Sweet Dill Mix

Max, one of the first things you taught me how to preserve was your Sweet Pepper Relish and I have been making it for decades. It is always a hit when I serve it. I have even put out some corn chips and a bowl of Sweet Pepper Relish and called it an appetizer. Then guests want to know where they can buy it.

I’m sure that some time or another I have sent you Jane Hill’s recipe for Sweet Dill Mix. This is gourmet level preserving. And gourmet eating too. I always have some of these out on the table at Thanksgiving and Christmas. You will not find anything like this pickle in even the fancy foods section of the grocery.

Yes it does take some time, but not much effort. The cauliflower is out of this world. I once made it with nothing but cauliflower and onions. Yummy. I always put the turmeric in to give it a yellow color.

Sweet Dill Mix:

This recipe was originally printed in the “Louisville Courier-Journal” according to the woman who gave it to me thirty years ago. Her mother had been making it for at least 30 years before that.

Prepare about 5 pounds of vegetables. Include small cucumbers, head of cauliflower, 2 cups tiny onions or onion slices, a few long cuts of celery, and thin slices of carrots. A few red and green peppers add color.

½ cup canning salt
2 teaspoons powdered alum
6 cups white sugar
5 cups white vinegar

Put all vegetables into a glass bowl or earthenware crock. Dissolve the salt in 3 quarts of boiling water and pour over the vegetables. Let stand 6 to 8 hours. Taste and drain. This may need several rinses to get rid of the salt taste.

Dissolve alum in 3 ½ quarts of hot water. Allow to cool to room temperature and pour over the pickles. Leave overnight. Alum makes things crisp and is seldom used today.

Drain and rinse well. Mix 2 cups of the sugar and 3 cups of the vinegar; boil until the sugar dissolves. Cool and then pour over the pickles. Let stand overnight. After it has stood several hours, stir the vegetables so all are well coated.

Next day, add a boiled syrup of the remaining 3 cups of sugar and 2 cups of white vinegar, cooled to room temperature to the original mixture. The old recipe says adding the sugar in installments will keep it from shriveling.. Again let stand overnight.

Following day drain all the syrup into a large kettle and add the last cup of sugar.

Divide all the vegetables into 6 or 7 hot, sterilized pint jars, making sure that some of each vegetable are in each jar. For each pint jar add 1 head of fresh dill or ¾ tablespoon dill seed, 1 teaspoon mustard seed, and 1 tiny hot red cayenne pepper.

Bring the syrup to a boil and pour over the pickle. You can add some turmeric at this point if you want a yellow cast to the pickle.

Can process 5 minutes in Boiling Water Bath, but this is not called for in the original recipe, and I never have.

Sweet Pepper Relish

So I “shamed” you into to learn to preserve?

Come on, Erma, you know it all has to do with that German great grandmother of yours. I’ll bet she never wasted as much as a crumb.

You are right. That was my Tomato Ketchup recipe.

Did you really make that much ketchup in the oven and not have to stand over the stove constantly stirring the mess?

My family is like yours. They LOVE home made ketchup, and it is such a mess to make. Not to mention standing in the steam of a boiling kettle of tomato pulp for hours.

All the recipes coyly say, “cook down until halved,” or “Cook for an hour until thick as you want.” Yeah, right. One hour’s boiling and you don’t even have spaghetti sauce, let along ketchup.

I must try this. And it doesn’t stick or scorch? THIS I must try.

What a pair we are, Erma. You were making ketchup, and I was making Sweet Pepper Relish. And yes, it was over a hundred in the kitchen. With high humidity which was not improved by boiling pots of water to sterilize jars and stirring up the relish itself.

Sweet Pepper Relish must be one of the earliest relishes that women made. Could any recipe be simpler? Just red peppers, green peppers, and onions. Some of my oldest cookbooks call this Christmas Relish, I suppose due to the red and green color?

This is the original recipe my grandmothers used. Naturally I have “improved” upon it over the years.

First off, one making of this is hardly worth getting out all the pots, so I make larger amounts. About all the difference is that you cook it a little longer, like maybe 30 minutes instead of 15.

The batch I made yesterday was 15 Chocolate Peppers (no, they don’t taste like chocolate, they are chocolate colored), 14 green bell peppers, 30 plus yellow sweet banana peppers (some of which were turning red), 18 green paprika peppers, and 12 red bell peppers, and 8 huge onions. This made 12 pints of relish, and it was a lovely mahogany color.

This relish mixed with mayonnaise and a bit of other seasonings, makes a decent Thousand Island Dressing. A couple of teaspoons of this mixed with sour cream and mayonnaise really dresses up coleslaw. Gives it a sweet and sour taste and a bit of red color.

Probably the hardest thing about this relish is getting the ripe, red peppers. You have to keep people from eating them raw!! You know, I wonder how many people realize that we eat peppers unripe? Green peppers are not ripe. They are ripe when they are red. It is surprising how many people have never eaten a ripe red pepper.

Sweet Pepper Relish:

12 green peppers
8 red peppers
8 medium sliced onions

Grind the peppers and onions in a food mill on a medium blade. You do not want a mush, but distinct pieces if you use a food processor.

Place in large bowl and cover with 2 ½ tablespoons canning salt. Let stand 3 minutes. Pour boiling water to cover and let stand 3 more minutes. Rinse and drain well. There should be almost no liquid left with the peppers.

Place the peppers in a large kettle. For a sweet relish use 2 ½ cups white sugar, however I use 2 cups as we like it a little tarter than most people. Add enough white vinegar to barely cover the peppers, and that is after you have stirred in the sugar which makes a lot of liquid. Bring to a boil and boil for 15 minutes or until thickened. Pour at once in hot, sterilized pint and half pint jars.

This amount makes about 4 to 5 half pints.

Oven Baked Tomato Ketchup

Max, you poor dear. Freezing all that corn and then standing over a kettle of pickling spices to make Corn Relish. But as that old tune from James Bond’s The Spy Who Loved Me says “Nobody does it better… Nobody is half as good as you.” That describes your Corn Relish.

I had never canned anything, or pickled, or dried, or even frozen anything until I met you, and you sort of shamed me into trying to preserve the summer. You made me feel a sort of moral obligation to be the good housewife. As you pointed out it is nearly a crime to let good, fresh produce go to waste. Actually your appeal to the less than frugal side of my personality wasn’t what made me start trying to can. It was the taste. And the knowledge that I knew what was in the jars I put up. When I read the labels on some of the grocery store products, I shutter. If I can’t pronounce it, it mustn’t be good for us.

One thing I learned from you was to make home made tomato ketchup. My family loves it, and you know what a chore it is to make. A few weeks ago my son sadly announced that he was bringing up the LAST bottle of ketchup. Ergo, I had better plan on making a big batch this summer.

So, yesterday, with the kitchen gods happy because it was 99 degrees outside, I made ketchup. Only this year I cheated. I read last winter that you can make ketchup in the oven. The recipe was pretty bland, but the idea stuck in my head.

Now this won’t work with the huge amounts of ketchup you make, but it worked like a charm for me. I just used my old faithful ketchup recipe and instead of standing for hours (that optimist recipe says for an hour or so, but 3 or 4 hours is more like it), I let the oven do all the work. No stirring. No worrying that with all the sugar and spices it might stick. Have you ever had ketchup to scorch? You, probably not. But me? Yep, and you talk about a stinking mess!! I must have scrubbed on the kettle for hours!! Not ot mention having to throw out all that hard work.

