Permission to Rest

We had our first Snow today.  We woke up to that wonderful blanket of white.  If the sayings of the old timers are true, our 1st snow on December 6th means we will have 6 total snows this Winter.

I love Snow and I love Winter.  I loved it as a Child, for this part of Northeast Missouri has a reputation of being the coldest in the state.  I learned to love it in Grand Forks, North Dakota, where we lived for 32 years.  Winters there are severe.  Nature shows one quickly who is in charge.  Adapting is a virtue and an element of survival.  A recent study shows that Grand Forks is the 2nd coldest city in the U.S.  That makes me smile. We just loved it.

As for today, we luxuriated in the blanket of white. We are going slower.  Richard made pancakes embellished with bananas, blueberries, and pecans for breakfast. Afterwards, we took a trip back to the pond to see the progress of such things.  Even Laddie, our Elder Sheltie, went along.  We checked out the progress of the Native Grasses in the area Richard seeded this year.  The Chickens were staying inside their Coop looking out.  Melanie harvested the last of the Kale and Parsnips. We kept banking the fire in the Wood Stove.  Soup is on.

Mostly we are going slower.  We have long last gotten that precious "permission to rest".

New Video

The Center for the New American Dream has produced yet another thought provoking piece. These issues are in the work of our time.
http://www.newdream.org/resources/high-price-of-materialism

Recipe: Date Roll Candy

3 c. Sugar
1 c. Milk
1 1/2 c. Chopped Dates
1 1/2 c. Chopped Nuts (I used Pecans)
1 tsp. Vanilla
Butter size of Egg

Combine the sugar and milk, cook to soft ball stage, medium heat.  Add chopped dates and cook to hard ball stage, then add 1 1/2 c. chopped nuts, 1 tsp. vanilla, butter (size of egg).  Beat until stiff.  Roll in damp towel to cool.  Slice when cool.

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Lottie Hart and Fred Brenz on their wedding day, Nov. 15, 1911

Lottie Hart and Fred Brenz with their daughters Ruthirene, Dorothy, and Louise, 204 E. Hickory Street, Kirksville, MO, Sept. 14, 1941

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Notes:

Mother wrote on the recipe card that her "Mother and Daddy made this just before Christmas.  We loved it."   I remember having this when we were growing up, but I had not had it for decades.  When we moved back to Kirksville, I talked with Mom about it.  That last Christmas season she was in her home, I asked if she had the recipe because I wanted to reclaim some of the old family favorites.  She said she was not sure where it was.  After she fell in January 18, 2009, I found this recipe in her recipe card holder above the sink.  She surely must have found it and set it aside for me.  This seemed a perfect recipe to take to the Holiday Heritage Tunes and Treats event which is on Friday.

I have to chuckle at the "Butter size of Egg".  So many of the recipes of old were not standardized.  Cooks just knew what was meant and their language was a good bit more colorful.  They also knew the ingredients that they were working with after many trials.  Often, they did not use a recipe.  So how much is "Butter size of Egg" for modern ones like me who have no clue?  I broke an egg in a measuring cup which was 1/4 cup.  That Egg was about 3 tablespoons.

Quote

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The hand that rocks the cradle

is the hand that rules the world.

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William Ross Wallace, 1865

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Forgive Me (Part 2)

These photos show images related to my Grandma Dora, Aunt Anna, and Aunt Mary, all of whom were amazing teachers of food preparation and presentation in my life. Today we would call that "slow food" but they did it quite quickly and with skill that would astound and could not be replicated by many today. Aunt Mary's restaurant, which is above, was called "The Argonne Cafe" and was located at 1731 Grand Avenue in Des Moines, Iowa.  The Argonne was near both the Ford Plant and Meredith Publishing, an area which must have been "hopping" during the War years.  Aunt Mary took great pride in her restaurant.  She would speak of it often over the years, as if it was a defining moment in her life.  (I wish I had been paying more attention.) She truly must have been in her element there. She was an amazing and inspired cook throughout her life.  I do not know when she bought the restaurant.  I do know that she worked there before she bought it.  The card below suggests that it was her restaurant in 1941. I do not know the vintage of the vehicles in the above photo but that would be a way to date the story too.  I believe that some of the 1st images of me on our family home movies are in front of this restaurant.  I was a baby and the year would have been 1948 or 49.  Aunt Mary sold the restaurant in about 1954. Thinking of her after this time in her own kitchen in Prairie Village, Kansas, I see feet running to the market to purchase the best grade of ingredients she could find and arms going in all directions grabbing just what she needed for that next culinary pleasure. I also hear much uproarious laughter besides.

