The Ultimate Mincemeat for Thanksgiving Pies

Max, my mouth began to burn just reading that Yellow Peach Pickle! Are you sure that “Spicy”, “Hot”, “Firy” wasn’t a part of the title? I think it should be renamed Three Alarm Pickle!!

Forget your New York friend and her Uncooked Relish (unless, of course, you have tons of excess little green tomatoes). Turn them into the best Non-Meat Mincemeat in the world!!

I have always believed that the reason people SAY they dislike Mincemeat is that the only kind they have ever eated is that little box of dehydrated, so-called mincemeat that probably was probably manufactured a decade ago. Well, it is that dry!! Or they think mincemeat is one of those frozen pies in the supermarket.

Well, they have never eaten some of my homemade mincemeat. We NEVER put meat in our mincemeat. I once saw a recipe that suggested using venison in place of the beef. What a way to make something horrible. Use tough, old venison!!

I will confess, Max, that I have never made mincemeat the same way twice. It sort of depends on what we have on hand. My ancient recipe calls for only apples, but whenever possible I use at least half pears. After grating off the rind of the orange and lemon, I always grind them up too. Why let a good fruit go to waste?

The secret to really good Mincemeat is long, slow cooking and plenty of brandy and bourbon. You want to cook it until it is really thick. When you get ready to make a pie, you thin the mincemeat down with more brandy.

The scent of mincemeat cooking is heavenly–which is good as it takes most of an afternoon to make. Don’t leave the room for more than a minute as it will burn.

But the results are worth the time and effort. People who always pass on the Thanksgiving Mincemeat Pie will end up eating two slices. Also this is one of those things that you can safely save for a couple of years. I make it when we have a lot of extra pears and apples.

At Thanksgiving you can make your pie the day before and sit it aside. Also make up a Brandy or Rum Sauce–like the hot Lemon Sauce you serve with gingerbread. Late in the afternoon when you are finally ready for dessert, reheat the Brandy Sauce in the microwave to boiling, and pour over the room temperature pie. I like to reheat the pie somewhat too.

Green Tomato Mincemeat:

3 quarts green tomatoes
3 quarts apples, or better yet apples and pears mixed
1 cup ground suet
1 pound raisins
2 tablespoons grated orange rind
2 tablespoons grated lemon rind
5 cups light brown sugar
¾ cup white vinegar
½ cup lemon juice
1 tablespoon ground cinnamon
¼ teaspoon ground cloves
¼ teaspoon ground allspice
2 teaspoons canning salt
1 cup brandy
½ cup bourbon

Put the tomatoes through a food grinder on a coarse chop. Peel and core apples and pears and put through the grinder. Repeat with the suet. Put the orange and lemon through the grinder after collecting the grated rinds.

Place all ingredients in a large enameled stock pot. Bring to a boil and reduce heat to a simmer. Stir frequently. Simmer for 2 ½ to 3 hours until dark and thick.

Pour into pint or quart hot sterilized jars. Will make about 8 pints. Each pint will make a regular pie.

Hot and Spicy Peach Pickles

I’ll have to think long and hard about that Pear Butter. It does have possibilities, and I am running out of things to do with pears.

As I was hunting through my cookbooks looking for “new and interesting” ways to preserve pears, I came across this recipe for Yellow Peach Pickle. The name sounded interesting so I read on wondering if I could replace the peaches with pears. Then I came to the garlic, curry powder, coriander, onions, and chilie peppers!! Wow, would this liven up a meal!! I guess if you like spicy food, this would be great, but not for me! Still I thought you might get a kick out of it Erma.

Wonder what you would serve this with? Mexican food? Texas barbeque? Certainly some ice water on the side would be appropriate.

Yellow Peach Pickle:

3 large onions
¼ cup vegetable oil
1 tablespoon finely chopped garlic
1 tablespoon curry powder
2 teaspoons ground turmeric
1 teaspoon ground coriander
1 ½ cups red wine vinegar
1 cup white sugar
2 dried hot red chilie peppers, crumbled
10 whole cloves
2 teaspoon canning salt
10 medium sized ripe peaches

Cut onions lengthwise into thin slices. In heavy 4 to 5 quart pot, heat the oil over moderate heat until very hot. Add onions and garlic. Cook 5 minutes until onions are soft but not brown. Add curry powder, turmeric and coriander and stir 2 minutes. Stir in vinegar, sugar, chilies, cloves and salt and bring to a boil. Reduce heat to simmer and cook 15 minutes.

Peel the skins off the peaches. Cut in half lengthwise. Discard pits. Cut each peach into wedges. Add to the simmering liquid and stir gently until wedges are evenly coated. Cover the pot, and simmer 20 minutes until the peaches are tender. Ladle into hot sterilized pars and seal.

Makes 4 pints. Attach label that states: Warning. Contents May Burn the Mouth and Stomach.”

Preserve Your Excess Fruit-Pears

Max, I would love to try your New York Uncooked Relish, but with our drought there are NO green tomatoes in the garden. There won’t be any to try and save for Thanksgiving.

You know, that recipe must have been pretty old as it did not mention killing the relish with a Boiling Water Bath. Your recipe doesn’t say so, but I will bet that originally the frugal housewife didn’t even put it in jars. It probably sat in a big brown stoneware crock in the basement.

You lucky person with bushels of pears. Have you ever made Pear Butter? It is obviously a first cousin to Apple Butter, and some people like it better. I actually do not leave the cores in for the first cooking as they are a mess to remove, but do leave the peels on as they add a lot of taste. And, I do not seal with paraffin. I use hot sterilized pint and half-pint jars and seal them like they are pickles. Try it, you’ll like it.

Pear Butter:

2 pecks ripe pears
½ cup of white sugar to each cup of pear pulp
½ teaspoon cinnamon to each 3 cups pulp

Wash pears, but do not peel or core. Slice. Place in large pan with a small amount of water. Cook until very soft which will be 15 to 30 minutes.

Run pulp through a strainer or food mill to catch the peels and seeds. Measure the pulp and return to kettle. Add the sugar and cinnamon according to the amount of pulp. Cook until very thick, stirring frequently to prevent burning. Watch like a hawk!! Pour into sterilized jelly jars and seal with paraffin while hot.

Yields 12 small jelly sized jars.

What To Do With Excess Little Green Tomatoes

Usually by now we have had the first light frost and with it comes the decision of what to do with all those green tomatoes. Of course, I wrap the larger ones in newspaper and store them in the garage. I know that you always pride yourself in still having your own tomatoes and peppers on Thanksgiving, and a few times even on Christmas. I have never had them last that long, but of course, your killing frosts are several weeks behind ours.

Some years back, I was in Woman’s Club with a woman from New York. (Well, we can’t choose where we were born, and she did leave the place.) She used to serve a really good relish, and she wouldn’t share the recipe for the longest time. Finally she shared the recipe with me. It turned out that she was embarrassed to admit that it was one of those Use Up The End Of The Garden Relishes like Chow Chow. Maybe in New York one is ashamed to feeding people green tomato relish, but we sure aren’t here in Iowa. The shame here in the heartland would be in letting any garden produce go to waste. Heck, we give prizes to recipes that use up every little green tomato!