I used my largest blue enameled turkey roaster–the one that barely fits in the oven. I filled that sucker to the very brim. Eight hours later (no stirring, no dropping, red faced Erma) it was reduced to half and was beautiful. Best of all, I slept through the whole thing. True, the house did smell a bit of tomatoes and spice, but it always does when you make ketchup.

You can do the math, but that giant turkey roaster full of juice and spices made 16 pints of ketchup. In other words, I about tripled the original recipe. Did I mention that I had seeds, skins, onion skins and sugar all over the kitchen?

Oven Baked Tomato Ketchup:

1 peck ripe tomatoes (8 quarts, or about 50 medium tomatoes)
2 cups finely chopped onions (about 3 large)
1 cup chopped sweet red peppers (about 2 large)
1 clove garlic, finely chopped
1 tablespoon canning salt
1 tablespoon celery seed
1 tablespoon whole allspice
1 tablespoon whole cloves
1 tablespoon peppercorns
2 teaspoons mustard seed
1 bay leaf
¾ cup brown sugar
2 cups cider vinegar

Wash the tomatoes, but do not bother to peel; cut them into small pieces and save all the juice. In a heavy kettle combine the tomatoes, onions, peppers, garlic and salt. Simmer until the mixture is soft about 30 minutes. Press through a sieve or food mill to remove the seeds and skins. You want as much pulp as possible, so all you want left is dry skins and seeds. An Italisn Victoria food mill is great for this.

Tie up the spices and the bay leaf in cheesecloth. (*See below for the old recipe.) Place everything in a large enameled roaster, like a giant turkey roaster. Place in the oven, uncovered at 300 degrees and bake for about 10 hours or until the ketchup has reduced to half and is nice and thick. This long, slow baking produces a very dark ketchup. Using white sugar would make it not quite so dark, but reduces the flavor somewhat.

Have ready 6 pint jars that have been sterilized and boiled for at least 20 minutes. Pour in the ketchup and instantly seal.

*Originally the recipe said to add the spice bag to the tomato juice and sugar in a large kettle. Bring to a medium boil, stirring frequently, until the mixture is reduced to half of its original volume which can be up to 2 hours or more depending on how meaty the tomatoes were. Remove the spice bag and add the vinegar. Simmer for 15 minutes more until the mixture thickens again.

Process in a Boiling-Water Bath for 10 minutes.

Makes 6 pints.

You know, Max, you probably gave me this recipe in the first place. I know that you wouldn’t Boiling Water Bath it, and neither do I. Between the acidity of the tomatoes, the sugar, and the long cooking and sterilized jars, no germ or bacteria is going to survive to grow in the jars.

Iowa Style Corn Relish

Well, Erma, the heat goes on. I am beginning to get a little tired of it. As always, the kitchen gods have decreed that it MUST be at least 90 degrees when one is putting up food. 95 or 100 degrees is even better.

So based on that opening statement, guess what I have been doing the last few days? Of course, freezing corn. Iowa Corn. That symbol of our state. Huge kettles of boiling water to blanch the corn and then cutting off the steaming hot cobs. But it is sooooo good in the winter.

Remember that I sent you a quick Corn Relish, well, really as we agreed a salad? Here is the one I always make in several batches.

Iowa Style Corn Relish:

4 cups corn kernels (about 9 to 10 ears worth)
1 cup diced sweet green peppers
1 cup diced sweet red peppers
1 cup finely chopped celery
½ cup minced onion
1 ½ cups vinegar (white)
¾ cup sugar
2 teaspoons canning salt
1 ½ teaspoons dry mustard
1 teaspoon celery seed
¼ teaspoon Tabasco sauce
½ teaspoon turmeric for color
2 tablespoon flour, optional, for thickening

Cook the corn in boiling water in a large pot for 5 minutes. Cool and cut from the cob, but do not scrape. In an enameled kettle combine the peppers, celery, onion, vinegar, sugar, salt, celery seed and Tabasco sauce. Boil for 5 minutes and thank your lucky stars that you have a food processor that eliminates all the hand chopping our mothers and grandmothers had to do to make this relish. Use a long handled wooden spoon and stir occasionally.

Dip out ½ cup of the hot liquid and mix it with the dry mustard and turmeric; then return to the large kettle. Add the corn. If you want the relish slightly thickened, blend the flour with ¼ cup of cold water and add to the kettle when you put in the corn.

Boil for 5 minutes, stirring extra well if the relish has been thickened, so that it won’t stick or scorch. Immediately fill clean, sterilized, hot pint or half pint jars to within ½ inch of the top and seal with jar lids.

Today all the experts recommend 15 minutes in a Boiling-Water Bath. Originally the recipe did not require this step.

This makes 3 pints.

Slow Roasted Tomato Sauce

Max, I can just see you standing over a stock pot of boiling tomato sauce–with the temperature in the kitchen over 100. Your face was probably the same color as those tomatoes.

Now I don’t put up near the amount that you do, but I have found an easier way to make a tomato sauce. The recipe doesn’t call for peppers, onions and spices like your does, but they can be added. The oven roasting removes the long stirring of the stock pot.

This wouldn’t be a good recipe for you probably as you are wanting to can dozens of jars of sauce, but it is great for people like me who have only a few excess tomatoes and want to preserve them.

Actually, it you have a large freezer there is even an easier way to preserve excess tomatoes. You simply wash them and drop them whole in a large freezer bag. When you need them later on in the winter, you pull out as many as your recipe calls for and start from there. This is a tip from an old friend. The only problem is that when they thaw, they turn to mush, but after all you are going to cook them, so who cares?

Slow Roasted Tomato Sauce:

This makes about 3 cups. Can be doubled tripled, or quadrupled.

12 plum tomatoes, cores removed
2 tablespoons olive oil
Salt and pepper to taste
1 cup chopped fresh basil

Heat oven to 400 degrees. Place tomatoes in a big roasting pan in a single layer. Drizzle them with the oil and shake the pan so the tomatoes are coated all over. Sprinkle on the salt, pepper and basil.

Place the lid on the roaster, or cover tightly with foil

Roast for one hour until the tomatoes have completely collapsed. Remove from the oven and set aside to cool.

When you can pick up the tomatoes, pick up each one and squeeze it to break each up coarsely. At this point the skins slip off easily. Or drop a few at a time into the food processor.

Place all the chopped tomatoes and the liquid in a heavy sauce pan. Bring to a boil, reduce heat and simmer for 10 to 20 minutes. Taste for seasoning. Add salt, pepper or a little garlic.

Use at once, or freeze in plastic freezer containers for later use.

Big Batch Tomato Sauce

Erma, my basil is not doing so well this year, but the tomatoes are coming out my ears. I have made about 30 quarts of tomato juice, and some catsup, and still they keeping piling up in the kitchen. So, I made up a Big Batch of Tomato Sauce one lovely, hot afternoon. Nothing like standing over a stock pot of tomato sauce for a couple of hours on a humid afternoon to put one in a great mood.

