Canning Jars and Meat Grinders

Who did most of the cooking when you were growing up? Just thinking about this question has me remembering the hearty beef stews and pot roasts that my mother would prepare. There would always be enough roast beef left over to make a shepherd's pie the next day. This would be an all day affair with my dad securing the meat grinder to the edge of the kitchen table and turning the crank as my mother fed the slow-roasted beef into the silver coloured hopper at the top. I loved to watch as the first bits of meat pushed their way through the plates in the front of the grinder and tumbled into the waiting Pyrex casserole dish. My parents shared the cooking duties in our home, each having their own specific tasks. I remember our dad carefully watching to get just the right temperature before dropping freshly cracked eggs into the poaching water on Sunday mornings as mom spread the toast with creamery butter. 

We ate well in our home but when it came to baking, that was our grandmother's domain. She knew just how the pie crust should feel as she rolled it out and that the bread dough was kneaded enough when it began to 'squeak'. I remember leaning over her kitchen table, pencil in hand, writing down her 'receipts' in my scribbler. My mom restricted her baking to Duncan Hines and Pillsbury. She always insisted that her mother had preferred to rule her own kitchen and hadn't taught her daughters to bake; thankfully Gramma had changed her attitude by the time my cousin and I were teenagers and she taught us both how to bake her specialties!

My grandmother taught me how to can as well. When we were living in Toronto, we had a huge pear tree in the backyard that would get so heavy with fruit that my dad would have to prop up its branches to keep the golden globes from hitting the ground as they ripened. Once warnings of the first frost arrived, we would all go out into the yard, armed with buckets, baskets, and paper shopping bags to pick the fruit that my grandmother would soon peel, slice and sweeten in my mother's kitchen. Up from the basement would come boxes of sealer jars that had been collected there as they were emptied of their delicious contents over the previous year. Bags of sugar and new lids would be purchased at Knob Hill Farms by my grandfather during one of his bargain hunting expeditions and soon our little bungalow would be filled with the sweet smell of pears as they softened in the open graniteware kettle on the back of the avocado green stove. 

By day's end, there would be rows of jars, filled with the light amber jewel toned pears, along with a few filled with rosy peaches if Grampa's shopping trip had been successful, cooling on tea towels laid out for this purpose. Oh, how I loved this scene, one I have repeated myself many times over the years in my own kitchen. I couldn't wait for one of the shiny jars to be opened so we could enjoy its delicious contents with a scoop of vanilla ice cream. This was dessert on many a night, no need for fancy cakes or pies, just the simple goodness of the harvest.

Grama was also the one who took care of most of our family holiday meals. Even if we were gathering at one of my mom's sisters' homes, Grama would arrive early, freshly baked pies in hand, to help with the turkey. My mom and dad took care of the meal when we hosted, but we would still enjoy Grama's pie for dessert. On those occasions, the meat grinder would make its appearance right after breakfast, this time churning out chopped onions, breadcrumbs and giblets for the stuffing that was cooked inside of the bird. There was an extra pan for us kids minus the giblets, thus avoiding complaints and helping to keep peace at the dinner table. 

They say that too many cooks in the kitchen can spoil the broth...I think I was lucky to have them all.

Someone's in the Kitchen with Dinah...

OK, so do we really know who was in the kitchen with Dinah and why they were strumming on a banjo when they should have been helping her cook dinner? As a child, I would sing along to the song and never give the lyrics a second thought, only now as an adult, do I think about the deeper meanings of both folk songs and stories. Some of them are certainly not what we would write about today. 

Not sure why but today's writing prompt made me think of this song (which is now playing on a loop in my head...don't you just hate it when that happens?!). Perhaps thinking of a kitchen, and who does most of the cooking in it, makes me slow down and remember all of the happy (and sad) times we spend in our kitchens. I don't know about your family but in ours whenever there was a happy occasion or a crisis, someone headed for the kitchen to put on the kettle or a pot of coffee as the women in the group slowly followed. The kitchen of my childhood was pretty much the domain of women. Was this sexist? Was is the men who relegated us to the kitchen? The answer, for me at least, is I don't think so. there always seemed to be things we women (and girls) wanted to talk about without the prying ears of husbands, fathers and brothers. This was the place of laughter and tears and no fear of judgement no matter what we needed to share. Yes, the kitchen was certainly the center of our home and it was the same at all of our cousins homes as well. 

