WHO REMEMBERS HOME EC?

 

Who remembers Home Ec?    

 WHO REMEMBERS HOME EC?  That Rite of Passage subject which, if you attended and learned all the finest points of Homemaking---you were almost guaranteed to find the Right Someone With Whom To.

Our Home Ec classes were in a charming smaller brick building, much like the wealthier folks’ homes in town, and with all the requisite rooms, but larger, and with purposes.    First and foremost was the kitchen---long counters with sinks every eight feet or so, almost like the chemistry lab, but ours were the outdoor-faucet types---those squat-nosed coppery screw-a-hose-onto faucets like for washing your car, rather than the tall swan upsweeps for filling all those science beakers and such.    There were cupboards and cabinets and a rank of four stoves, six burners each, and when all of us got going stirring Seven Minute or White Sauce---the already-tropical air became hotter.    We’d never heard of air conditioning yet, except for maybe at the picture show in Clarksdale, and that was a treat, indeed.

The kitchen had an air of past hot Summer cannings, with the shelves of the pantries filed with long lines of Ball and Mason jars of tomatoes and unsnapped beans and pickles.   There was a certain scent to that area, possibly because of the many jars which had merely a little calico circle secured with a string, to dust-guard the white layer of paraffin poured onto the boiling contents below to prevent any bacteria.   Wax and sugar the lasting tang of simmering home-fruit, for the countryside was then still so rural, you could stop out in the country and pick you a whole apronful of apples or peaches or fat rosy plums, with the grand prize being those thumb-size golden plums, my Mammaw’s favorite preserve, and gathered early of a morning way out in the hills toward her Home Place.   They DID make a marvelous concoction, and the whole ones suspended in that thick golden syrup glowed with a magic of their own, as if being jewels was enough, and the sumptuous taste merely lagniappe.

Another large room held a couple of bedsteads, a few ironing boards, and wide flat counters for learning to fold everything from diapers to bedsheets.  Hospital corners on the beds, (no fitted sheets for a decade or so, but we welcomed those when they came) those line-dried sheets flipped just so, the top sheet with the wider cuff-end turned down a foot so as to display any monogram or fancy stitching, and the furry chenille bedspread spread neatly tucked around and over the two pillows, with any design military straight. 

The claggy smell of Faultless starch is unforgettable, with the few times we were required to mix our own dishpan of the grey goo, plunge in our hands and the pillowslips or dresser-scarves or aprons, and wring the whole mass neatly for hanging to dry.   Each piece was “sprinkled down”  with a nifty little pierced bottle-top inserted into a Pepsi bottle of cold water.  (We never mentioned the small snug rubber nipples sold for a nickel in the NOTIONS case---they fit over the lip of a Coke or Pepsi bottle for a lot of babies' milk, and nice folks didn't take notice of good folks using what they could afford). Those damp rolls were packed with all the others into a pillow case or big spread towel to go into a cool place (or into the freezer, which we finally got in about 1954) for best results.   And the ironing---I could get with that---I was thumping that heavy Westinghouse iron onto all the pillowslips and smaller items when I was eight and had to wrestle the board down onto its lowest notch---even Daddy’s boxers got a good pressing and folding.

I had had a small lifetime of all those tasks when I started Home Ec in eighth grade, but the big room with the dozen Singers all lined up beside the LONG cutting table with yardsticks nailed around the top edges like embroidery, and the three “dress forms”---big wire body shapes in three sizes S-M-L---Sadie, Maud and Bertha, probably named in the farback days when those names were popular---who stood in the shadows, haunting the far end of the room until they were called to duty---THAT was not my favorite area.   I’d tried to learn a seam on Mother’s and Mammaw’s machines, but my hands just would not learn a straight stitch, and my feet on Mammaw’s treadle would stray from the neat line quicker than you could say scat to a cat, into and out of time with whatever little black .45 Elvis record I had going.   Even hems and Rock‘n’Roll are not happy companions.  And Mammaw’s steadfast thumps hand on the crank and flying feet in rhythm to “Redwing” and Eddy Arnold were perfection I could never get the hang of.  Still haven’t, and even though I spent many a free afternoon with Mother and OTHER Mammaw over their crochet and embroidery, my best effort became a tight little cone by the fourth row.   If ever you need a Barbie hat, I’m your girl. 