Now, this winter when I can run down to the cellar and grab a jar and have instant spaghetti or tomato sauce, I will have forgotten what it took to make the stuff.

If we counted our time, the electricity and gas to cook the stuff, and the cost of growing tomatoes, we would have to admit that we are eating liquid gold. Ah, but the taste. Nothing that you can buy in a jar or can at the store can begin to compare in flavor. Not to mention that we know our home canned stuff is free of all preservatives and heaven knows how many chemicals.

Big Batch Tomato Sauce:

3 onions
3 large carrots
2 green peppers
2 cloves garlic, minced
¼ cup oil
12 pounds peeled and chopped tomatoes
1 12 oz. Can tomato paste
¼ cup packed brown sugar
2 teaspoons oregano
1 ½ teaspoons basil
1 tablespoons salt
½ teaspoon pepper

Roughly chop the onions, carrots, and peppers in food processor. Mince the garlic with mincer.

In large stock pot bring several quarts of water to a boil. When water is at a full boil, drop in a dozen or so of the tomatoes for just a minute. Use a skimmer to lift them out and instantly drop the tomatoes into a large pan of very cold water. Repeat until all tomatoes are used. As soon as they are cool enough to handle, the peels can be slipped off. Cut out the cores.With either a potato masher, your hands, or the food processor, mash to a pulp.

Dry the stock pot. Heat the oil in the stock pot and saute the onions, carrots, green peppers, and garlic until tender. Add the remaining ingredients; bring to a boil; reduce the heat and simmer, loosely covered for 2 hours. Stir occasionally.

Pour into hot sterilized 1 pint jars, leaving ½ inch headroom. Seal with 2 piece lids and process in boiling water bath for 15 minutes.

Yield 9 pints

Serve over spaghetti pasta, or use with Swiss steak or pizza.

This recipe calls for dried oregano and basil, but fresh is better.

Pesto Sauce

Max, have you ever thought about how many cookies and cupcakes we have made through the years? It must have been a house full at least.

Just last week, I had to make up dozens of sugar cookies so my husband would have plenty to share with friends at the Fair. His requirements were simple: something that would travel well in the heat, not be messy on the fingers, and plain enough that everyone would like them. Isn’t that easy to fill?

I was wrong about only having peppers and tomatoes in the garden. The basil is doing well too. I must have a quart jar of dried basil left over from last year, when it also did very well, so there isn’t much need to dry the excess. I have been using chopped basil leaves on corn, on salads, over burgers, even in cornbread, and still I haven’t made a dent in the production.

We’re not real big on Italian food, but this Pesto Sauce is a nice change from the tomato based Italian sauces. This makes about three times what we can eat at one meal, so I freeze the rest. Hey, it uses up 5 cups of fresh basil leaves!

Pesto Sauce:

About 5 cups fresh basil leaves
¾ cup fresh parsley
½ to ¾ cup Parmesan/Romano Cheese
6 to 8 cloves of garlic
1 teaspoon salt
½ to ¾ cup olive oil
2 oz. Pine nuts or walnuts

In food processor, process everything except the olive oil and cheeses until thick and deep green. Quickly process in cheese. Finally add the oil and process until very thick.

At this point you can serve fresh on pasta, or use as a spread on break.

Any extra can be placed in a cupcake papers and frozen for later use. Place all papers in a large, zip lock freezer bag to use later in the winter.

Back to School Cupcakes

Well, Erma, the kids are back in school and it is time to begin think Fall! Now, if the temperature would just think Fall!. We have been extremely hot too, and I have not been inspired to do a lot of cooking in the kitchen.

I did make a double batch of Back To School Cupcakes for Sally to take with her to share with her class. Seems like it was only yesterday that I was making them for her mother to take to share with her class. I starting making them when the kids began elementary school, and they kept requesting them in Care Packages from home while they were away at college. That says something about a plain old cupcake.

Back to School Cupcakes:

¼ cup butter
2/3 cup sugar
1 egg
1 1/3 cup flour
2 teaspoons baking powder
¼ teaspoon salt
½ cup milk
½ teaspoon vanilla

Cream the butter and sugar in mixer until light and fluffy. Beat in the egg. Mix flour, salt, and baking powder in bowl. Alternate adding flour and milk to butter. Stir in the vanilla.

Fill greased or silicone muffin cups 2/3 full, or use cupcake papers. Bale at 375 for 20 minutes. Cool on baking rack.

When cold, make the following frosting:

Frosting:

2 oz. Unsweetened chocolate
¼ cup water
2 tablespoons butter
2 cups confectioners’ sugar
½ teaspoon vanilla

Melt chocolate in water in saucepan. Add all the remaining ingredients. Beat with a portable hand mixer, or with a large whip until of spreading consistency.

Yields 1 dozen cupcakes.

Sour Cream Coleslaw

Yep, Max, I think that Effie’s Easy Corn Relish is more salad than relish, and I suppose if you had plenty of fresh corn you could use that too by quickly cooking it first. With our drough we aren’t having enough corn even to eat fresh, and there certainly won’t be any to freeze for the winter.

We’ve talked so many times about various Coleslaws that I don’t know if I have shared this recipe with you or not. To me, this is pretty much the standard, everyday version of slaw. Nothing fancy, but good everyday fare.

Sour Cream Coleslaw:

1 cup sour cream
2 tablespoons sugar
½ teaspoon salt
2 tablespoons vinegar
1 tablespoon mayonnaise
½ teaspoon celery seeds
6 cups finely shredded cabbage

Mix all together and chill in the refrigerator for several hours before serving.

Makes 6 servings.

Easy Corn Relish

Erma, you know how we all love your Fried Sweet Banana Peppers, and you know that some people fix the hot banana peppers the same way?

I know that you have made Corn Relish many times in the past, and probably have several jars sitting right now in your canning closet. It just so happened that we had used up all that I put up last summer, and I haven’t had time to make another batch yet.

Then we went to a picnic last weekend at Sawyer Park and Effie Nelson brought an Easy Corn Relish. Effie’s idea of easy isn’t necessarily anyone else’s idea of easy, but when she gave out the recipe, I realized that this really is Easy.

Actually, it is more of a salad than a true relish which is how Effie served it. I guess the Corn Relish name comes from her Pennsylvania Dutch background. They were traditionally so big on every meal having 7 sweets and sours. At least Effie always puts several dishes of pickles and relishes on the table at every meal.

Easy Corn Relish:

1 (1 lb) can whole kernel corn, drained
1 cup chopped celery
½ cup sweet pickle relish
¼ cup chopped green peppers
¼ cup chopped red peppers
2 tablespoons chopped onion
½ cup French dressing
Salt to taste

Mix all together and chill several hours in the refrigerator. Stir occasionally. Make about 4 cups relish. Very popular at Iowa cookouts.

Fried Sweet Banana Peppers

Well, Max, here we are in our third week of 90 degree temperatures. Our flower and vegetable gardens look terrible! It isn’t the heat, it is the lack of rain. We are some 8 inches behind this summer and have had very little rain this past couple of weeks. About all that is doing well in the garden are the peppers and the tomatoes. Which, of course, are fortunately my favorite veggies.

Doing especially well are the Sweet Banana Peppers, and our favorite way of eating them is fried in a tempura-like batter. I’m sending along the recipe that I have been using, but I think the real secret to a crisp, crunchy batter is to substitute corn starch for some of the regular flour. It seems to make a much crunchier batter.