New York Uncooked Relish:

18 small green tomatoes
6 medium yellow onions
6 carrots
3 sweet green peppers
3 sweet red peppers
½ head of cabbage
1 tablespoon canning salt
1 quart cider vinegar
6 cups white sugar
1 tablespoon celery seed
1 tablespoon dry mustard

Put all the cleaned and seeded vegetables through a meat grinder on a coarse grind or a food processor. Place in a large mixing bowl. Add salt and mix well. Let set for about 10 minutes. Drain overnight through a large colander.

In large non-aluminum saucepan bring the vinegar, sugar, celery seed, and dry mustard to a boil. Boil for one minutes and remove from heat. Pour over the vegetables and mix well. Pour into hot sterilized jars and seal.

Makes about 3 ½ quarts

Preserve Your Excess Fruit and Crab Apples

Spiced Pears used to appear on our winter tables too. More like a relish than a desert and often served on a platter around a pork roast.

Thanksgiving Turkey and the Christmas Goose wouldn’t be complete without some of my spiced Pickled Crab Apples. I can’t say as I really like to eat them, but they are sooo pretty. There is nothing like a ring of deep red Crab Apples and fresh Sage to make a bird look festive.

There are no crab apples, or any apples that matter here, due to our late freeze and the long dry summer, so it is fortunate that I put up a lot of them last year. People say that pickles and preserves should not be eaten after a year, but that is a lot of bunk. Kept in a cool, cry place preserves and catsups will last several years. It is true that some pickles lose their crispness after a few months. Dill Pickles being the ones to get limp first.

My original recipe did not call for red food coloring, but I always use it as our crab apples are more yellow than red. With the red food coloring, not only is the skin a deep red, but the apple flesh becomes red as well.

To keep the skins from bursting open, I take a thick needle and prick the skin of each apple several times, and I watch the pot like a hawk. You want the apples to be very firm. I just noticed that the recipe doesn’t say a thing about preparing the apples in the first place. I suppose in the old days everybody knew what to do? Anyways, you wash the fruit well, and leave the stems on, but do remove leave leaves.

Spiced Pickled Crab Apples:

1 quart white vinegar
1 cup water
1 quarts white sugar
1 tablespoon cloves
1 teaspoon mace
1 teaspoon allspice
½ to ¾ gallon red crab apples
Red Food Coloring (Optional) (Consider if crab apples are not bright red)

Combine vinegar, water, sugar and spices and red food coloring if desired in a large non-aluminum pan. Bring to a boil and then cool to room temperature. Add the washed whole crabapples and carefully bring up the heat so the apples do not burst. Cook until barely tender. Let the apples stand in syrup overnight.

Pack the cold apples and syrup in sterilized jars filling to within ½ inch of the top of the jar. Process jars in a water bath for 20 minutes.

Yields 5 pints.

Preserve Your Excess Fruit and Pears

Erma dear, I was just waiting to see how long it would be before you hauled out your famous Brandied Peaches. Now, I will admit that one of those peach halves over a scoop of vanilla ice cream is a bit of heaven, and you are right, don’t eat a Brandied Peach and drive.

We suddenly have a big crop of pears so I have been ferrating out some old preserving recipes. Isn’t it funny how pears only seem to hit every couple of years? Anyway, this is a very easy and dependable recipe for Spiced Seckel Pears. Like your Brandied Peaches, these are nice on winter evenings when the wind howls and summer is far away.

Spiced Seckel Pears:

7 pounds firm Seckel pears
2 teaspoons whole cloves
3 pounds light brown sugar
3 cups white vinegar

Wash and peel the pears, leaving them whole with stem attached. In non-aluminum fairly large saucepan bring the brown sugar, cloves and vinegar to a gentle boil. Cook for 5 minutes.

Place the whole pears in the syrup and simmer until they can be pierced with a large cooking fork. Remove the pan from the heat and set for 12 to 24 hours.

The following morning place the pears on a large platter, and strain the syrup. Clean the saucepan and then return the syrup to the saucepan, bring to a boil, and boil for 5 minutes.

Return the pears to the pan and bring to a boil. Have ready 10 pint jars sterilized and hot.

Fill the jars and carefully press the pears under the shoulders of the jars. Fill jars with remaining boiling liquid. Wipe lids carefully and seal jars.

Makes 10 pints.

Old Southern Brandied Peaches

Max, dear, I hesitate to part with this family recipe. I can hear you now. “There she goes again. Erma and her booze recipes. Erma and her grandmother must have hit the bottle a few times when they were making this.”

Truly, Max, my grandmothers did not drink. They just cooked with alcohol. And cured most ailments with alcohol (seemed to work, the whole family lived long and healthy lives). And preserved summer’s brief fling with peaches in the most wonderful sauce.

Think a piece of dense, plain pound cake. Topped with a peach quarter and a spoonful of the liquor drizzled over the cake. Or the same with vanilla ice cream. Heaven on earth.

Shoot. Think of having the start of a sour throat. Then think of eating a Brandied Peach. Sure better than a cough drop. Certainly natural, organic, and still laden with Vitamin C, or whatever vitamins are in fruit.

Think of chopping up a Brandied Peach in your winter breakfast oatmeal. Just don’t run out the door and fly down the road. You might join Paris Hilton and all the other bimbos with a DUI.

I am including some of the original directions here. In the olden days, and here I am talking about ALL the way back to the Dark Ages, they didn’t even seal the jars. Brandied Fruit was stored in stoneware jugs with a stopper or a cloth tied on. I’m sure servants, male children, and even the men of the castle would dip into the Brandied Fruit whenever they thought the cook wasn’t looking.

I love, and totally agree with the original cook’s statement. “The best brandied peaches are those made with the best and most brandy.”

Old Southern Brandied Peaches:

6 pounds ripe peaches
Brandy
3 pounds white sugar
2 cups water

“Pare the peaches with a knife, never scalding and skinning them as is usual for canning. Remove pit and cut into quarters.”

Bring the sugar and water to a boil in a large stock pot. Boil until slightly thickened. Add peaches and cook until just barely tender. Test with a long fork. This is usually less than 5 minutes.

Have pint jars hot and sterilized. Using slotted spoon, fill the jars with the peaches. Divide the sugar syrup among the jars so that each jar is between half and three quarters full of syrup. “Fill remainder with good brandy. Cover jars but do not seal.”

“Let stand overnight and if shrunk in the morning, add more brandy to fill. Then seal and put away in a cool place.”

“The best brandied peaches are those made with the best and most brandy.”

Unusual Sweet Dill Pickles

We have been sharing unusual preserving recipes this week, and here is one that is a classic. Sweet Dill Pickles. Sounds like a contradiction in terms. Sounds like a description of us. But it really is a sweet dill pickle.

This recipe came form an old “Farm Journal” cookbook of the 1960”s. Very few people have ever eaten a sweet dill pickle, and after they do, most want to know how to make them. Part of their secret is the soaking in ice water to make them crisp. In fact, any cucumbers that have a wait a while until you can start pickling (like today’s crop isn’t big enough for a making) are improved by an overnight in ice water.

Sweet Dill Pickles:

Use dill-sized cucumbers.
6 cucumbers
Ice water
Onion slices
Fresh dill heads
1 cup sugar
1 cup water
1 pint white vinegar
1/3 cup canning salt

Soak the cucumbers in the ice water for 3 to 4 hours in a large mixing bowl. This “refreshes” the cucumbers and insures that they are crisp.

