Tuesday, October 9, 2018

Made From Scratch


I am not young. Of course neither am I old. But as all older folks delight in saying, things certainly have changed since I was a child. Some changes have made life much easier. And as I may have mentioned in passing I really like indoor plumbing... no more outhouses for me. But I digress.

Fast food was a thing of the future then. Cake mixes were not used. We started with flour and all the other necessary ingredients and made our cakes from scratch. The frosting for the cake was also made from scratch using a bit of butter, confectioner's sugar, vanilla, and water or milk.

Ready-made cereal was too expensive for a large family like ours. Oatmeal, cream of wheat, cream of rice, and cornmeal mush were the norm. I usually got up before the rest of the kids because I went to a different school (I was older) so I made breakfast enough for all of us. Then Mom could get a few minutes of extra sleep. She had babies to take care of during the night.

For cooked cereals it is just as easy to make a lot as it is to make a little. I certainly did not mind doing it and I had a good hot breakfast to start my day.

There were no tubes of cookie dough to slice and bake. We mixed the ingredients and spooned them onto cookie sheets for snacks. Yum. We could make whatever kind of cookies we wanted to. Every home had plenty of eggs, butter, flour, and sugar. They were what was used in every day cooking.

I always liked to make homemade bread but that was a fun luxury for us. Store bread was inexpensive and a large family tends to use a lot of bread.

One of our favorite snacks was what we called bread-and-sugar. We just took a slice of bread and dipped it into sugar. If we had fresh cream we would spread the bread with that first. It was our favorite treat and so easy to make.

In the evening when we watched TV it was good to have a snack. One of our favorites was fudge and popcorn. We said it as one word because we felt they went together so well.

Of course fudge was a process. You had to mix the cocoa, sugar, butter, and vanilla with water. Then you had to cook it to just the right consistency. When you dropped one drop of fudge into cold water and it made a soft but definite ball it was done cooking. Then you had to stir it continuously until it hardened. Then pour it into a cake pan and it was ready to cut into pieces to eat.

This was also before microwave popcorn. It was even before Jiffy Pop. To make popcorn we heated a bit of lard in a pan until it was very hot. Then we put the popcorn kernels in the pan, placed a lid on top of the pan. Holding the lid in place and shaking the pan over the heat until the corn was done popping could be tiring for your arms but it was worth it. A little salt and Voila there was popcorn to go with the fudge.

One year Daddy decided we could save a lot of money and have some good family fun by shelling our own popcorn. He bought a couple of bushels of popcorn on the cob. We made a night of it. We all had containers to hold the kernels of popcorn that we removed from the cobs. All we had to do was hold the cob and use our thumbs to push the kernels off into the container. I had a blister at the end of the night that I remember as being almost as big as my thumb. Maybe a bit of an exaggeration but it did hurt and it was big.

Mom cooked all sorts of things and taught us all (boys included of course) to make all these marvelous things from scratch. Cookies, candies, cakes, pies, breads... you name it we probably made it.

Then she found a recipe in a woman's magazine for some cookie bars. They were delicious and quickly became a family favorite.

She kept playing with the recipe until she had the best cookie bars ever. We all wanted to learn how to make them. She always said she had too much to do right then but next time she would show us. Next tiem there was another excuse.

My sister was helping Mom make Christmas cookies once and Mom was making her specialty. She had a recipe written. My sister sort of glanced over Mom's shoulder and Mom quickly closed her cookbook.

My mother died without ever sharing her recipe. And the recipe has never been found. We have all tried to make those cookie bars but they are never quite right. And somewhere my generous, giving, unselfish mother has a sly grin on her face.

Another fun family event was making taffy. It is another candy that needs to be cooked until the ball is the right consistency. Then we would put butter on our clean hands and as soon as the candy was cool enough to handle we would pull it.

We would take an amount of the candy and stretch it and fold it over until it hardened. It was such fun.

My granddaughter wanted to make rock candy. I remembered those science classes where we used strings to collect crystals of candy and make strings of candy. I was not looking forward to it. Then I found a recipe online that solved the problem.

We make the mixture of sugar, light corn syrup, and water. It is cooked until it reaches the hard rock stage. I use a candy thermometer now because it is so much easier than testing for the right consistency.

When it is ready we add whatever flavoring and colors we want and stir them in quickly. Then we pour it into a cookie sheet sprinkled with powdered sugar. It takes no time at all before it is ready to break into small pieces. It is the best hard candy ever.