These need to be eaten the second they come out of the oil, and the person cooking them, me of course, should eat several to make sure that they are quality Fried Peppers.

This same batter will work with any vegetables that you fry like zucchini, onions, eggplant, green beans.

Fried Sweet Banana Peppers:

Batter:

½ cup flour
¼ cup corn starch
1/8 cup corn meal
Pinch salt
1 teaspoon baking powder
Water

Mix flour, corn starch, corn meal, salt and baking powder in a bowl.

Cut yellow banana peppers into four long quarters. Remove seeds.

Add enough water to the flour mixture to make a batter that will cling to the peppers.

Place 8 to 10 pepper quarters at a time in the batter and make sure the entire pepper surface is covered.

Have about an inch or so of oil in a large frying pan. Heat to about 360 degrees, use deep fry or candy thermometer. With a pair of tongs, carefully place a few peppers at a time in the hot oil. Fry until golden brown (as little as a minute) and then turn over and fry the second side.

With tongs, lift out each piece, place on a paper towel, and repeat the process.

Do not stack the fried peppers. Serve at once with catsup or home made chili sauce.

Swedish Rye Bread

Erma, thirty years now you have been trying to educate me on the finer points of corn breads. I guess we Yankees, just don’t get it. We like ours cake like and made of yellow corn meal.

We may not understand cornbread, but we Yankees do have you southerners beat all to pieces on ethnic yeast breads. If you want a hearty bread for sandwiches, it is hard to go wrong with Swedish Rye Bread. The secret is the caraway seeds for the unique flavor. Kids who refuse to eat “brown bread” will eat this one.

Swedish Rye Bread:

¼ cup brown sugar
¼ cup molasses
1 tablespoon salt
2 tablespoons shortening
1 ½ cup boiling water
1 package dry yeast
¼ cup warm water
2 ½ cups rye flour
3 tablespoons caraway seeds
3 ½ to 4 cups white flour

Combine the brown sugar, molasses, salt and shortening in a large bowl like the KitchenAid Mixing Bowls. Pour over the boiling water, stir and then cool. Stir in the yeast to the warm water.

When the molasses mixture is lukewarm, stir in the rye flour, yeast, and caraway seeds. Beat well.

Begin mixing in the white flour until you have a soft dough. Knead for about 10 minutes on a floured board until satiny. Place dough into a greased bowl, cover and let rise until doubled, about 1 ½ to 2 hours.

Punch down the dough, divide into two balls and let rest for 10 to 15 minutes. Shape into loaves and place in greased loaf pans. Cover and let rise another 1 ½ to 2 hours.

Bake at 375 degrees for 25 to 30 minutes. Cool on wire racks. Brush warm crust with melted butter if you wish a soft crust.

Makes 2 loaves.

This makes a great base for a Ruben Sandwich.

Corn Dodgers

Max, you are right. I have never seen a Fried Green Onion recipe before either. Unfortunately, our onions are far past the green scallion stage. However, we will have more in the late fall and I will have to try this. It isn’t often that someone can come up with a recipe that I haven’t seen before in some form or another. Fried Green Onions would go well with Corn Dodgers. The kind of foods you can make over an open fire.

Many of my cookbooks say that originally Corn Dodgers were cooked out in the fields for lunch on the metal part of a hoe, so another name for them was Hoe Cakes. They don’t say how you made up the dough, or maybe you carried a bowl out to the fields with you?

Note that this is another version of basic Cornbread, or the Grits Spoon Bread I sent you last week. This is Cornbread southern style, not that egg and sugar enriched stuff you Yankees call cornbread.

Corn Dodgers:

1 quart corn meal
1 cup water
1 teaspoon salt
Butter

Stir and meal and salt into the water to make a stiff dough. Pat into long cakes, like a hot dog bun, and place in a greased casserole or old fashioned black iron skillet. Top each dodger with a bit of butter which makes a brown crust. Bake at 400 degrees for 15 to 25 minutes until the tops are golden brown.

This makes 12 to 24 dodgers, depending on the size.

Serve very hot with butter.

These are best if made with white, stone ground corn meal. One good brand is Weisenberger Mills from right here in Central Kentucky.

Fried Green Onions

Erma, do you still have any green onions left in your garden?

I ran across this odd little recipe in one of my oldest cookbooks the other day, and I thought you might like it–given your love of onions. I can’t recall ever seeing anything quite like it.

Fried Green Onions:

4 handfulls green onions (About 4 or 5 scallions per person)
3 tablespoons butter

Cut off the root ends of the onions and any dried or yellow parts on the stems. Trim the green stems so that the onions will fit into a large skillet. (Save the cut off ends for a salad, or shop and freeze to use later.)

Melt the butter in the skillet and add the onions. Cover the skillet and cook over medium heat for 2 to 3 minutes. Turn the onions over and continue cooking for another 1 or 2 minutes. White part of onions should still be crisp.

Almond Vanilla Wafer Coffee Cake

Max, I have made the boiled puddings like your recipe of yesterday. Definitely these are NOT something that you want to make on a day fast approaching 100 degrees like today.

On the other hand, Almond Vanilla Wafer Coffee Cake is worth the time and effort even in the heat. It makes 4 coffee cakes and they freeze quite well. I have never seen another sweet bread or coffee cake that uses Vanilla Wafers as a filling. This came from a 1960’s bread book and the author stated that the recipe was originally Swedish, but that she had changed the filling to vanilla wafers.

I’ll bet originally the filling was chopped nuts and the vanilla wafers was a cheaper alternative. This is so much better than it sounds.

Almond Vanilla Wafer Coffee Cake:

4 cups flour
¼ cup sugar
½ teaspoon salt
1 cup butter, cold and cut into cubes
1 package yeast
1 cup of milk, warmed
2 beaten eggs
5 ½ cups crushed vanilla wafers
½ cup melted butter
1 teaspoon almond extract
2 tablespoons water

Crush the vanilla wafers in a food processor, or use a large zip lock storage bag and a rolling pin. Mix the crushed vanilla wafers, the ½ cup melted butter, the almond extract and water and blend well.

Cut the 1 cup of cold butter into the flour, sugar and salt with a pastry blender, or with your hands (which is messy) until you have fine crumbs. Stir the yeast into the warm milk; then add the yeast and beaten eggs to the crumbs. When it makes a dough, cover the bowl with plastic wrap and store in the refrigerator at least 6 hours. It is good for several days.

Next day, divide the dough into four parts. Roll each out into a 16 x 12 inch rectangle with a rolling pin. Divide the vanilla wafer crumbs into 4 equal parts and place one part on the dough. Roll up like a jelly roll from the narrow side.

Place roll on a greased or nonstick cookie sheet, and form into a crescent. Using kitchen scissors make 8 cuts about an 1 ½ deep on the inside of the crescent. Repeat with the other 3 pieces of dough. Each cookie sheet can hold 2 crescents.

Cover the sheets and let rise for about 3 hours, or until doubled.

Bake for 20 minutes until golden in a 375 degree oven. Cool on cooling racks. When cakes are about half cool, drizzle Almond Icing over.

Make 4 crescents. The extra cakes freeze well.