Slice the cucumbers into thick slices. Place into hot, sterilized pint jars. Add onion slice and head of dill in each jar.

Meanwhile bring the sugar, water, vinegar and salt to a boil. Pour boiling liquid over the cucumbers. Pour to within ½ inch of the top of the jar. Seal. Let stand a month before using.

Makes 3 to 4 pints.

Italian Gourmet Roasted Red Peppers in Oil

No, Max, few people have eaten Dilly Beans, and neither had I until I met you. You had them at a cocktail party and we all thought they were so smart and sophistated. You must have been laughing up a storm in the kitchen. “Those dopes don’t know that they are eating pickled Green Beans!!”

If you still have any red peppers in the garden after the drought, you must try this. It came from an Italian woman who swore it was authentic Italian cuisine. I don’t know, but it sounds possible.

You, no doubt, have priced those imported Roasted Red Peppers? And knowing you, you said, I think I’ll pass on that at that price. Then try these. Except for the olive oil, this is really cheap stuff.

Italian Roasted Red Peppers in Olive Oil:

8 large red bell peppers
Olive Oil
3 cloves garlic
2 small hot red peppers

Coat the peppers with oil Cook under broiler or on outside grill, turning with tongs until they blister. Cool.

Peel the loose skins off and remove the seeds. Place in hot, sterilized half pint jars with garlic and hot peppers. Fill jar with oil. Seal. Serve with meats or on sandwich with roasted sausage.

Can also be prepared with green peppers.

You can do the same thing with pimientos that you grow in the garden. Fix them exactly the same way. You don’t need all that much olive oil as you pack the peppers really tight.

I freeze pimientos. I blister them like in the recipe above. Remove the skins and seeds and then just put them in small freezer bags–a couple of peppers per bag which is equal to a small can of pimientos.

Remember when freezing any peppers to double bag them. Small bags of individual servings and then a larger zip lock bag to hold all the smaller ones. You don’t want pepper smell in your ice cream.

Dilly Bean Appertizers

Erma, you are right. Your Antique Virginia Chili Sauce is Liquid Gold. There must be twenty dollars of fruit in it.

Now here is something that will appeal to your frugal side, and your gourmet side: Old California Dilly Beans. Simple, basic ingredients. Super easy to fix. And cheap if you grow your own green beans. To be nice and crisp, the beans have to be right off the vine. Store bought and they will become Dilly Rubber Beans. Real bad news. How do I know? I tried some.

These are Old California because the woman who gave me the recipe was Old and from California. These are nice appetizers. Very few people had eaten a Dilly Bean.

Old California Dilly Beans:

2 pounds fresh green beans (straight and really crisp)
Cayenne pepper, dried
Cloves of garlic
Dill
2 cups cider vinegar
2 cups water
¼ cup canning salt

Pack washed and stemmed raw beans lengthwise into clean pint jars. To each jar add ½ teaspoon red pepper, 1 clove of garlic and 1 head of dill. Beans should not come above the base of the neck of the jar.

Combine the remaining ingredients and bring to a boil. Pour over the beans and seal. Allow to cure for 6 weeks. Chill before serving

This makes about 5 pints of Dilly Beans.

Old Virginia Recipe Chili Sauce

Max, I will bet that your grandmothers were like mine in that every crumb was saved, and every watermelon rind was destined to return to the table as a pickle that winter.

Of course, we did feed some of the rinds to the horses, and how they loved them. If you want to see pleasure, just watch a horse munch into a juicy watermelon. They become giant pigs.

You are right that pickling and preserving are becoming lost arts. There was that renaissance in food preservation in the 1970’s with the Back to the Earth movement. Remember city-bred hippy girls trying to learn how to can and freeze? No wonder, home economists decided that every pickle had to be further processed in a Water Bath. Those girls had not a clue as to how to preserve anything.

You and I, on the other hand, had grown up watching family members canning like their lives depended on it–which they did. Those women remembered the Depression, the War Years, and the hard farm years when preserving the garden was the difference between eating and not eating well during the winter.

And, they canned on wood and coal burning kitchen stoves. The temperature in the kitchen must have been awful. It’s bad enough today in an air conditioned kitchen and with an electric stove.

Think of the effort and sweat and love that must have gone into making a batch of catsup or chili sauce.

This Victorian Era Virginia recipe would have been pure torture to prepare. Hand grinding all the vegetables, hand grinding the spices, and then standing over a steaming pot of simmering tomatoes for hours on a summer afternoon.

Even with our modern labor saving machines, homemade Chili Sauce is a labor of love. Still, once you have tasted it, the store bought variety is truly second rate. Heinz used to make a pretty good Chili Sauce, but it seems to have faded from the shelves. The current commercial Chili Sauce is long on heat and short on flavor. None of the old recipes even include chili peppers as one of the ingredients so I am not sure where the name came from. Do you know?

I have simpler ones, but this Antique Virginia Chili Sauce is superb. No one but someone with a large garden could attempt this recipe. Think what it would cost to go out and buy 30 ripe tomatoes, a dozen onions, 6 ripe peppers, and a half dozen each pears and peaches? If you had to buy the ingredients, we would be talking Liquid Gold here. As you can guess, the pears and peaches provide extra sweetness.

Antique Virginia Chili Sauce:

30 ripe tomatoes
12 onions
6 pears
6 peaches
3 red peppers
3 sweet green peppers
4 cups brown sugar
1 quart cider vinegar
3 tablespoons canning salt
½ tablespoon ground cloves
1 tablespoon ground cinnamon
1 tablespoon ground allspice
1 tablespoon celery seed

Original recipe begins with, “Use a motar and pestal and grind the spices.” Today we would just open a can and measure out with measuring spoons. However, for the best taste, use a spice grinder and use fresh ground spices.

Original recipe continues: “Put all through a grinder. Cook slowly two and one-half hours. Bottle and seal.”

Most people today would skin the tomatoes by dropping them in boiling water for a few seconds. If you do not have an old fashioned Foley Mill, a food processor will do. What you want is mush. You need to stir this every once in a while as the tomatoes and sugar will stick and burn. After about an hour and a half, sample the chili sauce. Depending on your taste and the ripeness of the tomatoes, you may want to add more brown sugar.

You are going to cook this down to at least half the original mixture. It should be thick as store bought catsup. You may have to cook for an hour longer than the recipe says.

This makes a couple of pints.

Makes an incredible dipping sauce. Hamburgers become divine. Add some horseradish and you have the BEST cocktail sauce.

Watermelon Rind Pickles–Use every bit of that expensive watermelon

Have you noticed that watermelons this year are not very good? Cantelopes seem to be exceptional, but we haven’t had a decent watermelon yet. Could it be the lack of rain? I guess watermelons must need plenty of rain, hence the name WATERmelon?

Erma, I would give you even odds that your grandmothers always made Watermelon Rind Pickles. They were such a staple of the Victorian Era. Wonder what desperate woman first came up with the idea of trying to use the worthless rind of a melon? Whoever she was, her idea must have been an instant success. Look at all the early cookbooks. There is always a Watermelon Rind Pickle in the preserving section.