Things have certainly changed over the years with families being busier and rarely having the time to sit down together at the dinner table. We all seem to be running a million miles a minute and hurting our health with take-out food, not to mention the damage to our wallets from the cost. I wish there was a simple solution, that we could just snap our fingers and things would slow down a bit, but now it seems even when we are home we allow our work life to sneak in. How many of us put away our smart phones in the evening...even for a little while? And we all talk about it. My Facebook feed is littered with posts from people who are celebrating their upcoming trips to "no cell reception" areas, just so they can disconnect and enjoy their solitude or connect with the people who are there, right in front of them.

Sorry about today's post being all over the place, seems that my mind is wondering of late, filled with thoughts of everything I need to get done in the next two weeks. It is a funny time of the year to be moving on to something new. I usually think of the fall as a time of settling in, nesting, and getting ready for the holidays. Instead, I am packing up nine years worth of memories and making travel plans. It is going to be an exciting few weeks.

More Than a Simple Date Cake

I’d have to say my grandmother, my mother’s mother, ‘invented’ my favorite family recipe although it wasn’t until many years later that I realised it wasn’t something that everyone ate. My mother and her sisters grew up in the 1940’s and their family didn’t have a lot. My grandfather got work from time to time with the road crews in Saskatchewan but, for the most part, they lived on what my grandmother grew in her garden along with the eggs from her laying hens. They would only have meat when she butchered one of the old hens who wasn’t laying anymore or if my grandfather was able to bring something home from one of his hunting trips.

One of my grandfather’s favorite desserts was Matrimonial Cake. For those who are not familiar with this recipe, it is kind of like a date square. I’m not certain why it is called Matrimonial Cake but according to Cook’s Info, http://www.cooksinfo.com/date-squares, this name is no longer used outside of Western Canada. In doing some research I’ve found a number of sources and comments that this name was given because the cake is “rough on the top with a sweet filling and a solid base”.

So, getting back to my grandmother’s recipe. As I said, she had to make do a lot in her cooking and dates were something she had to buy. This would have been difficult, I should imagine, during the Depression so women, like my grandmother, used whatever they had at hand to feed their families and add variety to their tables. Many Depression-era recipes utilize rhubarb in place of other fruits or in addition to other fruits (just Google cooking with rhubarb in the depression and you’ll find a host of recipes, http://community.tasteofhome.com/community_forums/f/30/t/8458.aspx). Rhubarb, as anyone knows who has a plant or two, grows like a weed and is virtually impossible to kill. It’s also one of the first things to grow in the spring. With an abundance of rhubarb to use and a husband who liked his desserts, my grandmother (along with many other housewives at the time) let necessity be the mother of invention and came up with an alternate filling for her Matrimonial Cake. As it turned out, Grampa preferred the rhubarb so Grama kept making it that way. As a child, this was the only way I knew Matrimonial Cake. Sure, we might get a date square at the bakery but I never thought of it as the same thing. No, Matrimonial Cake was made with rhubarb…or so I thought. Imagine my surprise when I entered a country fair baking contest in the category of Matrimonial Cake and mine was the only one with a distinctly pink filling! I wanted to cover my plate and quietly walk away but hubby said mine looked better than the others even if they had a different filling and what did I have to lose. It turns out he was right. I won the section and was asked to include my recipe in the fair’s recipe book, so much for thinking I’d made a fool of myself.

Yes, my grandmother’s Matrimonial Cake is my favourite recipe. Think I’ll have to make a batch for Thanksgiving.

Grama's Potato Bowl

Here goes, I’m taking the plunge yet again and am determined to complete my challenge to write something every day for the month of October for NaBloPoMo. I know, I know, those of you have followed me through my fits and starts in the past know that I generally let life get in the way of my writing somewhere about a third of the way through…halfway if I try really hard. But this time is going to be different. This time I’m setting the stage for the next phase of my life. Being a full-time writer. Yes, after working in the same office for over nine years I am ‘retiring’ with my husband and taking up writing full time. There is something romantic and exciting about telling your friends you are “taking a year off to travel and write” but that is exactly what I have planned. So to get myself started in being disciplined enough to sit down at my keyboard every day, I decided to sign up for the October NaBloPoMo challenge.