Almond Icing:

3 cups Powdered sugar
2 tablespoons soft butter
½ teaspoon almond extract

Blend the sugar, butter and almond extract, and add enough milk (2 to 3 tablespoons) to make a smooth icing.

If freezing, add the icing after they have thawed.

This sweet dough is good filled with any sort of Danish Pastry fillings.

English Suet Pudding from Martha Washington’s Recipe

Erma, I knew you would work in your bourbon in your Simple Sponge Cake recipe.

Here is a late fall or winter recipe that I ran across in one of my colonial cookbooks. This is the kind of thing that colonial cooks often called a cake before the day of ovens in stoves. This is supposed to be a somewhat modernized version of Martha Washington’s original recipe.

English Suet Pudding:

1 cup ground beef suet
1 cup of sugar
2 eggs
3 cups flour
3 teaspoons baking powder
¼ teaspoon salt
1 ¼ cups of milk
1 cup of raisins

Blend the suet and sugar together in a stand mixer on slow speed until well blended. Add the eggs one by one, beating well after each addition. Mix and flour, baking powder and salt. Alternate adding flour and milk. Finally stir in the raisins. Pour into a well greased 2 quart mold. If no tight cover for your mold, use aluminum foil to make a tight fit.

In a large kettle with a lid, place a trivet or cooking rack, and add 2 inches of boiling water to the kettle. Place the mold on the cooking rack, cover the kettle and steam 1 ½ hours. Add additional boiling water as needed.

Check the pudding for doneness before removing from the kettle as the shape of the mold can effect the time needed to cook. Let stand several minutes and then slip out of the mold. Serve with a hot lemon or vanilla sauce, or slice and serve with cream cheese.

Make about 12 servings.

Simple Sponge Cake

You know, Max, I have no idea when Cymling was replaced by Yellow Crookneck Squash. It’s sort of like mango. Old Southern cookbooks sometimes use the word mango for green peppers. Back then, I guess, most people didn’t know there was a tropical fruit mango.

We have had a week of 90 degree plus temperatures, and the promise of at least another week. The weather people haven’t once mentioned Global Warming. Hey, it’s early August; it is supposed to be hot, hot, hot. In fact, despite “near record temperatures” we haven’t broken a record yet in this hot spell. Everyday they give the record high, and all of them have been from the early 1900’s or the 1930’s. Did we have Global Warming back then too?

The heat does call for some simple meals, like cold salad plates with lots of tomatoes, cucumbers, and peppers. For desert: ice cream, sherbert (my Pineapple Daiquiri I sent you earlier in the summer is perfect now in the heat), and a plain cake are good. A Simple Sponge Cake goes well with the ice cream, and it is so much better than the sponge cakes the stores carry in those little packages.

Simple Sponge Cake:

5 eggs
1 cup of sugar
½ teaspoon baking powder
Pinch of salt
1 cup flour
1 teaspoon vanilla (Almond flavoring is also very good)

With a KitchenAid Artisan 5-qt. Stand Mixer, beat the egg yolks and sugar together. Mix and salt, baking powder and flour together and gently stir into the egg yolks along with the vanilla flavoring. Beat the egg white with a KitchenAid 5-Speed Hand Mixer until very stiff. With a spatula, gently fold in the egg whites.

Place in an ungreased tube cake pan. Waxed paper, cut to fit the bottom helps to ease the baked cake out of the pan. Bake in a preheated 325 degree oven for 35 to 45 minutes. Invert the cake pan and let the cake cool completely before removing from the pan. (Cake can also be baked in two loaf pans like the KitchenAid 1-qt Loaf Pans).

Being me, you can also substitute bourbon, rum, or brandy for the vanilla. Each gives a little different flavor.

Stuffed Cymlings or Small Summer Squash

Are you still having plenty of squash from the garden? While looking through my Monticello Cookbook I ran across this familiar, old Yellow Crookneck Squash recipe. Wonder why people quit calling them “Cymlings”? A note at the end of the recipe states that this is a good way to fix older cucumbers and eggplant too.

Stuffed Cymlings or Small Summer Squash:

Boil four cymlings or squash until a fork penetrates fairly easily and yet not quite done. Cut slices off top and with a spoon, spoon out insides, leaving a shell to be stuffed. Then using the frying pan in which your breakfast bacon was fried, with an additional good tablespoon of the bacon fat, fry one good sized finely cut up onion. Add the strained and mashed insides of your squash with a tablespoon of cream and season to taste with salt and pepper and Worcestershire sauce. Put this back into the shells and top with cracker and bread crumbs mixed, then a grating of cheese and dot with butter and sprinkle with paprika. Bake until brown, or run under broiler.

Oven: 400. Bake: 15-20 minutes.

Serves: 4

Mrs. Michie’s Brunswick Stew

Fried Green Corn is tasty, and surprisingly, not well known. Guess we just gorge out on Corn on the Cob in the summer. With today’s improved genetics, corn stays sweet for several weeks. In the past, it got too tough to eat on the cob really fast.

Here is another really old recipe from Virginia and the Michie Tavern: Brunswick Stew. Somewhere on our trip, we saw a sign saying that this place was the home of the original Brunswick Stew. Stew was a staple from the first days at Jamestown until the days of refrigeration and modern stoves.

Mrs. Michie’s Brunswick Stew:

This stew was originally made with squirrel. However, chicken or rabbit is generally used in place of squirrel today.

6 lbs. Chicken or rabbit, cut up
1 med. Onions, chopped
2 lbs. Ripe tomatoes, cut into eights
1 lb. Lima (butter) beans
2 lg. Potatoes, diced
2 lbs. Corn (about 4 cups)
1 lb. Okra, cut up (optional)
2 tsp. Sugar
4 tbsp. Butter
Salt & pepper to taste

Simmer the chicken or rabbit in 2 - 3 qts. Water for approx. 2 hours or until the meat can be easily boned. (The amount of water used depends on your desired thickness of the stew.)

Remove the meat from the broth and allow to cool. Add the vegetables to the broth, stirring occasionally; simmer until the potatoes, onions and beans are tender. Add the butter. Dice the boned meat (optional) and ad to the broth. Add the sugar, salt and pepper to taste. Let the stew simmer for 2 hours over low heat. Serve.

Yield: 8 - 10 servings.

Note: It is believed that the flavor of the stew improves if allowed to “set” overnight and served the next day.

You know Max, that originally this recipe would have read (more likely, the cook would have been told), “Take whatever fresh meat you have around, and whatever vegetables are in the garden, put in the big stew pot and cook all day.”

Fried Green Corn

Sorry to hear that the drought and the raccoons have cut into your fresh corn. Here in Iowa, Erma, we have corn as far as the eye can see. When we tire of Corn on the Cob, I fall back on an antique recipe for Fried Green Corn. Like your Corn Pudding recipe a week or so ago, you can use corn that is a bit past its prime. It is just a bit chewier. Mixed yellow and white corn makes a pretty dish.

Fried Green Corn:

6 ears corn
2 tablespoons bacon fat
½ teaspoon salt
2 teaspoons sugar
Dash of pepper

Slice the corn from the cob and then scrape down the cob with a heavy knife to get out all the corn and moisture. Heat a heavy skillet and add the bacon fat. (If you don’t have bacon grease, use butter). When the grease is hot, add the corn pulp and cook for about 15 to 20 minutes, stirring often. Add the salt, pepper, and sugar.