And I would have been happy with that.   Those foldings and cleanings and cannings and recipes and bed-changings, on up to caring for an infant---on my part, up close---my only sister was born the year I turned twelve, and I spent my succeeding six years totally immersed in family life---Demi-Mom when school was not in session. I could have traveled the world as an au pair at sixteen, had we ever heard of such a thing.  

   We learned all the ins and outs of Homemaking of those times in the usual four years of Mrs. Ward’s tutelage and example.  I clipped out a comic strip decades ago---little girl musing to herself, “All I want to do is have a family and be a good wife and mother---WHY do I have to go to Kindergarten?”   And I really, until that senior year, expected that to be my life.    Despite my parent’s drive and eagle eyes on my grades and excelling in all things I could, I really never gave a thought to college---those Home Ec years instilled a love for cooking and homekeeping and all things to do with family, and that was what my Hope Chest was for.  

But, there was an entirely different path set for me, outside the home, and I’m grateful that I could experience both worlds.   And both were enhanced by my years in that big brick house that room-by-room, taught us girls (and quite a few boys, calling it Singles Survival) to take care of the simple and important things of everyday life. 

My Graduation Dance dress, in pale blue brocade.   Mrs. Baker made three of them, exactly alike, in different colors, and didn't say a word to any of us.    We took a look at each other at the dance, and all fell out laughing.   I wore it for years.

THE COLOURS OF THE WIND

 

Such Weather art as REDS AND GREEEEENS and all the shocking orange and yellows screeching from the screen.   I'd found a young man with the charming name of MAX (insert little exclamatory, shattery O here)  VELOCITY, on YouTube and since he was doing all warnings to Montana, I just settled to my puzzle.   And THEN I realized:   There CAN'T be another Bloomington and Mitchell and Orleans and Evansville just South there in Montana---too much coincidence.   It was for HERE---I'd been out in the morning, with a little fun shop at ALDI for Christmas leftovers and stocking stuffers for next year, and all was well when I came in lugging all the loot.  

Between then and lunch and MAX, the skies had taken a TURN and then it began to get dark  and I set a little grabbit lantern at my feet just in case.   We had one traumatic outage this past Summer whilst we were having the house re-wired---trauma enough in itself, but worse.

You know how "They Say" that a tornado sounds like a "Freight Train,"---I suppose for the greater weight of the train at the time, rather than a nice excursion or Express for commuting. At least they said that in all my Southern raising---on the Memphis NEWS Dave Brown used those exact words.   And Somehow, the winds were so gusty and the cold descending fast---I swore I could hear AMTRAK and Illinois Central and the Queen:  City of New Orleans, right here around our house.   I LOVE trains with all the love in my small-town-girls' heart, but I could see our enormous TREES waving in the yard as limber as the WeatherBush.    The Across-the-street neighbors had taken down the elaborate array of all things inflatable and lightable, or we'd have had a mylar/vinyl/plastic catastrophe right here in the street.   And dear Minnie Mouse, who we have laughed at for years for her tendency to deflate overnight, and fall sprawling with a drunken smile on her face---once up a tree, with her inebriated, goofy grin facing US, might have made it as far as I-65 before landing.  

We made it through the night, with no visible damages, and only the tiniest dust of white rime in the sidewalk cracks to show for all the rain, but that YouTube art was Scary as all get-out---like runaway Seventies graffiti in neon colors.  I have not heard of any damages or outages, and  it did allow for a couple of hours of texting with Sweetpea, with our describing the sounds and strength of the rainfall and the winds, and setting up a date or two for lunch while she's out of school.     You take BLESSIGNS where you find 'em.      Stay warm and well.  

THIRTY-FIVE YEARS AT THE GOLDEN TORCHES

 

Thursday would have been the Thirty-fifth Anniversary of the Christmas Day that we moved from Alabama to Indiana. I’ve told you about our ongoing love affair with Waffle House HERE, from Christmas Day, 1990, when we were on the road to our new life here.  We’ve had countless breakfasts there since, sometimes at midnight, if the whim strikes.

So, that Saturday of 2015, the day-after-Christmas, we braved the sleety day to go and celebrate our TWENTY-FIVE years in this wonderful, adopted place.  

We walked in onto the slippery, slidey tile floors---wet with countless footsteps, and were embraced by that unmistakable aura of good coffee, sizzling bacon, and the welcoming bright waitresses and cooks.  