 

One of the lessons that I learned early in life was that if you ever had an opportunity to "eat with Mary", you wouldn't dare pass that up.  It would be a sensory pleasure you would be talking about for years, and in this case for a lifetime.  Maybe that explains in part why Aunt Mary reportedly had long lines of people waiting outside her restaurant. It is easy to see why.

Mary's sister Anna moved to Des Moines to help Mary with her restaurant.  I can imagine that it was significant support for these 2 women who were 1st generation born in this country to Croatian immigrants to have been in a very active Croatian community, including Dora's sister Sadie Budiscelich Ruppe.  In the above image, Aunt Anna is in the kitchen peering over the counter.  I can imagine that Mary and Anna were quite a team. Aunt Anna would have been in her mid 20s to about 40 when the restaurant closed.

Here is Aunt Mary at the till of her new restaurant.  Aunt Mary began some of her early restaurant work at the Younker's Tea Room, which these days would have been called "up scale".  By the time she was about 30, she was a restaurant owner.  She and M. Wayne Bryson married in 1954 and moved to Kansas City with his transfer in the Ford Motor Company in 1955.  She would have sold the restaurant sometime before.  Both she and Aunt Anna look the happiest in these photos that I have ever seen them.  Aunt Mary's ownership of the Argonne included the years of World War II.  During this time when men were gone to the war, women took on many leadership and work roles which were not customary at that time for their gender.  I can imagine that her restaurant was just hopping and with it came great pride that she was successful and doing her part.

I love this picture of my Croatian Grandmother Dora (Dragica) Budiselich Bloskovich (Blaskovic). While she is ironing rather than cooking, she is indeed in her small kitchen.  I see that wonderful refrigerator behind.  This would have been just about the same area that I remember making bread with her when I would have been 6 or 7.  Grandma Dora and Grandpa Kazimer moved to Des Moines in October 1946 with Kazimer's decline in health.  They lived at 1111 East 9th, which was next door to Dora's sister Sadie and her husband Matt Ruppe.   This picture would have been taken about 1948 or 49. Grandma Dora would have been about 70.

Bee Hive

On this day, Melanie took a course on Bee Keeping, sponsored by the University of Missouri Extension Service and taught by Jim and Valerie Duever from Auxvasse, Missouri (www.jimandifarms.com). Melanie says it was an excellent workshop covering such topics as history, anatomy of a honey bee, life cycles, castes, how to build a hive, the hive tool box, pests and diseases. After lunch, participants built a hive consisting of one brood box (the bigger box) and one super which was to be a door prize at the end of the class.

Melanie has wanted bees for years, so the class was a must for her.  She wants to do her part for conservation of Bees.  Of course, we'd like and need the pollination too. And we love Honey.

As they got closer to the give away, Ethan from the Farm down South looked at Melanie and said:  "If you win this, it will be the Universe's way of saying it's time to get Bees."  She had already been thinking about that.  At the end of the day, they read the number 685 which she had right there in her hand, to which she responded:  "Yesssss!"

We are always having adventures here on the Farm.  It is also somewhat amusing that she has been in charge of door prizes for the Kirksville Community Chorus "Holiday Heritage Tunes and Treats".  She has spent considerable energy making sure that there are lots of fun, exciting and whimsical Treats for folks.  On this day, it was her turn.

Forgive Me (Part I)

Forgive me but I come from a long line of women who placed importance on Food they crafted and shared. And why should I ask for forgiveness?  After writing this, I am really not quite sure.  We seem to be living in what my experience tells me are "strange times".  I grew alongside master cooks. At first, I stood on a chair beside them, later on a succession of stools growing shorter, and later I found my feet firmly on the ground.  They were not perfect cooks, but they were my considerable teachers.  These days, a lot of people don't cook and they don't know how to cook.  Some even have kitchens just for show, but you couldn't really cook there. These elements of strange times make me sad.  I am grateful to these lovely ladies for their remarkable spirit of preparing food for the ones they loved.  Furthermore, these days, I am once again happily outside the loop.