Serves 6.

Turtle Soup

Yes, I have made kraut, and it is so much better than anything you can buy in the store. We don’t have the room to grow a lot of cabbage so I don’t fix it now. Thank goodness, there is the refrigerated kraut available now. The stuff out of a can is awful! I’m sure you put some caraway seeds in when you cook kraut, and a tiny pinch of brown sugar makes a big difference.Is there anything better suited to a cold winter’s day than a meal of kraut and polish sausage?

It doesn’t sound too good today. We have been up above 90 degrees for a week or so (yes, Max, I know that it is summer and it is supposed to be hot), so cold salads are just what we want.

In the heat, I, too, have been reading old cookbooks. One of them is my old copy of “Historic Michie Tavern Muserm ”A Famous Tavern of the 1700’s” Cooking Treasures of the Past Compiled by Michael Christy.” We drove by Mitchie Tavern on our Virginia trip, but it was early in the morning so we did not stop to eat.

I have actually, Max, eaten turtle, and I can say that it wasn’t anything to write home about. Too much effort to catch and prepare, but I suppose in the old days most everything took hours to fix, and you ate what you could find. Turtles were plentiful and easy to catch, so people ate them. As I recall Turtle Soup was a gourmet food of the Victorian Period.

Turtle Soup:

1 fresh turtle
4 teaspoons parsley flakes
½ teaspoon thyme
1 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon pepper
1 teaspoon celery salt
1 teaspoon cloves
1 teaspoon allspice
¼ cup margarine or butter
1/3 cup flour for dredging
3 medium onions, quartered
2 stalks celery, chopped

Slaughter the turtle the night before, hanging it up to bleed. In the morning, boil 2 qts. Water; add the turtle and scald well. Discard the water. Graze and peel the outer layer of the skin off of the shell. Open up the turtle, being sure not to break the gall. Put the fins, eggs, and other frail parts into a pan and set aside. Smash the turtle shell into pieces add the rest of the turtle, with the pieces of shell, to 2 ½ qts. water. Add the onions, celery and spices.. Simmer over low heat for 6 hours.

Approximately 30 minutes before dinner, cream the butter and flour; add to the broth. Take the fins and other parts and roll in the flour (dredging). Cover and fry for 15 - 20 min. With ½ cup of butter. Add the eggs and fried ingredients to the broth. Simmer over medium-low heat for about 30 minutes. Add one cup of your favorite wine just before serving.

Yield: 8 servings

I guess that if you didn’t “smash the turtle shell” you could save it and have an instant bowl.

Homemade Sauerkraut

I have read about Spoon Bread in Southern Cookbooks, Erma. Thanks to you, I have a number of them on my shelf, but I have never tried to make it. We had it at Williamsburg, I think, and I remember thinking that it was sort of a cornbread soufflé. I think you’re right, this must have been invented as a way to serve cornbread at fancy dinners.

Have you ever made Sauerkraut? Yesterday we used up the excess garden cabbage that was threatening to split open and ruin.

I still have my German great-grandmother’s kraut cutter. Wicked tool it is too. Get a little careless, and you will have thin sliced fingers. Guess that is why they never let me shred the cabbage. I just got to mush the cabbage and pickling salt together. We made it in 10 gallon stoneware crocks and stored it in the underground well house while it “worked” or fermented. It was a rather heady smell.

Today, of course, with our mania for food safety, everyone cans the kraut, but before the days of canning, kraut was just stored in big stone crocks in a cool place. My husband’s father used to tell of being in Germany during World War II and going into abandoned farmhouses and feasting on the jars of kraut. Soldiers were told to not eat food they found as it might be poisoned, but he ate it any ways. It was a welcome relief after days of G.I. rations.

Homemade Sauerkraut:

Shred the cabbage finely with an old fashioned wooden kraut slicer, or in a food processor with a fine slicing attachment. You want fine threads of cabbage. For every 5 pounds of shredded cabbage use 3 ½ tablespoons of pickling salt. Mix well with your hands in a large pan. Gently press into a large stoneware crock. Repeat until the crock is filled to 6 inches of the top.

Rule of thumb is for every gallon in your crock, you will need about 5 pounds of cabbage. So, the standard 10 gallon crock uses about 50 pounds of cabbage.

Press the cabbage down firmly enough with your hands to extract enough juice to cover. Cover crock with a clean cloth. Place a pottery plate or dessert plate (something that will fit down inside the crock, directly on the kraut) and weight it down with a jar filled with water.

Keep the crock at 65 degrees so it will ferment. Check the crock daily, and remove any scum as it forms. Wash and scald the cloth often to keep it free from scum and mold.

The fermentation is complete when no bubbles rise which is usually about 10 to 12 days.

If you have the space, like an extra refrigerator, pack the kraut into heavy plastic bags with the zip lock storage fasteners, and keep the fridge. It will keep for months that way.

For canned kraut, pack the kraut into hot, sterilized quart or pint jars to an inch of the top. Add enough juice to cover the cabbage. (If more juice is needed, you can make a weak brine by mixing 2 tablespoons of salt and 1 quart of water.) Screw the bands on tight and process in a boiling water bath for 15 minutes.

Fifty pounds of sauerkraut makes about 15 quarts.

Hominy Spoon Bread

Interesting cucumber recipe, Max, but I think I will stick with raw baby cucumbers.

Did I ever tell you the story about my husband taking in some excess garden vegetables to the office? There was this pretty young secretary who had mentioned that she loved cucumbers, so he brought her a lunch sack full of cucumbers, fresh off the vine that morning.

She pulled one out and went, “Ugh! They’re dirty! And they’re not shiny like the ones in the store.” She would not believe him when he told her that the “shine” came from wax so they would store longer, and she gave the sack back to him. I wonder how many other bright pennies think the same way? Certainly, a lot of city girls have not idea one where food comes from or what it looks like before cleaning up for the grocery.

Since we are on a nostalgic trip back to our roots in Colonial and Pioneer Times, I’m sending along an old Southern Spoon Break Recipe for you to try. The only place I’ve ever heard of that even knows what Spoon Bread is Virginia, Kentucky, Tennessee, and the Carolinas. All the South loves cornbread, and I think (of course, this is just my theory) that Spoon Bread developed as a way to serve plain old cornbread at a fancy meal. I’ll bet Jefferson was served Spoon Bread at Monticello. Cornbread is everyday fare, Spoon Bread is company fare. Usually Spoon Bread is made only with corn meal, the addition of hominy grits makes this one a little different.

Hominy Spoon Bread:

½ cup hominy grits (Quick grits can be used)
2 ½ cups water
½ teaspoon salt
1 tablespoon butter
3 eggs, separated
½ cup white cornmeal
2 teaspoons baking powder
½ teaspoon salt

Cook grits with water and salt as directed on package in a large heavy saucepan. Stir constantly. If cooked on a high temperature, near a boil, the grits will splatter out of the pan. Take off the heat and stir in the butter. Cool slightly and stir in the egg yolks.

Mix the white cornmeal, baking powder and salt; and slowly stir into the grits.