We were seated beneath the only PINK-painted lamp in the house, with fanciful snowflakes giving our table an unaccustomed rosy glow.

MY kind of Art.

The windows had all been painted from the inside with festive scenes---wreaths and drums and ornaments, reminding me so fondly of a nice boy from my childhood, whose great talent for chalk-drawing was amazing---he’d come into our classrooms after school, painting blackboard after blackboard with scenes of elves and Santa, or Easter bunnies on bright green hills, or hay-shocks and pumpkins.  It seemed so magical to walk in one morning to such happy pictures, like strolling into one of those Easter eggs with the tiny dioramas inside. 

Waffle Houses are always filled with a cheerful energy, with scurryings and lively banter and rushing to get that good hot food out HOT.   You might well be seated in a Scalosian restaurant, with whatever instantaneous delicacies they might boast, for all the lightning speed of the Waffle House Staff.

Our own server Brittney seemed quite interested when we told her it was our “anniversary of Waffle House," and as she sped and skidded on those continuously-mopped floors, we told her of our tradition, and then, as she went back into the cooking area, we could hear the words “anniversary” several times, including once from the booth just ahead of me, where sat a nice couple having their own breakfast.

On one of Brittney’s return trips with that ever-filled pot, she handed us our ticket.  “I told my manager Nate about your anniversary, and he’s paid your bill,” she said.  

What a lovely thing!  We were simply overflowing with thanks, and as we prepared to leave, we asked to meet Nate and thank him.   He came out and stood behind the register as we repeated the story, with all the staff gathered round.   I don’t talk very loud, but I could hear “AWWWW,”   from several places around the room, and as we headed for the door, I waved and said Bye, and it seemed that the whole room chimed in, waving and calling out.

And that was our Anniversary visit to the Golden Torches, ten years ago. Yesterday would have been exactly thirty-five years since that memorable visit, and I wish that I could be there THIS MINUTE, bathed in that bright golden atmosphere of hustle and hum, smelling those delicious scents of BREAKFAST, and re-living those precious days.   Y'all need to stop in sometime, for scattered, smothered, covered and topped.   

GRAPENUTS CHICKEN

 

Years ago, a recipe went round the South for a tasty chicken dish, marinated in Wishbone Italian, rolled in crushed cornflakes, baked til tender and golden. It turned up at church suppers, funeral feasts, potlucks, pitch-ins, and Tupperware gatherings.

We were invited to the home of friends for dinner (we knew the husband well, as he and the men of our family were members of several organizations and all were farmers. I had met the wife briefly on occasion). Now, for the life of me, I cannot imagine what prompted the invitation, except possibly the husband's urging of a social occasion amongst us four.

And I was delighted for an evening which entailed real shoes, a dining room, and someone else's cooking. The idea of sitting down for an entire meal, without jumping up for the salt, refilling glasses, or wiping up spilt ones---that had its charms, as well. And though I did not know these people well, it was going out for the evening, an unusual and lovely thing, indeed.

Living-room-served Appetizer was rumaki, but not bacon-wrapped. The livers and whole water chestnuts had been marinated in the soy mixture, dumped in a baking dish, marinade and all, topped with slices of bacon, and baked til the bacon was brown around the edges.

The whole panful was poured into a clear glass dish, which then resembled some science experiment gone awry---graybrown chunks of boiled liver, long flappy strands of ecru boiled bacon, the whole floating in a brownish fluid flecked with liver crumbs and congealed lumps of blood. We were given toothpicks and told how much easier this recipe was than wrapping all those yucky, bloody livers. And there we stood, all dressed for special, probing our toothpicks into the brothy clumps with the enthusiasm of folks poking a bear with a stick. We emerged with a dripping bit, held our tiny plates beneath on the way to our mouths, and hoped for the best.

But you know, if you could get past appearances, they weren't so bad; the crispy chestnuts had taken on the hue of the sauce as well, so you weren't sure which you might be putting into your mouth, and would be surprised that the soft unctuousness you were expecting might turn out to be a not-unpleasant crunch.

But then came the True Crunch: the famed Cornflake Chicken. But they were out of cornflakes, it seems, so the hostess made do with the next best thing in the cereal cupboard: Grape-Nuts. Now, Grape-Nuts, on a good day and in its natural state, perhaps with a little pool of milk and a scatter of blueberries, is a passably pleasant breakfast. But those hard little nuggets, already baked into a shelf-life of ninety-nine years---well, baking them further still---that was not a good idea.