Today’s prompt asks me to talk about my family’s most beloved dish. My first thoughts ran to holiday family dinners and all of the delicious dishes spread out across the tablecloth but then I began to think of the dishes themselves. The turkey platter that my husband bought me when we were first married, the ‘silver’ gravy boat that was a gift from our girls, the remainder of a crystal salad set that my parents gave us long ago and all of the other special items that come out of the cupboards for a special meal. Of these, the most special for me is the yellowy green Depression Glass bowl that is heaped with mashed potatoes, just as it always was on my grandmother’s table. It isn’t fancy, just a simple fluted bowl that she likely purchased at the five and dime or received as a free gift after collecting stamps at the local A&P. The specialness of this bowl isn’t in it monetary value, no it is in the memories of all the happy times, the family gatherings where this simple bit of glass held pride of place.

These dinners weren’t fancy, just good solid home cooking. Grama would have been busy for days, baking pies and cookies and making some of her creamy chocolate fudge (the kind that melts in your mouth the minute it touches your tongue). Her little kitchen would be a hub of frantic energy as she asked 'us girls' to peel some apples or get ingredients from the pantry. We loved spending time with her there as she talked to us about holidays of her childhood and of her brothers talking her into making them an extra batch of sweets, hoping my great-grandmother wouldn’t notice the missing sugar. These are the stories that I cherish now and share with my daughters and grandson. The stories that help them to know what it was like to grow up on a farm in the prairies at the turn of the century.

As I set the table for Thanksgiving dinner this year, I will smile as I remember those special times spent with my family and look forward to making new ones.

Yes, I would have to say that Grama’s potato bowl is one of my family’s most beloved dishes.

Jesus is our Superhero

Our five-year-old grandson attended a Remembrance Day ceremony at his school this past Thursday. He and his classmates are learning about those brave men and women who fought for our freedoms, the freedoms that we all enjoy today.

Discussing heroes with small children, particularly boys, inevitably bring up the idea of Superheroes. Are superheroes real? Were our soldiers superheroes? What did they wear? Did they have super powers?

As we spoke about these things over a child friendly dinner of macaroni and cheese, I was reminded how clear and simple the understanding of good and evil are to a child. None of the grey areas of an adult mind that think of things as mostly good or not too bad. For a child, good is good, bad is bad, and bad will be punished.

Small children also have a natural fear of things that are bad, things that go bump in the night, and monsters. At five, monsters are a big part of things that are scary.

Here we were, discussing monsters and heroes, good and bad, and I could see the wheels churning in that little head. It seems that he was trying to connect all of these concepts before his next question. I could sense this was going to be good.

"Mamma," he asked "does God protect us like the soldiers and superheroes do?" Yes, he does, I explained, wondering where this was leading. "Jesus is the same as God right?" I explained he is the son of God and yes, he protects us as well. "So that means Jesus on the cross takes care of us then." (He was referring to the crucifix hanging on the wall.) I confirmed this was the case.

Again, the wheels were turning. Tilting his head to one side and looking intently at Jesus hanging on said crucifix, little Eli tapped his finger on his bottom lip as he tried to put all of this together. Then came his response. "Mamma, I know how he protects us! If monsters are trying to get in the house or are hiding in the woods outside, Jesus comes to life and chases them away!" This explanation was accompanied by a five-year-olds recreation of a superhero ninja kick (At least that's what it looked like to me.)

Not sure how to respond (this did seem somewhat sacrilegious) I paused for a moment. How to explain that Jesus was a peaceful man not likely one to use ninja kicks. How to explain that God and the Holy Spirit is all around us but not in a physical sense. Admittedly, not an easy task. Was it wrong to allow him to believe these things?

Ok, I admit it; I took the easy way out. Responding in a way that indicated I wasn't too sure about the ninja kicks or how he accomplished his protection, I agreed that Jesus would protect us if a monster attack should occur.

Seemingly satisfied and pointing his focus back to his mac and cheese, Eli finished the conversation with one comment, "Jesus is our superhero." I have to say I agree.

Lest We Forget

 

As I sit listening to the news this morning and skimming my Twitter feed, I am becoming increasingly more disturbed with the discussion surrounding Remembrance Day.

As many of you have heard, while schools are holding Remembrance Day ceremonies this week, they also allow their students to opt out of these events. My first reaction is shock that any parent would deprive their child of the opportunity to participate in a ceremony to honour and thank those who fought for our freedom, the very freedom that allows them to opt out.