The only difference with this one is color. At first I thought this recipe came from someone named Rosy. Then it clicked that Rosy was the color. Mother had a friend who used to color her Watermelon Rind Pickles. Half were tinted red and half were tinted green so that she could have some different colors on the Christmas Day pickle tray.

This one makes a natural Rosy colored pickle. If you want it pinker, just add a drop or two of red food coloring. This is another one of those old recipes that seems to have fallen by the wayside. You don’t usually see them in the markets, and only a few old fools like us still take the time to make them.

Considering the state of cooking and food preservation today, in a few years there are not going to be many women who will know how to preserve anything.

Watermelon Rind Pickles-Rosy:

4 to 5 quarts prepared watermelon rind
4 quarts water
3 tablespoons canning salt
3 cups white vinegar
2 cups cold water
10 cups sugar
1 tablespoon whole cloves
3 sticks cinnamon
2 teaspoons peppercorns
½ cup Maraschino cherries

Trim the outer green skin and pink flesh of rind leaving a very thin line of pink. Cut into 1 ½ by 1 ¾ inch pieces. Soak the melon cubes in water and wait for 24 hours.

Drain in colander

In large stew pot or stock pot like the Farberware Classic stockpot, cover the melon with boiling water and boil gently for 1 hour and a half. Drain.

Place the rind in ice water until thoroughly chilled (several hours) to overnight) and drain again.

Combine vinegar, cold water, sugar and spices tied in a cloth bag in the stock pot, or enameled pot. Bring to a full boil. Add rind and boil gently for 30 minutes. Remove the spice bag. Let stand for 24 hours.

Finally add the Maraschino cherries and bring to a boil again. Pack in hot, sterilized jars.

Makes about 6 pints.

Unusual Pickled Peppers

Well, Max, are you feeling better now that it has cooled off a bit? We are cooler, but terribly dry. The garden is a disaster. Only a few tomatoes and peppers are left, and they look cooked on the vine.

About the only peppers that are thriving are the Sweet Banana Peppers, and I have no idea why. We mostly eat them fried, or dipped in a tempura batter with a dipping sauce of homemade catsup or chili sauce.

There is one other use for them I know, and that is pickled. Really, I suppose, you could do any ripe, sweet pepper this way, but my recipe specifies Sweet Yellow Banana Peppers. The nice thing about them is the color. So many people haven’t seen yellow peppers, and certainly not as a pickle. Think of the nice color this would make on a winter relish tray.

Pickled Sweet Banana Peppers:

1 cup sugar
1 cup white vinegar
1 teaspoon canning salt
Yellow Banana peppers

Place sugar, vinegar and salt in a medium sized saucepan. Heat and stir until sugar dissolves.

Take a half pint jar and use it to measure the peppers. Slice the peppers lengthwise. Remove the caps and seeds. Cut enough peppers to fill 5 half pints.

Place the peppers standing up and packed tightly together in hot sterilized jars. Pour the boiling syrup over the peppers an seal the jars. Let set for several weeks before using.

Christmas Salad from the Merchants’ Limited on the New Haven Railroad

No, Erma, I am not rushing madly into the Christmas season with this Poinsettia Salad. I served it last Sunday in an attempt to vary the presentation of our endless tomatoes. Of course, I didn’t tell the fam that it was originally called Poinsettia Salad for Christmas. To me, it is much more of a summer than a Christmas salad. Think of how tasteless tomatoes are like at Christmas time?

In fact, the family didn’t even guess that the tomatoes were supposed to be flowers. Guess my artistic talents were down to their usual bottom of the barrel?

This was supposed to be a recipe served during the holidays by the New Haven Line. Most of the railroads featured special dishes during the holiday season when so many people would be on the trains.

Wouldn’t it be nice to travel in style on a train, and enjoy distinctive meals in an elegant dining car, rather than those yummy microwave entrees that you get on the plane–if you are lucky, or unlucky, enough to be in the air at meal time?

Poinsettia Salad for Christmas:

6 ripe tomatoes
6 tablespoons cream cheese
3 teaspoons heavy cream (can substitute rich mayonnaise)
6 egg yolks, hard boiled and chopped fine
6 lettuce slices, ½ inch thick
French dressing (Optional)

In the original recipe, you were directed to drop the tomatoes briefly into boiling water and peel, but I prefer my tomatoes with the skins on.

Blend soft cream cheese and cream or mayonnaise until smooth.

Cut each tomato into 8 sections, top to bottom but not cutting through the base. Place each tomato on a lettuce slice, or a lettuce leaf. Open the tomato to form a flower. Place a dollop of soft cream cheese in the center of the tomato. Sprinkle on egg yolk to represent the yellow center of the flower. A spoonful of French dressing can be served if desired.

Southern Pacific Railroad’s Dressing

You know, Max, back in the heyday of the railroad dining cars, refrigeration was not all that advanced. Nor was there much (bottled salad dressings only began to appear on grocery store shelves in the late 1950’s) variety in salad dressings. Heck, people didn’t even eat all that many salads back then. Fresh salad ingredients were unavailable much of the year, and mayonnaise seemed to be THE dressing of choice.

So it is no wonder that fancy restaurants, hotels, and railroad dining cars made a big deal of their “special dressings”, much like today where restaurants push their own House Dressing. I have found dozens of signature dressings that the railroads claimed were their own inventions. Interestingly enough, they can still be found today on the salad dressing shelves, but without the attribution to the railroad chefs who invented or perfected the recipes.

This signature dressing was simply called the Southern Pacific Railroad’s Dressing, and it is unique in using currant jelly instead of the sugar food processors would use today.

I’ll bet the railroad cooks on the Southern Pacific Line made this by the gallons.

Southern Pacific Railroad’s Dressing:

1 tablespoon English mustard
1 level teaspoon salt
¼ cup white vinegar
½ cup currant jelly
2 cups mayonnaise
1 cup catsup

Stir mustard and salt into the vinegar until dissolved. Add jelly and stir to smooth. Mix in the mayonnaise and catsup. Store in an airtight container.

Makes 3 1/3 cups dressing.

This will keep easily two weeks in the fridge–if you can keep from slathering it on with an overly generous hand.

Santa Fe Railroad’s Special Lunch Sandwich

Erma, your secret is safe with me. I’ve known for years that you were one of the cheapest women in the world. Well, I didn’t know that when I first met you. Back then, I thought you were elegant and brainless.

You might not have known back then much about cooking, but you had an inborn sense pinching pennies. It is just like you to have an assortment of rice and potato recipes that are just different enough that the average person thinks that Erma is fixing gourmet meals just for them.

It is just like you to gussy up leftover mashed potatoes and call them Puff Potatoes from the Chesapeake & Ohio Railroad.

You know, the two of us could probably run a railroad dining car and make a profit. They say the railroads ran their diners as profit losers to attract travelers, and their labor costs were pretty high. But with today’s modern appliances and food storage abilities, a smart cook could put out a fancy meal on a tight budget.

It would just take a lot of planning. Rely on unfamiliar recipes, stress the presentation at the table, and use only the freshest produce. In an America, where many people live on fast food from Mickey D’s, and on those fully prepared entrees in the frozen food section, a dish like Puff Potatoes from the Chesapeake & Ohio Railroad would be a welcomed treat. None of the diners would have a clue as to how cheap, easy, and fast it really is.