• My Mother Dorothy Brenz Bloskovich collected recipes.  Her countless clippings from newspapers and magazines, her cookbooks and subscriptions to magazines (including Southern Living), and her careful instructions on recipe cards and the back of any piece of paper at hand gave birth to a collection of recipes which seemed to have no beginning and end.  Her notes included:  "so and so likes this" for every member of the family.  She was an expert pie maker.  Those pies were served up in our home but they also went on excursions far and wide to church suppers, to ice cream socials and picnics, and to families in special transition:  new neighbor, family experiencing a death, family with a new baby.  She was the one who would march into the house after a long day of work and sit down at the phone with paper and pencil in hand to organize a meal for a family in need.  Furthermore, she seemed to shine in graciousness, organization, and table appointments.  She never called herself a cook which was a surprise, but we did.
• Aunt Mary Bloskovich Bryson was owner and operator of the "Argonne", a restaurant in Des Moines in the 40s and early 50s.  Word has it that people waited in long lines out the door just for a place at one of the tables.  When my family and I would visit her and Uncle Wayne in Kansas City (later Aunt Ann too), every meal before us was a feast.  She had the best potato salad, which inspires mine today.  She made barbecued ribs which cause me to salivate just thinking about them.  And her lasagna was an art form.  She called it "LAH sig NAH".  I do not know if she knew how to pronounce the word, but she sure knew how to make it. As a growing girl, I would often spend 2-3 weeks there in the summers.  She was in a bridge club of 8 ladies who would show up for delicate foods served royally on china and linens on card tables in her tiny stuffed living room.  That was the first time I ever saw, heard of, or tasted a Stuffed Tomato, which was all the rage at the time.  She stuffed Tomatoes with Tuna Salad. I remember them sitting happily on their iceberg lettuce leaves in her downstairs refrigerator.  I admit that I haven't carried on the tradition of making Stuffed Tomatoes.
• Mary's sister, Aunt Anna Bloskovich, was a waitress at Mary's restaurant too, where both were cooks.  Apart from the restaurant, Aunt Anna excelled in the old Croatian cooking.  That probably came from living with her Mother Dora Budiselich Bloskovich until Grandma died in1966. If a person wanted to cook one of those old favorites, she was the one to ask just how to do it. When I was in between my 9th and 10th grade year, Aunt Ann and Grandma had just arrived in Kirksville.  Aunt Anna made amazing homemade bread which was soft and yellow.  I thought her bread was so good that she should enter it in the County Fair.  I promised that if she would make it I would ride my bicycle from their apartment at 401 West Jefferson to the fairgrounds to take her bread.  Sure enough, I picked it up, placed it in my bicycle basket, and began pumping those peddles as fast as I could on the long way to the Fairgrounds. Sadly, I fell on my Bike and the poor loaf of bread didn't survive in a form that was fit for showing.  I felt terrible.  But at least she knew that I thought her bread was the best around.  Aunt Ann like Aunt Mary cooked with an amazing flare.  Their hands and arms were going in all directions, ingredients and mixing bowls just magically appeared at the right time as if part of their own grand play.
• My favorite memories of Grandma Dora are of her in the house at 1111 East 9th Street in Des Moines.  We would have traveled those 150 miles to Des Moines for very special trips.  In those days (late 40s and early 50s), travel was a very big deal.  Upon arrival, we would be greeted by aromas from a country far away, a royal feast for us (especially my dad) who were honored guests.  Even at a young age, I felt like I was a visiting royal.  I remember one specific trip there when I was in the 3rd grade.  When we arrived, which was late on a Friday night, I had never seen a table so laden with food.  I am surprised that it held up.  I remember eating the best Fried Chicken I think I had ever had.  I ate 4 legs and 3 wings.  I simply chowed them down.  I could hardly stop.  I can imagine my Mother was aghast, but my Grandma and my 2 Aunts loved every bit of it.  I remember making bread with Grandma Dora.  She spoke only a few words of English and I spoke only a few words of Croatian.  But we spoke volumes through the bread that she made.  That soft pillow of bread dough bore our hand prints as we kneaded it just to the right moment. Her Povitica has become a standard in our family.