Beat the egg white with a mixer until soft peaks form. Fold into the grits and place in a greased 1 ½ quart casserole, like the CorningWare French White Casserole.

Bake at 350 degrees for about one hour until golden brown. Serve immediately with lots of butter.

Make 6 servings.

Mrs. Chalfin’s Stuffed Cucumbers

Erma, you served some of your Blackberry Champagne once when we were visiting, and it was pretty good, but your Pear Champagne was out of this world. Until then I did not know that the old name for this was Perry. I had read about Perry as a drink in old history books and cookbooks, but I hadn’t realized what it was.

I must save your Blackberry Wine recipe in case the world comes crashing down and we have to survive off what we can grow in our own gardens. It is comforting to know that a complete breakdown of society does not mean that we can not have wine with our meals.

You are coping with an excess of blackberries, and I am coping with an excess of cucumbers. While there are hundreds of pickle recipes (I know as I have probably tried most of them at one time or another), there is a limit as to how many pickles one family can eat in a year.

You talking about your recent visit to Monticello inspired me to dig out my 1950 edition of the “Monticello Cook Book.” Reading along, I came upon this Stuffed Cucumbers recipe. I don’t know who Mrs. Chalfin was, but she had an interesting take on cucumbers. People used to eat their cucumbers much bigger (and tougher and bitterer) than we do today. This baking and stuffing would cover over the bitter taste of a large cucumber. I am sure her “medium cucumbers” would be classed as large today.

What I found interesting is her inclusion of fresh thyme, chives, parsley, celery seed, and sage. Not many recipes of that era included herbs. As I recall, Jefferson’s gardens were filled with herbs so he must have had his French trained cook use them generously.

Mrs. Chalfin’s Stuffed Cucumbers:

8 medium cucumbers
1 green pepper, chopped
½ pound pork sausage
2 ½ cups soft bread crumbs
Salt, peppers, celery seed to taste
1 teaspoon fresh thyme leaves plus a pinch of sage, unless sausage is already highly seasoned

Wipe and peel cucumbers. Cut in half lengthwise. Remove seeds and chop and drain them. Cook sausage and peppers until slightly brown. Add to the cucumber pulp without the grease. Use 2 tablespoons of this fat to make a gravy with flour and ½ cup of milk. Add to the other ingredients with the bread, seasonings and herbs. Fill cucumber shells, sprinkle with chopped chives or parsley and top with melted butter. Bake at 375 degrees F. for about ½ hour or until tops are brown and cucumbers are done.

Note: Eggplant and Summer Squash are both good done this way.

Blackberry Wine

Despite the very dry season, we are still enjoying lots of blackberries, and with enough jelly and syrup to last several years down in my canning storage area, it is time to turn to Blackberry Wine. Okay, Max, I can hear you now. “There goes Erma and another one of her booze recipes.” So, I use a lot of alcohol in my cooking. Isn’t that better than all those artificial, unpronounceable chemicals that are in most processed foods? Have you read, or tried to read and pronounce, the ingredients in the stuff that is on the grocery shelves?

Last night we had Mexican and I made the mistake of reading what was in the flour tortillas. Flour tortillas are flour and water. Right? Not these. There must have been at least 15 chemicals, no doubt to add shelf life to the tortillas.

Well, to get back to my “excessive” use of alcohol in cooking. I figure that bourbon, brandy, and wine are more “natural” and healthy than chemicals. Yes, I know that there is a lot of chemical wines coming on the market, but we have been making our own wine for years.

The making of high caliber wines does involve a lot of work and time, but for everyday consumption, you can make a tolerable table wine with not a lot of skill or effort. After all, Europeans have been doing this for thousands of years. Think the old Greeks and Romans had high tech wine making facilities? Hardly.

Blackberry wine has to be about the easiest and most fool proof of the wines. While we were at Monticello the guide showed us Jefferson’s grape arbors and told us that he was a failure at growing fine wine grapes. None the less, he made some fruit wines that he consumed along with the imported French, Portuguese, and Italian wines that were probably for special occasions.

We still use a recipe that came out of a 150 year old cookbook, and, I am sure, that you would find the same instructions in records from the Medieval Period. Nowadays, we buy some yeasts from a home wine supplier, and add to the goop, so that we end up with wine, sherry, and champagne. Some batches are better than others, but isn’t it the same for the vineyards? With this recipe, you have the satisfaction of knowing your wine is “all natural, with no artificial flavors or additives” as the old ad goes.

This works with any kind of juicy fruits. With blackberry however, you end up with a beautiful crimson color.

Blackberry Wine:

Wash and pick over the blackberries. To each measure of mashed berries, use the same amount of cold water. Put into a stone jar and let stand three days; strain through a coarse cloth. To every gallon of juice add three pounds of white sugar, stir well; pour back into stone jar, let stand three days more, then strain again. Put into a stone jar, cover with thick cloth, let stand in a cool place three months and then bottle.

Is anything easier, Max?

Raspberry Syrup

Yes, Mary Randolph certainly knew how to put together a cookbook. I’ve often wondered if she actually tried all the recipes, or had a staff of servants who she told how to cook? Heck, to even be literate enough to write a book at that time was an accomplishment.

One of the things that many people today don’t realize is that the daily cooking was not all that women were expected to do. I’m not just talking about housekeeping chores, but the whole area of food preservation. Without grocery stores, freezers, and home canning techniques, preserving food for the winter was an enormous responsibility. The winter diet of even the wealthy was not much, and for the poor, it was awful. You could dry, pickle (like my Pickled Fish), or preserve with sugar, and that was about it.

I thought about this week as I was making Raspberry Syrup. This is one recipe that I could, probably, actually make over an open hearth. Of course, in the old days, they just poured it into a stoneware crock and put a tight cover on the crock. If they found a little mold on the top, they just dipped it off and continued eating the rest.

One of the nice things about this easy recipe is that you can use any kind of juicy fruit, and you don’t have to worry much about cooking it to the soft ball stage. Undercook it, and your syrup is simply thinner, overcook and you have jelly. Either way, you have something you can use. This is great over crepes.

Raspberry Syrup:

2 quarts raspberries
2 pounds sugar
2 cups of water

Wash berries, drain, mash well with potato masher or carefully in food processor so seeds are not pulverized. Strain the berries through a jelly bag for at least 6 hours.

In a large kettle bring the sugar and water to a softball stage, around 225 degrees. Slowly add the juice and bring to a boil a second time. Skim any scum off the top with a strainer spoon. Pour into hot, sterilized jars and seal.

Almost any kind of berry (strawberry, blackberry, currants, cherries, or loganberries) will work.

Fried Apple Fritters

So you love the language of old cookbooks? Well, how about this one? “The Virginia Housewife” was one of the first cookbooks published in the United States. I’m sure that it didn’t hurt that she was one of THE Randolphs of Virginia. Other than the quaint language, Fried Apple Fritters are as good today as in my 1830 edition of her cookbook.

Fried Apple Fritters:

“Pare some apples, and cut them in thin slices–put them in a bowl, with a glass of brandy, some white wine, a quarter of a pound of pounded sugar, a little cinnamon finely powdered, and the rind of a lemon grated; then let them stand some time, turning them over frequently; beat two eggs very light, add one quarter of a pound of flour, a tablespoonful of melted butter, and as much cold water as will make a thin batter; drip the apples on a sieve, mix them with the batter, take one slice with a spoonful of batter to each fritter, fry them quickly of a light brown, drain them well, put them in a dish, sprinkling sugar over each, and glaze them nicely.”