The Santa Fe Railroad’s Toasted Hot Mexican Sandwich is a perfect example of how a smart chef could create a unique luncheon sandwich out of common cubboard ingredients, and for very little money. There is what? 50 cents a serving involved? Naturally, the smart cook and railroad chef, used up the remains of the roast from the night before.

Again, like so many railroad recipes, this one could be made up during the down time of the day and held in the fridge. When there was an order, all you had to do was slap the mixture on a thick slice of bread, run it under the broiler, throw on a few chips and a dill pickle, and lunch is served.

Santa Fe Railroad’s Toasted Hot Mexican Sandwich:

1 pound cooked roast beef, diced fine (Use up that left over roast from the day , or days before)
1 hard boiled egg
1 green chili, parboiled (today, we would used canned)
½ cup pimentos1 celery stalk
¼ cup Swiss cheese
½ cup mayonnaise
1 teaspoon lemon juice
½ cup chili sauce
8 drops Tabasco sauce
6 thick slices of a bread like French or Italian

In a food processor, fine chop the eggs, chilies, pimentos, celery and Swiss cheese. Mix the roast beef, eggs, chilies, pimentos, celery and Swiss cheese. Add the remainder and mix thoroughly.

Place the slices of bread on a baking sheet. Top each with a generously serving of the beef mixture. Broil until topping is lightly browned and bubbly.

6 servings.

Chesepeake and Ohio Railroad Puff Potatoes

Max, we too are being overrun with deer. They are so hungry and thirsty that we are seeing them even in rural subdivisions. Pretty soon, we’ll hear the rednecks saying. “Honey, keep the gun handy. You never know when you’ll see a deer out on the back porch.”

You can have your Reindeer Mulligan Stew, Max. I’ll keep with more practical and tasty railroad recipes. Like this one from the Chesapeake & Ohio Railroad. It is sort of a rehash of the old second day mashed potato patties everyone used to know how to make. What makes this different is baking the finger sized pieces.

It has just come to me as I write you, how this recipe came to be popular with the railroad chefs. One, it is cheap and filling. Potatoes then were the item that covered a lack of meat on the table. But for the railroad chef who came up with this recipe, I’ll bet it was the fact that it could be made up in the down hours between meals when there would not be such a rush.

Sure, it would use up any leftover mashed potatoes from a previous meal (which saved the railroad money), but the cooks would have them made up ahead of the meal and sitting in the refrigerator. All the cook had to do was pop the tray into the oven and in ten minutes, you have a fancy potato dish that looked like you slaved over the stove for hours!

This is a recipe that any caterer today should drool over. Not to mention those of us who are lazy and like to look like we labor for hours in our kitchens, plus not spend much mula. Ssssssh. Someone might learn our little secrets.

Puff Potatoes from Chesapeake and Ohio Railroad:

6 large white potatoes
Salt to taste
2 oz. Butter
3 egg yolks
Pinch nutmeg
Flour for dusting
Egg and milk wash

Butter a baking sheet and set aside.

Peel and cut up the potatoes. Place in saucepan, add enough water to barely cover the potatoes, salt and bring to a boil. Cover and cook until potatoes are soft. Drain in a colander. Mash with a potato masher, then add the egg yolks, butter and nutmeg.

Put potatoes on lightly floured pastry board. Dust with flour, roll into a long strip and flatten to about 1 inch wide. Cut into finger length pieces. Place fingers on buttered baking sheet an inch apart, brush with a little mixed egg and milk wash and bake until nicely browned, about 10 minutes.

If you don’t have a baking sheet with a Teflon-like finish, you might want to line the sheet with foil first to make it easier to clean up, and so you don’t scratch up your finish.

Serves 6.

Great Northern Railroad Mulligan Stew

Erma, no railroad recipe collection would be complete without my Great Northern Railroad’s Reindeer Mulligan Stew. I don’t know how often Reindeer Mulligan Stew was on Great Northern’s bill of fare, but the railroad actually put our a little handout for the diners explaining that reindeer was quite tasty and tender, and that Great Northern had a contract with some farmers in Alaska to provide them with farm raised reindeer.

Guess, reindeer wasn’t very familiar to people back then either?

You can find buffalo sometimes in the meat market, but have you ever seen reindeer? Our butcher can hardly find decent beef to put out. No way he would find reindeer.

The Great Northern handout said that this recipe came directly from an Alaskan hunter and, therefore, was authentic. It certainly is hearty enough for those cold Alaskan winters.

Great Northern Railroad’s Reindeer Mulligan Stew:

2 pounds reindeer meat, cut in 2 inch cubes
2 cups rutabagas, cut in 2 inch cubes
2 cups carrots, cut in 2 inch cubes
2 cups potatoes, cut in 1 inch cubes
2 large onions, quartered
6 whole pepper corns
4 bay leaves
Salt to taste

If you happen to have a fresh dressed reindeer, the meat should be taken from the neck, shanks, and parts of the shoulder. If you don’t happen to have a fresh, dressed out reindeer, substitute beef.

Place the meat in a large stew pot with enough water to cover the meat. Bring to a boil, reduce to a simmer and cook for 30 minutes. Add the rutabaga and simmer for 15 minutes. Add carrots, potatoes, onions and salt. Put the peppercorns and bay leaves in a cheesecloth bag and place in the stew. Cover and continue to simmer until meat is tender, about 2 to 3 hours.

Makes 8 servings.

Wonder how white tailed deer would do in this recipe? With the drought and the natural breeding habits of the deer, they are becoming a general pest. Fish and Game are targeting areas with excess deer population and encouraging hunters to thin down the herds.

Rice Piedmontaise from Los Angles Union Station

I certainly hope that those railroad cooks and their chopping knives are better than I am with a hefty knife. Just a few weeks ago, I “missed” and ended up cutting a finger nail in half. Auwooooh!! Should have used my pink KitchenAid 12-Cup food processor. Maybe the kitchen gods were telling me something? Like, the old ways are not always better?

Max, I’m sure I’ve given you this recipe before, but this rice recipe has been a favorite of our for years. My mother-in-law gave me a little pamphlet put out by the Santa Fe Railroad when we were first married and living in California. Lorraine had grown up riding all over the West on the Santa Fe Lines and well remembered the days when dining on the train was a gustatory experience to look forward to.

Risotto, Piemotaise was supposed to be a signature dish of the Fred Harvey Dining Room at the Los Angeles Union Station. It was my first encounter with Risotto, and I loved it!

Later on, Max, Risotto became a fashionable dish and we read all about how hard it was to make, and how you had to keep adding liquid and watching so it wouldn’t burn. This isn’t at all like that. Perhaps the Fred Harvey chef hadn’t been to Italy? No matter. It’s still a great and unique way to serve rice.

Like you with serving Welsh Rarebit because it was easy on the budget, I served Risotto, Piedmontaise to lots of company, and they thought it was a gourmet dish straight from Italy. There are few dishes cheaper and easier than this one. What? Pennies per serving?