When I was pregnant with my first baby my husband was working as an assistant candymaker. He enjoyed that job and was anxious to show off his new talents. He was going to make peanut brittle.

I was thrilled. I like peanut brittle and my husband had never cooked anything before. I sat back and let him go to it.

He cooked the candy and then he poured it out onto the kitchen table. Big mistake.

At work they had a huge marble slab to pour hot candy onto. Marble is not porous. My formica table was.

Armed with wet towels, spatulas, trowels, chisels, and several friends it took us hours to remove the peanut brittle from the table.

If I make a cake which is seldom these days I use a cake mix. It is easier and to be quite honest it is cheaper. But they do not have quite the same taste as the ones from scratch.

18 comments:

  1. I bet you will figure out that cookie bar recipe one day! My Mom made fudge the same way, with dropping some into cold water. Did you use sewing thread to make layers of the cakes? My mother did, never did figure out how to do that!

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    1. I never did the thread to slice the cake into layers but I have seen it done. We simply slapped one cake on top of the other. Never more than two layers for us.

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  2. How time has changed. I cannot remember the last time I even cooked.

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    1. I have gotten to the point of disliking the stove. If we did not live so far away from fast food stores I would probably seldom cook.

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  3. I liked what I called a "sauce sandwich" which was a slice of white bread covered in the tomato sauce my mom was cooking. It was my favorite "appetizer".

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  4. Those were the days, Emma, whentreats were homemade and tasted better. We never made fudge, but my mother baked chocolate cookies from the basics you described, pkus Nestles morsels. We also made popcorn in a large pot over the stive and used oil.

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    1. My mother made the best chocolate cake with fudge frosting. Mine never turns out as good. I think I do not cook the fudge frosting quite long enough.

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  5. We never have fast food Almost all our vegetables come from the garden and meat from the butcher. I also do not bake often, but when I do I make my own, no packets. I do make bread quite often, but the french make such amazing bread and pastries it is hard to not buy them occasionally. Take care Diane

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  6. My father was the only one in my family who had the physical strength to make homemade fudge, the cocoa box recipe where you had to beat it until it was thick. Still the best fudge I ever ate.

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    1. Sometimes we took turns because it could take a while. If we had extra we even added walnuts.

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  7. Are certain that we were not in your kitchen?!

    It has been years since I made cake from a recipe. Pie is always homemade. I miss my mom and grandmothers.

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    1. I miss mine too. Grandma was a plain farmer's wife cooking plain wholesome meals with homemade bread every day. Mom was pretty much the same but she liked to try new things. Mom and I always argued over which of us made the best pie crust (I did). I made better bread; she made better cakes and cookies. I made better meatloaf and pot roast but pretty much everything else was her.

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  8. I love your wander to the past Emma. These days it is certainly tempting to buy packet mixes and fast foods. Like Rhodesia I never have fast food either. Everything is from scratch. I regularly make my own hummus, bread, salads, soups, and stews. (I don't bake cakes much these days as I prefer not to eat sugar, but always bake a fruit cake at Christmas - that reminds me, I should get the fruit soaking in the rum this week.) I grow spouts all the time on the windowsill and have three small vegetable gardens and in summer I grow most of the easier vegetables like green beans, spinach (we have a huge New Zealand version called silver beet), herbs, rocket, lettuce, cucumbers and tomatoes. Also I have a lemon tree, an orange and three mandarin trees, a big rhubarb patch (yum rhubarb crumble), two blueberry bushes, a plum, a macadamia nut, a persimmon, a casimira and two passionfruit vines. Nearby on some common land is an avocado tree, two walnuts and a feijoa. I am lucky here it is quite a mild climate by the coast and everything grows well.

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    1. Be careful. You might get yourself a permanent house guest. I love everything you mentioned except a couple that I do not know.

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  9. beautiful chest of memories you open to share joys of your past dear Emma! and i always love to read them and they take me to my magical world of childhood :)))

    my mom either died without sharing her recipe of my favorite sweets that she specially made for my brother when he was in army for ten years (later he left ) she used to make huge amount so he can take along and when he told his friends like her sweets she was so happy to hear and packed more

    yes i am 48 now and i can say that 33 years ago eating stuff sold outside was more healthy safe and less harmful

    now there are tons of things kids buy in cheap price and then parent pay high bills to the doctors

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    1. I would bet that you wish you had the recipe for those sweets. Those cookie bars are the only thing my mother refused to share.

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