Like the precise measurements? Spoonful. Glass. “Some wine.” Mrs. Randolph assumed that her readers could think for themelves

Fried Venison Steaks

Erma, you overestimate the Hollywood blondes. They would burn even squash.

Now, I have a recipe that they should be given to fix. It is from Mrs.Lettice Bryan’s The Kentucky Housewife, which was published in 1839. In 1839, few kitchens yet had a wood or coal burning stove, so most women were still doing the open-hearth thing.

For our blondes, the instructions should say, “First, shoot a deer, and dress it out.” Actually shooting a deer around here is no big deal. They are taking over the place. You can hardly take a trip of 50 miles or so without seeing a dead deer along side the road.

Fried Venison Steaks:

“Cut your steaks from the haunch, as it affords better slices than any other part of the venison; season them with salt, pepper, and sifted sage, dust flour over them, and fry them a light brown, in lard. They will not require as much frying as pork or beefsteaks. When they are done, transfer them to a warm covered dish, and set them by the fire, where they will keep warm. Turn out a part of the lard if there is too much; it will answer for frying again. Pour into the remainder a few spoonfuls of boiling water, add two minced onions, a spoonful of brown flour, one of butter, and a glass of sweet cream; stir it till it raises the boil, then pour it round the steaks.”

Don’t you love the language?

Fried New Cymlings

How could you suggest that I, moi, would stoop to collecting specimens at historic landmarks? I will have you know that our tour guide encouraged us to take some samples. Why, right now, I am drying the seeds of an heirloom tomato from Jefferson’s Monticello. Ugly little thing, but quite tasty it was.

Max, that Pickled Fish recipe belongs only in a historical cookbook. Would you really eat Pickled Fish, willingly?

What is it about those Hollywood starlets and trouble? Does the fame and money go to their heads? All right, perhaps there is nothing in their heads. For their sakes, I hope an agent or parent or someone invested what they have made so far as I don’t see them working much in the future. Imagine being a spectacular has been at age 21!

I like your idea of a month colonial reality for the girls. It would boost attendance at whatever venue they were sentenced to, and it might teach them a useful skill, which they are going to need to support themselves. After spending 12 to 14 hours a day trying to cook meals on an open hearth (basting themselves in the summer heat is just an added bonus), they wouldn’t have much energy left over to party and get drunk.

Like you, I have been rereading some of my historical cookbooks. It is interesting to see how recipes change over the decades. I found this one in an old South Carolina plantation cookbook, and I had to think for a while to remember exactly what a Cymling was. It’s a yellow crookneck squash. I think Cymling is a better name. The use of bacon grease tells you that this is an old recipe, but still good. In fact, this is so easy that our starlets could probably, well maybe with help, fry the squash in a skillet over an open flame.

Fried New Cymlings:

2 pounds cymlings
4 tablespoons bacon fat
1 teaspoon sugar
Salt and pepper to taste

Wash and slice cymlings into ¼ inch slices. Heat the bacon fat in a large skillet and when hot add the cymlings. Cover and cook for about 10 minutes. Uncover and continue cooking for another 10 minutes. Sprinkle on sugar, salt and pepper.

Serves 6

Pickled Fish

Know you all had a great trip to Virginia. How many cookbooks did you buy, and how many slips and seeds did you “liberate”?

While you were checking out the colonial kitchens, did you keep up with the news? Nicole Ritchie is off to jail on DUI, Britney Spears had a brawl with her mother, and Lindsay Lohan got picked up on DUI and possession of cocaine two days after leaving rehab. Says something about their rehabilitation program to have her back on alcohol and drugs two days after leaving the place. And Paris Hilton said now that she is 26, she is “getting her life back together” and launching a line of designer clothes. I hadn’t noticed that she ever wore many clothes.

Perhaps we should send your Cornmeal Mush recipe to the L.A. Jail that houses these delinquent females. I am sure none of them ever ate anything like it.

Better yet, sentence the spoiled darlings to a few weeks learning how to cook like the early settlers did. Can’t you just see Paris, Nicole, Lindsay, and Britney all dressed up in the quaint Colonial Williamsburg costumes, demonstrating hearth cooking for the visitors? I would pay just to see them trying to catch a chicken and wring its neck, and then plucking out the feathers and cleaning it before starting to cook it. It would be a lot like Paris and Nicole’s TV show, only not rehearsed and staged.

You were mentioning the fish diet at Jamestown yesterday, and I was looking through some of my colonial Virginia cookbooks when I came across this recipe for Pickled Fish. I have never tried it, but probably the early colonists used something like it. I will bet the earliest recipes were only vinegar, water, and salt. Those other spices would not have been available to many families.

Pickled Fish:

1 pint vinegar
1 pint water
Salt to taste
20 peppercorns
20 allspice
5 bay leaves
5 sliced onions
4 slices lemons

Put the vinegar, water, salt, peppercorns, allspice, bay leaves and 4 slices of onion in a large stockpot. Boil for 30 minutes. Add the lemon slices and remove them after 5 minutes. Simmer the fish in this liquid until you can pull out a fin. Cook only a few small fish or fillets of fish at a time.

Pack the fish in a stone crock with one or more slices of raw onions between the layers. Pour over the hot liquid when all fish are cooked.

Cover and keep in a cool place. After a few days the liquid will form a jelly around the fish. Will keep for several weeks.

This is enough liquid for a half gallon of fish.

Cornmeal Mush

Well, Max, we had a wonderful trip to Jamestown, Yorktown, Williamsburg, and Monticello in Virginia. These places make history come alive! Naturally I was checking out the kitchens and looking for new old cookbooks, or old new cookbooks, to add to my collection.

When you see the primitive conditions under which women cooked in the early years, you really appreciate all our modern conveniences. Much as you and I love to cook, I don’t think either of us would like spending our entire day preparing meals. Especially on an open hearth.

They told us at Jamestown that most cooking was over an open fire outside, or indoors on a hearth whose chimney was made of sticks and mud. At Jamestown, fish seemed to be the main food, but that during a Starvation Time they resorted to rats, horses and even their cats. That kind of puzzled me with the broad James River right next to the fort. Were there no fish for a time? Or was it that they did not know how to fish?

I am sure that one food that entered the Jamestown diet early on was Cornmeal Mush. It was easy to cook and corn was usually plentiful. The only hard thing would have been grinding the corn into meal. Only I think they pounded the corn in the early years with tree trunks and stumps. Once stoves were invented, women would start the Mush in the evening, set it back on the cooler part of the stove, and it would be ready the next morning.

If the family was lucky, there would be butter to melt over the Mush, or some sort of sweetener like honey or molasses. Leftover Mush could be cooled and patted or cut into slices and then fried for a real treat. Confession, I have never been able to fry Mush and get the golden crust my grandmother did. I love Fried Mush!

Cornmeal Mush:

2 teaspoons salt
4 cups boiling water
1 cup cornmeal

In a double boiler add the salt to boiling water, and then slowly add the cornmeal while stirring constantly. Cover and steam over simmering water from 1 to 3 hours.