Risotto, Piedmontaise:

1 small onion
4 tablespoons butter
1 cup rice
½ teaspoon salt (I never use salt as the chicken broth is salty enough)
2 ½ cups chicken broth, heated
Grated Parmesan cheese (optional)

Chop the onion fine with a small mincer. Heat the butter in a large skillet and slowly bring the onion to a limp stage. Add the rice and continue cooking, stirring, until the rice is golden which will be about ten minutes. Watch carefully as it will cook for quite a while and suddenly start to brown. (This step can be done up to a day ahead with the rice stored in the fridge.)

At this point you can do one of two things: In the original recipe, you added the hot chicken broth, put a cover on the skillet, and reduced the heat to cook slowly for 18 to 20 minutes. The liquid should all have evaporated. Stir in Parmesan cheese if desired.

My method is to put the browned rice and chicken broth in a casserole with a tight lid and bake at 350 for about 30 minutes. Again the rice should be dry. I sometimes take the lid off for several minutes to slightly brown the top of the rice.

This makes about 8 large servings of rice and it reheats well in the microwave.

I bake this when I am making a meal with other stuff that needs to cook in the oven. It isn’t fussy about temperature. I’ve made it at 300 degrees (just takes longer), or up to 375. I’ve even baked it with almonds and raisins, in which case it is a pilaf.

Chesapeake & Ohio Railroad Coleslaw

Erma, as always, you can find a way to “alcohol enhance” anything! I would never have thought to dress up that old faithful, “Welsh Rarebit” with English ale. It is too bad that Welsh Rarebit seems to have become a forgotten recipe. It is so easy, and is wonderful for the budget. Seems like I recall fixing it a lot in our younger days. Like when the budget was more than a little strained? Of course, I never thought to put beer into it.

Since we are both on a bit of a railroad kick the last few days, I have been looking through some of my old railroad pamphlets that they used to hand out as publicity, and you know what? I have been impressed with the quality and taste of so many of their recipes. They evidently cooked “our way.”

Take a gander at this Chesapeake & Ohio Mexican Style Coleslaw. Now, today putting Mexican in the title would indicate lots of hot peppers, and a dish guaranteed to burn all the way down. I suppose in the 1930’s grinding up two green peppers was enough to call it Mexican? Still it is a nice version of basic coleslaw.

Coleslaw is another dish that seems to have gone out of fashion. Too bad. All the experts say that raw cabbage is really healthy–good for the heart, or something.

Imagine the train cooks, ratcheting along in a swaying railroad kitchen with huge chef’s chopping knives, chopping cabbages, onions, and peppers.

Did you know that many dining car’s staff included 4 cooks in those tiny kitchens? Think what they would have given for a good modern food processor? Chesapeake & Ohio

Mexican Style Coleslaw:

1 head cabbage
2 small green peppers
2/3 cup mayonnaise
1 ounce white vinegar
1 medium onion
2 tablespoons parsley
16 strips pimento
Salt to taste

Shred the cabbage very fine in a food processor. Same with the green peppers. Mix the cabbage and peppers in large mixing bowl. Mince the parsley and onion very fine in the processor. In smaller bowl blend the mayonnaise, vinegar, onion, salt, and parsley. Let stand for several minutes. Stir into the cabbage and chill. Serve with a pair of crossed pimento strips on top.

Makes 8 servings.

Chesapeake and Ohio Railroad’s Welsh Rarebit

Max, I hesitate to send you this railroad recipe, since you seem to be suffering a full blown case of Summer Heat and I Can’t Take It Any Longer. So I suggest you file this one away for a cool autumn afternoon. Welsh Rarebit seems to have fallen out of favor the last few years. When I was little, I thought it was Welsh Rabbit. Shows what a bright child I was. How does a dish named rabbit have no meat?

As I was typing this out, I realized that it has ale in it. Honest, Max, I do not spend all my days hunting down recipes that have alcohol in them. They just seem to fall into my lap. No ale? Beer will work too.

Chesapeake & Ohio Railroad’s Welsh Rarebit:

3 tablespoons butter
1 pound aged cheddar cheese
½ teaspoon dry mustard
½ teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon Worcestershire sauce
½ cup ale
2 eggs
8 slices of thick toast, cut into diagonals
Paprika

With a shredder, shred the cheese fine. Beat the eggs slightly with a whip.

In a double boiler over gently boiling water, melt the butter. Then add the cheese and cook until the cheese is melted. Stirring constantly, add all the rest of the ingredients, with the eggs last. Cook until the mixture is thick and heated through.

Serve this over two slices of thick toast, whole wheat is best, and with a side of bacon or Canadian bacon. Sprinkle on a bit of paprika for color.

Makes 4 generous servings.

Illinois Central Salad Dressing

Erma, I can always depend on you to have an “alcohol enhanced dessert” that you call medicinal. Who, but you, would have a “cure” for heat that is really a booze pie? I’m so sick of the heat that I’m about to take a double dose of your Brandy Flip Pie. It may not bring the temperature down, but after two slices, who’ll care?

Since we seem to be living on salads this week, I am sending you a real treasure. It is the old Illinois Central Railroad Salad Dressing. This was the only recipe that included the railroad’s name and was always prepared fresh on the train. When I make it, often in double batches, I look at the original directions that said to allocate 45 minutes to prepare, and I see how fast I can put it together. Imagine standing there in a swaying railroad dining car kitchen with a large chef’s knife “chopping fine” all those vegetables? And you know that they didn’t make it up one quart at a time. Some poor beginning cook probably spent hours of his day making up gallons of this dressing. What that fellow (I don’t think there were ever women chefs on trains back then) would have given for a food processor like the KitchenAid 7-Cup Food Processor. Just throw in the veggies, hit the pulse button a couple of times, and voila, it is “chopped fine.” Mere seconds.

Illinois Central Salad Dressing:

2 tablespoons celery
2 tablespoons green pepper
1 teaspoon green onion
2 tablespoons dill pickle
2 tablespoon pimento
2 hard boiled eggs
2 cups mayonnaise
1 cup chili sauce

In my original recipe, the directions said to chop all the ingredients fine. Today we are lucky and can use the food processor and cut out all sorts of chopping time. In a large bowl mix all the vegetables and the eggs and then add the mayonnaise. Slowly stir in the chili sauce. Chill well, and store in a one quart storage container.

Makes one quart. Use any place one would use a Thousand Island like dressing.

Original directions say this will take 45 minutes to prepare. See how much time a good food processor will save you?.

Brandy Flip Pie

Max, I am afraid that the heat has finally fried your brain. Calm down, girl. Get ahold of your self. Yes, I’m sick and tired of the heat too, but trust me, it is about over. In a few weeks you will forget that we were dripping like wet rag dolls, and hating to turn on the kitchen stove. I now it must be bad when you are rebelling from fixing full, thresher meals. Surely you didn’t serve that Crabmeat Olympia Hiawatha salad to your family for the main meal. It sounds more like a ladies luncheon item rather than fare for working men.

Your mentioning Fred Harvey reminded me of another one of his company’s recipes that I used to make in the heat of summer. It is a Brandy Flip Pie that was featured at his Dining Room at the Chicago Union Station once upon a time. My only encounter with Chicago Union Station was 30 years ago, and boy was it a disappointment. Shabby didn’t begin to describe it then. And the food there looked like it came out of a vending machine. Maybe it is better now?