• And I cannot forget Aunt Lula Myers Hart.  She took care of my brother and me when we grew up as our parents were both working, a matter which was highly unusual in those times of the 1950s and 60s.  Aunt Lu fixed basic foods from the simplest of ingredients.  Some seemed to bear the stamp of the Depression Era.  My favorites were Hamburger Hot Dish, Peach (or Berry Cobbler), and Raisin Bars drizzled with the tiniest bit of powdered sugar icing.  Aunt Lu usually had fresh warm cookies or bars awaiting my brother and me when we arrived home from school.  She also fixed our dinner.  Mom and Dad would arrive home tired and worn out at about 5 pm.  She had that hot meal waiting for us, while she gathered up her things and Dad took her back to her tiny apartment.  I always thought one of the best gifts for working parents and their children was to come home to the aroma of food especially prepared.  (That didn't happen to me, except on occasions when I used the Crock Pot.) Aunt Lu made the best Homemade Noodles.  I still can see them all covered with flour while they dried on the wooden board.  When I went off to college and took a food preparation class, I asked my professor, Dr. Dorothy Pearson, if we would make Homemade Noodles. I just assumed we would.  They were standard, right?  Much to my chagrin, I found out Homemade Noodles were not in the curriculum, but Mrs. Pearson did point out a recipe in the Better Homes and Gardens Cookbook. 
• Aunt Louise Brenz Wells (later Glassburner) would have feasts awaiting us when we would arrive at their 35 acre farm just east of Sublette.  Her famous Roasts would tickle and tease the senses as we walked into that little Farm House.  They inspired the Roast that I make to this day. Her Thanksgiving Dinners could have been featured in rural farm magazines.  We would walk into her house through the small and narrow kitchen which had a row of windows and door on the east.  That old Kitchen Pump with its icy cold water in winter held its place of pride through all those years when they did not have running water.  One of my favorite memories was her Fiesta Dinnerware which seemed to make Rainbows radiate from her cupboards.  I loved her Macaroni and Cheese with the little bits of Pimenta throughout. She was renowned for her cakes:  Angel Foods and Hawaiian Orange Chiffon.
• I should not leave off Aunt Ruthie Brenz Griffin.  While she lived on the west coast and we rarely saw them, she and Mother were always trading recipes, especially in the latter years.  About 20 years ago, Aunt Ruthie helped us reclaim the tradition of Steamed Pudding, which was from their English Mother, Lottie Hart Brenz.  I also remember that during the special times that Aunt Ruthie came, the table appointments were works of art.  Everything just gleamed.  One of my favorites was the little hand made place cards telling people their special places to sit.  We all had a hand in making the table pretty, which I loved.
• Of all my foods experiences, one that has shaped me has been that cooking was something that was a shared experience.  Everybody helped in some way, especially the girls and the women.  (My Dad was fine cook in his own right and he was an excellent and speedy dishwasher.) From the time I was wee little, I always had a place to help.  Over time, my aprons got bigger and I learned more and more.  I began to contribute solo too.
• I shall close with another entry about Mother.  One of the things that I learned from my Mother was that the food should look pretty on the plate and on the table.  You don't just plop food down.  You consider how it will be presented in the best light.  This little entry takes a side trip too.  One of her favorite places to go on very special occasions was the McDonald Tea Room (1931-2001) in Gallatin, Missouri. Virginia McDonald (b.1887-d.1969) was widely known for her culinary creations (she was also known for her big hats).  She had a cookbook and was the subject of numerous articles.  Her restaurant was a destination spot long after she had passed.  Her gifts were inspirations to Duncan Hines.  Yes, Duncan Hines was a real person.  Virginia McDonald believed that food should look pretty on the plate.  That included embellishments.  I loved that.  To me, the plate became just another canvas to paint. 
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Regretfully, I do not have pictures of all of the above in the kitchen or close to that beloved "power central" of the household.  I suppose that the work of the kitchen was considered a bit mundane for the taking of pictures.  Plus, the subject may have wanted to look her best in front of the camera's eye.  And she did look her best when she was in the middle of those preparations.  

While I had posted images of Aunt Ann and Aunt Mary earlier, I moved them to another post.  The above pictures of Mother's new kitchen in December 1951 are much more fitting for this entry.  She and Dad had just built their new house and moved in November.  I can only minimally know the pride that she put into the design of this magical place.  This marvelous staging area was all set for culinary expeditions and wonders, for teaching me some valuable tricks for the life time.