Turmerick thin sliced, Harts-horn and Ivory, of each four ounces,
well steeped in a quart of white Wine till it be like a Jelly, then draw
it forth with care.

*Like hard cider. But made with pears instead of apples. Thus, perry. Give you three guesses on what you call cider made from peaches.

Nutty Pups, Pineapple-carrot Toss, Potato Chips, Popcorn Pops, Milk

Guest-posting today is my sister, Bethany, captain of The Good Ship Lollipop.

My sister came to visit me this weekend and while she was here, I showed her a cookbook I have, that used to belong to our grandma. Checking the date inside the cover, we discovered it is a sixth printing of a 1968 Better Homes and Gardens cookbook. You know - the red and white checked cookbook that everyone in the country has on their bookshelf. I compared it to a more recent version done in the 1990's and discovered that other than the cover, there was very little that was the same about these books!

I told Jana that she needed to borrow my book for this blog and instead, she invited me to do a guest blog post. It was really fun going through the book. It had a great section in the back for meal planning and entertaining. I finally settled on a menu called "Children's Lunch"

Nutty Pups, Pineapple-carrot Toss, Potato Chips, Popcorn Pops, Milk

Nutty Pups

Broil Frankfurters over hot coals. Serve in a hot toasted buns spread with chunk-style peanut butter. Pass pickle relish

"Frank"ly I was very skeptical about this one. I had no hot coals, so I cooked the hot dogs under the broiler and since my daughter is allergic to peanutbutter, I used sunflower seed butter instead (which tastes very similar). This is what she thought:

She ate every single bite of this hot dog! My three year old ate just the hot dog and half the bun. My 2 year old just ate the bun. Then again - I didn't even give her a hot dog because she doesn't eat them when I serve them normally.
I found it to be edible. It wasn't disgusting like you would think it would be - it had a bit of that sweet/salty thing going actually. I wouldn't serve it again on purpose but if somebody served it to me for dinner I would eat it politely.


Pineapple-carrot Toss
Drain one 8 3/4 ounce can pineapple tidbits well. Mix with 2 cups shredded carrots and 1/2 cup plumped raisins. Chill. Just before serving, add mayonnaise to moisten.

The only change I made to this is that I used Vegannaise (soy mayo) instead of mayo. My daughter is also allergic to egg so the substitution was necessary.

This is my 3 year old smiling at the camera and nodding that she likes this salad:

However, when the meal was over, this cup was still just as full as you see it. In fact my 5 year old, who also liked it on first bite, didn't eat hers either. My 2 year old picked out the pineapple pieces and ate those. I thought for sure this would be the hit of the meal but it was definitely the miss instead! I thought it tasted a whole lot like a jello salad my grandma used to make - minus the jello. In my opinion, the mayo didn't ruin it at all like you would think it would but clearly my kids (who the meal was designed for according to the cookbook!) didn't like it.

Potato Chips - I served these straight out of the Lays bag. The cookbook didn't include a recipe so I assumed they didn't want them homemade. My kids ate every single chip. Shocking.

Milk - I thought it was weird that they listed milk as part of the menu, but I guess they were thorough in including a drink as well! Milk in a cup is a rare "treat" for my younger kids since my 5 year old is allergic to dairy as well. My 3 year old said, "MMMM! I like milk!"

Popcorn Pops
4 quarts popped corn (2/3 cup unpopped)

1 cup peanuts
1 cup light molasses
1 cup granulated sugar
1 tsp. salt


Combine popped corn and peanuts in a large bowl or pan. In 2-quart saucepan, combine molasses, sugar and salt. Cook over medium heat to hard ball stage (260*) Pour syrup slowly over popped corn and nuts, stirring till mixture is well coated. press into 5 ouce cold-drink cups. Insert a wooden skewer in each. let cool. Push on bottoms of cups to remove. Makes 16

I have owned a candy thermometer for 10 years and have never used it until today. I actually had to test it first because I live at a high altitude and adjust the temperature accordingly. Also I deleted the peanuts due to the peanut allergy. Basically these tasted like Cracker Jacks. I didn't have sticks or the right sized cups, so you can see in the picture at the top, that I made them into popcorn balls instead.


I'll close this up with a few words from the editors at the beginning of the cookbook:

"A homemaker's kitchen is a personal, creative world of her own where convenience and proficiency in food preparation are supreme. The Better Homes and Gardens Test Kitchen helps provide inspiration and ideas for homemakers who want the best in creative food preparation."

I'll give them that - these recipes certainly were ... creative.

Spry makes super-de-duper biscuits!

She just hates those jokes. She hates those jokes SO MUCH.

She also appears to be wearing curtain tassels around her neck. Poor girl.