Actually, Doctor Erma prescribes a piece of this pie as a sure cure for excessive summer heat. It is easy to fix, cold, and best of all it has 4 tablespoons of brandy! Before you start in on me and my “excessive utilization of alcohol”, think about it. I haven’t sent you a booze recipe in at least a week or two.

Trust me, dear, a little slice of this pie and you will forget all about the heat.

Brandy Flip Pie:

1 envelope of unflavored gelatin
¼ cup cold water
4 eggs, separated
½ cup sugar
½ cup milk, scalded
½ teaspoon fresh nutmeg
4 tablespoons brandy
1 baked pie shell
Bitter or semi-sweet chocolate bars (Optional)

Soften the gelatin and cold water. Beat the egg yolks with a hand whip and then combine with sugar and milk. Cook in a double boiler until the mixture coats a spoon. Remove from the heat and add the gelatin. Stir and chill until slightly thickened.

With a small mixer, beat the whites until stiff with the remaining sugar, nutmeg, and brandy. Gently fold this mixture into the thickened yolk mixture with a spatula.

Pour into a cold pie crust and chill until firm. Serve with chocolate curls made by running the long blade of a vegetable or potato peeler over the slightly warmed chocolate.

Crabmeat Olympia Hiawatha from the Chicago, Milwaukee, St. Paul and Pacific Railroad

Erma, when I was looking for my Death Valley Date Nut Bread recipe (it is in a pamphlet put out by a railroad group), I found a main meal salad that sounded really good. Plus, it fits our nasty hot weather perfectly. I don’t remember the Chicago, Milwaukee, St. Paul and Pacific Railroad, but it must have run through Iowa, but if Crabmeat Olympia Hiawatha is any indication, they set a fancy table.

Finding fresh crab in the Midwest was not, and still isn’t, an easy task. Gourmet that you are Erma, you would shutter at my thought for this recipe. Just use the frozen imitation crab. It’s already cooked, and with the salad seasonings in this no one but a gourmet like you would guess the substitution. Just throw in a few chips or crackers and you have a whole meal THAT DOESN’T HAVE TO BE COOKED!!

Crabmeat Olympia Hiawatha from the Chicago, Milwaukee, St. Paul and Pacific Railroad:

1 pound cooked, fresh crabmeat
1 stalk celery
1 green onion
1 stalk parsley
1 teaspoon tarragon vinegar
4 tablespoons mayonnaise
Dash curry powder
2 cups lettuce, shredded
8 large black olives
4 dill pickles, cut into fantails
4 sprigs watercress

In a food processor mince the celery, onion and parsley to a fine chop. Place the crab, celery, onion, parsley, vinegar, and mayonnaise in a bowl and mix. Sprinkle on a bit of curry powder and again mix well.

Line 4 salad plates with the shredded lettuce. Use an ice cream scoop to make a nice mound on the lettuce. Add olives, dill pickles and watercress for decoration.

Makes 4 large salads.

Death Valley Date Nut Bread from Furnace Creek Inn, in Death Valley, California

Okay, Erma, it isn’t Cheese Dumpling weather. Ice Water Soup sounds good though. I am TIRED of hot, humid weather!! I WANT fall!! I want to start making Fall recipes. I want to start baking again.

Actually, I did some baking this week. It was my turn to provide refreshments for Woman’s Club. Helen Anderson provided the fruit trays and I was asked by make my famous Death Valley Date Nut Bread, and serve it sliced thin with cream cheese.

Talk about an old recipe. This comes from when Fred Harvey’s company ran the Furnace Creek Inn, which must have been in the ‘20’s and “30’s; and I am willing to bet that this was one of the original dried fruit/nut bread recipes. It was one of those things that everyone who went to Death Valley had to have.

Furnace Creek Inn is still in Death Valley, but it not as elegant a resort as it was fifty or sixty years ago. It was closed for the season when we were there two years ago, and look a little down at the heels. But then it was July, and hotter than blue blazes.

Remember the trick to chopping dates? Don’t try the food processor. You get sticky gobs, and I speak from experience there. Use kitchen scissors and a tall glass of hot water. Snip a few dates until the blades get sticky, then just dip them into the hot water and you are ready to snip away some more.

Death Valley Date Nut Bread from Furnace Creek Inn, in Death Valley, California:

3 ¾ cups dates
1 ½ teaspoons baking soda
3 ¼ cups boiling water

Using kitchen scissors, chop the dates into small pieces. Dip the scissors into hot water if the blades begin to become sticky. Pour the boiling water and soda over the dates and let set 20 minutes.

1/3 cup shortening or butter
3 ½ cups sugar
1 cup brown sugar
4 eggs
¾ ounce of vanilla
8 cups flour
½ teaspoon salt
8 ounces of chopped nuts, walnuts are best

In mixer, cream the shortening and sugar for 5 minutes. (That was the original recipe, if you are using the heavy duty mixer, you can reduce the time to a little over 3 minutes.) Add the eggs and vanilla and continue beating for 2 minutes.

Combine the flour and the salt and slowly add to the creamed mixture. Finally stir in the nuts.

Prepare 4 greased loaf pans, and then fill the pans. Bake for one hour at 350. Cool on cooling racks.

Makes 4 loaves of about 14 slices each.

Hungarian Cheese Dumplings from Santa Fe Railroad

I must try that railroad relish. We always have plenty of green tomatoes. And to come from the Great Northern Railroad dining cars was a huge plus. You know how we all love trains. One of these days, Erma, when my ship comes in, I hope to take the Canadian Pacific through the Rockies, and then one of those old steam train excursions through the Yukon and Alaska.

A Hungarian friend once served me the most delicious dumplings with Chicken Paprikash. She was a refugee from the 1956 uprising in Hungary with hair the color of her Chicken Paprikash. Naturally, I had to have the recipe. She sheepishly admitted that she didn’t use a heirloom Hungarian recipe but one from a neighbor who worked on the Santa Fe Railroad. Anya admitted that the Santa Fe recipe was easier and tastier than the original. These make a really nice change from potatoes or rice with a meal. No one guesses that they are really cottage cheese, and everybody LOVES them.

Hungarian Cheese Dumplings from Santa Fe Railroad:

1 pound dry cottage cheese
4 eggs, large
12 tablespoons flour
½ teaspoon salt
1 cup fresh bread crumbs
4 tablespoons butter

Put the cottage cheese through a ricer. Add the beaten eggs and stir well. Next add the flour and salt and stir until smooth. Make the dough into balls about the size of a walnut.

In a large saucepan bring 2 quarts of water and a dash of salt to a boil. Reduce heat to a gentle boil and drop in the cheese dough balls. Cook for 20 to 25 minutes.

When done, remove with a slotted spoon and drain off all the water. Keep dumplings warm.

In a small skillet, melt the butter and sauté the fresh bread crumbs until nice and golden brown. Sprinkle the bread crumbs over the dumplings and serve hot.

Makes 6 servings

Anna’s Hot-Stuff Sauce from Great Northern Railroad

So you think I’m a bit of a fraud by passing off “cheap” (translation: inexpensive) dishes as gourmet. It is not price alone that determines what is gourmet. Availability is also a factor. The scarcer something is the higher the price. You just try, Max, to buy my gourmet carrots appetizers in any grocery store. If they were there, they would cost a pretty penny, believe me.