I understand that there are religious reasons for opposing war. As a Catholic, I don't relish the thought of sending our young men and women off to war but I have never thought of Remembrance Day as "let's celebrate the army going to war day". For me, it is a day to remember and honour those who fought for our freedom. Debate as you may whether these wars and conflicts were right or wrong but we should not ignore the sacrifices of our veterans or their families.

Yes, the sacrifices of their families as they worked to hold the family together while mom or dad were serving overseas. The fears and concerns of those at home who didn't know whether their loved ones would return, or if they returned, if they would be healthy and whole.

I am sure many people will not see things my way and that is ok, because of the brave men and women fought for our freedom. Freedom from tyranny and oppression. Freedom from terrorism. Freedom to practice their own religion. Is that not the reason many of our ancestors came to this country?

Yes, I will proudly attend the Remembrance Day mass with my grandson and his classmates on Monday morning. We will say a prayer for his great-grandfather who fought alongside his brothers and uncles in WWII. He answered the call to end the terror raging in Europe.

We will remember the brave Canadian firefighters who travelled to England to help battle the blazes caused by the bombings. We will remember the volunteers, including members of the Knights of Columbus, the Salvation Army, the Saint John's Ambulance Brigade, the YMCA, and The Royal Canadian Legion, amongst others, who travelled overseas to set up canteens and provide support to our troops.

We will remember those who haved served our country in uniform and those who do so today. We will remember those who made the ultimate sacrifice and gave their lives in the fight for freedom.

We Will Remember, Lest We Forget.

miss kimmy

Chocolate Cake and Happy Memories

After a particularly busy day at work, and a two-hour commute on snowy roads, I arrived home to be greeted by the familiar scent of chicken a la king (it's the red pepper that gives it away for me). My husband had gotten home before me made supper since he knew I would be late. He had also picked up a chocolate cake for dessert. Not a fancy bakery kind of chocolate cake, just one of the little single layers with the chocolate icing stars that you get in the freezer section.

Not terribly exciting you might say but for me, that simple little cake brings back wonderful memories of visiting my grandparents' home. Although my grandma was a great cook and a wonderful baker, my grandpa used to love those little frozen cakes (frozen chocolate cream pies were also a favorite), and he would always make sure there were a few in the freezer in their little kitchen.

My grandparents were not what you would describe as well off, Grandpa worked at a local Texaco station and Grandma cleaned houses. They lived in a basement apartment in Toronto, where they had moved to be closer to their daughters and their families. I am sure money was tight but you could never tell by how they set their table. There was always plenty to go around and treats to boot.

I don't know about you but there are certain foods that instantly remind me of certain people or of moments in my past. Who among us doesn't have memories of arriving home from school to the scent of freshly baked cookies (in our house these were courtesy of the Pillsbury Dough Boy but you get the picture), or the delicious smell of a turkey roasting in the oven as your relatives arrive for Thanksgiving dinner.

Holidays are inseparably intertwined with the smells of different food, for me at least. The smoky, sweet smell of a ham for Easter, along with the distinctive scent of the scalloped potatoes that were always served with them. Freshly baked apple pies with their hint of cinnamon and nutmeg that were served at every family gathering except for birthdays when a moist and delicate layer cake was identified by its warm sweet scent of vanilla.

I feel very fortunate to have these wonderful memories that can be triggered so easily by something as simple as the scent of baking cookies. I know it sounds a little like a Norman Rockwell painting and of course, every holiday wasn't perfect. Having a houseful of relatives is bound to create some, shall we say, comical moments.

One that stands out in my mind was a Christmas Eve at my grandparents' place. The uncles and cousins were in the living room with Grandpa watching the Leafs' game and Grandma was in the kitchen with the aunts waiting for the pies to be done so she could put them out for lunch (not the noon-day meal but the lunch she always put out in the evening when she had company). Suddenly, we began to smell something burning, that sticky, cloying smell of burning sugar and fruit. Grandma opened the oven to see one of her precious pies in flames! Hearing the commotion, we all ran from the living room to see her trying to fan out the flames with the nearest tea towel. Realising this wasn't going to work, Grandpa decided to try out his shiny new, red fire extinguisher...needless to say, the freezer chocolate cakes came in very handy that night.

miss kimmy