Cookbook and CalumetWhen I was growing up, I thought "fast food" meant sandwiches for Sunday lunch! Cooking from scratch was the only thing I knew, and my mother wanted to be sure I knew how to do it properly -- complete with an apron! ("Good cooks always wear aprons, dear!") Saturday was baking day, and Carol-Ann and I took turns making the bread. We started the dough rising right after breakfast on Saturday, and the beautiful golden brown loaves were cooling by early afternoon. Sunday lunch was special because we got to have sandwiches made with that bread. It seemed like fast food on Sunday, but it took all Saturday morning to make the bread!
While the bread was baking, I usually tried out a recipe from my mother's big falling-apart cookbook. I started a collection of those in my own "Recipes" book. I opened it up today and saw that there are grease and flour spots on many of the pages. Here is Lemon Sponge Pudding, one of my very favorites!
The Calumet can is one I saw in an antique store and couldn't pass by, because the very sight of it brought back the days of clumpy baking powder, weevil-filled flour, and ants in the sugar. I remembered smoky wet wood smoldering in the stove, and beautiful cakes that fell when the heavy cast-iron oven door clanked shut. Best of all, though, I remembered how much our youth group loved the cookies I made! This can looks just like the ones we used to have. I know that brand is still around, and the can has not changed much, so when I saw that can in the antique store, I thought, "Is this really an antique?" I turned the can over and decided it was! See for yourself...
And here is one more picture, especially for Carol-Ann!
9 comments:
Great post, Babe! You outdid yerself on this one!
But you know, I can tell those bread-baking days burnt out some of your memory! It was just such hard work to make that bread (knowing while we were baking that Gord was swimming in the river with the guys and the crocodiles) that your impression of those days is that you were fully assigned the bakery. I feel that way too in regard to myself, but in reality, as I recall, we were assigned week-about. One week you did bread and I did the handwashing -- scrubbing socks and undies on the old washboard -- and the next we reversed it. Now, I was young and foolish in those days, so it could be I shirked and was really there only as a back-up! The kitchen was so hot and the process so long that it felt as if it went on forever!
Remember the time you were making that final trip from kitchen counter to oven with loaves of bread in your hands ready to bake -- trophies of a whole day's work -- and your loosely tied lappa skirt started to fall! Since there were boys in the kitchen, you had to decide quickly which was more important! You can let us all know which it was ... my mind clogs at this moment! Ha! NOT! The clog that I DO have is that I suddenly can not be sure if this incident was involving you or me!
Okay, C-A... you have raised some interesting questions...scanning memory bank...scanning...scanning...ERROR! No such memory retrieved! Please contact your systems administrator!
Ha ha ha! That must have happened to you, as I am QUITE sure it would have been indelibly imprinted on my memory if it had happened to me! In fact, my psyche would probably have a definite crease in it! Oh, but I can just imagine it so clearly, how easily that could have happened!!
Regarding the baking, I do not remember the every-other-week thing, but it is quite possible that the heat of the kitchen made it seem we were always in there! It could be that you did the bread sometimes, but do you remember doing the cookie and dessert and casserole baking at all? I do remember taking turns doing the dishes, though. I do not remember washing anyone else's undies but my own, and I don't remember you taking a turn washing mine. (Maybe I am having selective memory. Just shows how much I need to have you reading my posts! I shall go in and correct myself if need be!) Hmm... perhaps we should see if Mum can clarify, as she was the adult looking on!!
Hmm! This is a real puzzle! You'd think we'd remember! One thing I'm with you on (and felt it so even as I wrote earlier) we did not do each other's undies!! Thank goodness for that!
I do think that we took turn about, though with bread and other baking. The one who had to do the bread had to be up very early to get the first rising on the way and it usually made an easy day if the yeast was ready by breakfast time. I had that bread recipe memorized at one point -- so much so that I even made bread during my first year of married life near 22 years ago. But since I never did it again, after 22 years I have now forgotten the recipe!
And re the ending of the loose lappa tale -- the bread hit the floor!
Well, C-A, I am going in and change my post, because I am sure there is no way you could have memorized the recipe without making the bread!! And I will add one more pic, just for you!
Okay, now I don't know if y'all should write a biography about your mom and dad, or a comedy novel about yourselves!
I never learned to cook. Oh, I can follow a recipe, if it is fairly basic. Funny, my mom is a great cook, and my grandmother was legendary! But I always had my nose in a book somewhere. I am trying to teach Charis the things I didn't learn, but it's kind of like the blind leading the blind.
Oh! And I had to snicker at you two. Charis and Foster will not TOUCH each other's underwear. Even clean ones, to put away! And if they do (if I ask them to put them away,) they hold them out at arms' length and say, "Ew! ew! ew!"
Some things are just universal, I guess.
One more story. On my mom and dad's first date, she was wearing a poodle skirt with a big petticoat beneath. When they arrived at the movie theatre, he held the door of the car open and she got out, and her petticoat fell down around her ankles! (AT least it wasn't her skirt!) My dad, ever the gentleman, turned his back. Mom reached down, pulled the petticoat up, and snapped it back in place. What else could she do?
So, she would appreciate your skirt story!
Okay, the comments on this post have absolutely made my day in the humor department! Renae, I do love your additions so much! I love your family and have never even seen them! I can just imagine your mother's mortification on her first date...oh, my goodness! I would have died! It's true... what else could she do?!
Oh my oh my!
This has been too funny!
Renae, the story about your Mom's petticoat reminded me of another olden-days clothes story I heard somewhere about a hoop skirt. The girl sat down in such a way that she sat on the back side of the hoop and when the front side of the hoop swung into the air, well, there was a bit of hoop-la over the free show of whatever was there to be seen!
Ah! The recipe for bread has been posted, I see! Hey, J, does your little book have "Cottage Pudding" cake and the "one-egg cake" and the "two-egg cake" in it? We selected our Saturday recipes according to the activity of the hens! When there'd been a lot of cackling at the hen house, on occasion we even made meringue!!!
My book has the "Two-Egg Cake" but not the others. You are right! We were so limited by how many eggs the chickens were laying. If we found a recipe that did not take eggs, we thought we had found a treasure!
Love that hoop story! It put me off hoop skirts forever!
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