Anna’s Hot-Stuff Sauce is another recipe that falls in that same category. Basic ingredients and it uses up those last green tomatoes from the garden, but again try and find something like this in a store.

This recipe comes from the heyday of passenger travel on the railroad. It was served as an appetizer, dips not being in fashion at the time, and as a side dish with sandwiches and salads. It would certainly have been a fall specialty because finding green tomatoes in winter, spring and even early summer was impossible. The Great Northern Railroad chefs would have made this fresh daily in green tomato season, but we can save it as a relish and enjoy it all year.

Anna’s Hot-Stuff Sauce from Great Northern Railroad:

8 cups green tomatoes
2 Tablespoons Canning Salt
1 stalk celery
3 large white onions
1 ½ green peppers
1 ¼ cups cider vinegar
½ cup water
1 cup brown sugar
1 ½ red, hot cayenne peppers

In 3-Cup Chef’s Chopper, chop the tomatoes fine. In large bowl stir the salt into the tomatoes and let stand 20 minutes. Meanwhile chop the onions, the green peppers and the celery. After 20 minutes add the onions and peppers to the tomatoes. Stir well.

Using a large, fine sieve, or a cloth bag, squeeze the vegetables very dry, while saving all the liquid in a large sauce pan. Add the vinegar, water and brown sugar to the liquid and bring to a boil. Keep at a rolling boil for 10 minutes. Then add the dry pulp vegetables. Continue cooking for 10 minutes at a rolling boil. At the end of the 10 minutes stir in the cayenne peppers which have been diced. Remove from the heat and pour into hot, sterilized pint or half pint canning jars. Seal.

This makes 6 pints.

Gourmet Carrot Pickle Hor d’oevoures

It is no use Max trying to convince some of our more modern housewives that you don’t have to overcook and boil stuff to preserve it. Of course, you do have to follow basic cleanliness rules. Like be sure your cucumbers are clean, and that your jars are well sterilized and hot just dipped in boiling water a couple of minutes.

I wrote this recipe down years ago in California. It came from some general’s wife who had to entertain a lot and this was one of her piece d’resistances for the cocktail hour. I think the newspaper clipping said something like, “I always keep a few jars of these ready to pop open when unexpected guests drop by for cocktails.”

Back then we had to scrape the carrots and cut them into little sticks. Today you can pick up a bag of the baby carrots in the market and just wash them well. They are different and people always want to know where you bought them. Best of all they not only are super easy to make, they are cheap. The general’s wife didn’t say that, but even generals don’t have huge entertaining budgets.

Gourmet Carrot Pickle Hor d’oevoures:

3 pounds carrots (cut in thin sticks or use the baby carrots from the grocery)
1 pint white vinegar
½ Tablespoon whole cloves
½ tablespoon whole allspice
½ Tablespoon mace
1 cups white sugar
½ stick cinnamon

Boil the carrots in water until they are just heated through, and can barely be pierced with a fork. Place in hot, sterilized pint or half jars.

Place all the rest to a boil and pour over the carrots. Seal the jars and let stand at least 6 weeks.

Yield is 3 to 4 pints. Serve very cold.

Sliced Green Tomato Pickles

Leave it to you elegant Erma, to have a gourmet recipe that really is cheap, cheap, cheap. And you would pass it off as “gourmet.”

Well, my Sliced Green Tomato Pickles are sort of in the same category. Today they are so different that people think they are special when the truth is that this old recipe came about as a way to salvage the last few green tomatoes when the killing frost came around. I think a version of this recipe was in one of the Little House books. An early frost came and there was still lots of green tomatoes left so Ma made Green Tomato Pickles.

Believe it or not, but I love to put these on Pinto Beans. Everybody in my family did.

Sliced Green Tomato Pickles:

7 ½ pounds green tomatoes (about 30 medium)
6 good sized onions
¾ cup pickling salt
1 tablespoon celery seed
1 tablespoon whole allspice
1 tablespoon mustard seed
1 tablespoon whole cloves
1 tablespoon dry mustard
1 tablespoon peppercorns
½ lemon
1 sweet red peppers
2 ½ cups brown sugar
3 cups white vinegar

Wash tomatoes well, cut off blossom ends, blemishes and stems. Slice thin crossways. Peel and slice onion in thin rings. Sprinkle salt over alternate layers of sliced tomatoes and onions in a glass dish and let stand in a cool place overnight.

Drain off the brine, rinse vegetables thoroughly in cold water and drain well.

Slice the lemon thinly and remove any seeds. Wash the peppers, remove the stems and seeds, and slice thinly crossways.

Tie all spices loosely in a muslin bag. Add spice bag and sugar to the vinegar in a large enamelware kettle. Bring to a boil Add the tomatoes, onions, lemons and pepper slices. Cook for 30 minutes after the mixture returns to a boil, stirring gently to prevent scorching.

Remove the spice bag and pack the pickles in hot, sterilized pint jars. Be sure there is enough liquid to cover all the vegetables in the jar, leaving ½ inch headroom.

Process in a Boiling Water Bath for 10 minutes. Again, I don’t do this.

Makes about 6 pints.

Kosher Style Dill Pickles

Well, Erma, since we seem to be an a preserving kick this week, I’ll talk up my Kosher Style Dill Pickles. Since you can use larger cucumbers than for some pickles, after all you need cucumber wedges that stand up in a quart jar, this is a pickle to make later in the summer. Plus you need big full dill heads which are later also.

These Dill Pickles are like the ones that we used to get in the meat market. You know the ones–the pickles in the gallon and half gallon glass jars that the butcher would fish out with a fork (if he was clean, some just used fingers).

I thought they were so special, and then I found out how easy they were to make. Duh. Any idiot can make these dill pickles. They are just about fool proof. No cooking. No standing around. No chopping, grinding, slicing. Just cut big cucumbers into thick wedges and push into a jar. True, you have to wait 6 weeks to eat them, and they must be stored in a really cool cellar. If they get warm, they turn mushy. Six months is about the shelf life. After that they start to soften. Taste is fine, but not the texture.

Yes, I know, Erma, today all the home economists say you must Boiling Water Bath all pickles, relishes, and tomato products. Well, my neighbor makes fresh dill pickles, and follows that recommendation, and what does she complain of? Her pickles are not nice and crisp and crunchy.

Think about it! If you subject a crisp cucumber to 10 minutes in a Boiling Water Bath, what do you think it is going to happen? Cooked cucumbers are limp. Duh! I can’t convince her. She is sure they will spoil without the Boiling Water treatment. For hundreds of years Poles, and Germans, and Russians, and other Eastern Europeans have been preserving pickles this way. Shoot, they often didn’t even seal the jars. They used open barrels and kegs. Those people knew how to preserve a cucumber.

Kosher Style Dill Pickles:

2 quarts water
1 quart white vinegar
1 cup canning salt
2 cups sugar
Slice of onion or clove garlic for each jar
1 head of dill per jar
Small red cayenne pepper (optional)

Fill 12 hot, sterilized quart jars with cucumbers packed tightly. Usually a tall cucumber needs to be cut into 6 to 8 wedges. Add a fresh dill head, pepper, onion or garlic clove.

Have water, salt, vinegar and sugar at a boil before packing jars with cucumbers. Pour over enough liquid to cover the cucumbers. Seal and set aside in a cool place. Wait 6 weeks before using.