After the surprise of the first bite, we cut and scraped and managed to eat the INSIDE of the chicken pieces---the outsides resembled wallpaper flocked with BB's. Hoping to avoid a trip to the dentist for repair work, we did some meticulous carving and managed to carry on a conversation, all at the same time. Even after all this time, I can remember trying to separate those little stone crumbs from the tender chicken, corral them in my cheek, then swallow them like aspirin with a few sips of tea, whilst maintaining a conversation.

Side dish was a lovely platter of baked sweet potato surprise, another favorite au courant on the hairdryer circuit. The recipe included mashing the potatoes, then forming them into a ball around a marshmallow, then rolling the balls in: (developing a theme here) TADAAAAAAAA!!! Cornflakes.

Repeat chicken chorus ad lib, with a nice gravelly coating of Grape-Nuts around those mooshy sweet potatoes---like a mouthful of sweet aquarium rocks. How anyone could have thought TWO dishes rolled in cereal would make a balanced meal is beyond me, but the Grape-Nuts carried both recipes to heights undreamed of by the original cooks.

I think of that nice lady occasionally, how she opened her home to us, set her table nicely and cooked us dinner, and how ungratefully snarky my memories are. And I don't think I ever told the story from that day to this---it just seemed so ungrateful, somehow, after all that effort, and not befitting the hospitality.

But I still can't pass the cereal aisle without thinking of that chicken.

YORKSHIRE PUDDING, REDUX

 

When I went to England for the first time, I had a list of things to try and see and do and buy and experience, quite a few of them food-related. I wanted a bowl of porridge in Scotland (related in another post), Roast Beef and Yorkshire Pudding, treacle tart, a real afternoon tea with scones and cream and jam, and several other traditional things (all of which were accomplished and enjoyed very much).

So the first night on the road, we had dinner at our little hotel, and it was the only buffet of the trip, save for the bountiful breakfasts for which England is so famed. As I passed the gentleman who was "carving the joint," I asked for the beef. He misunderstood and carved off two hefty, steaming, juicy slices of the pork instead. I just accepted it, went right down the line, retrieved the nice muffin-pan shape of golden Yorkshire pudding, poured a bit of the rich brown gravy from the silver boat onto both, and had one of the best dining experiences of my life. It was rich and salty and BEEFY with the essence of the meat.  That sauce/gravy moat was the very embodiment of generations of Dripping, and would have been worth five hours' turning of the beef spit in the fireplace by small boys in the kitchen.

Later in the week, we stopped for lunch in the Lake District, and Yorkshire pudding was one of the features of the day in the restaurant/souvenir shop we were ushered into. I thought I'd try it one more time, and it was a bit different from the first. My plate arrived, or at least I hoped there was a plate under the weight of that huge bowl-shaped piece of browned dough holding its pint of gravy. The gravy was not so rich this time, nor did it have that tang of good meat essence nor the satisfying flavour of anything but browned flour and whatever liquid was used to make it. But it made up in quantity.

It was enormous. It covered a dinner plate, with just room on the edges for the server to get a tiny thumb-grip on either side. It looked as if a brown cake-pan had been appropriated from the kitchen, filled with brown liquid, and sent to table, its little ridges of sides barely holding in the flood. It sloshed when it was set before me, and the quandary arose: dip a spoon in that bread bowl and eat gravy soup until the ramparts could be breached, or cut right in, thus granting exit to enough brown sauce to flood the pretty tablecloth and perhaps flow back toward the kitchen. I'm a generous cook, with a lavish hand with the groceries, but I think I've served MEALS without that much gravy on the table.

Then we looked around us. Whole families were chowing down on plates of the kiddie-pool-sized servings. Twig-sized young women were tucking into the stuff with the gusto of lorry-drivers, and small children had their OWN great moats of brown in front of them. It was amazing. This was food for hearty hikers, tramping into the house in Wellies, beaming and rosy-cheeking their way through great trenchers of heavy food and gallons of steaming tea. Flour and water were the order of the day, and we were all consuming enough carbs to bankrupt Atkins several years early.

The pudding appeared to have been baked in a pieplate or cakepan, with inch-high sides which rose up and held its juicy burden, and the bottom was just about the depth of a piecrust, though springy and tender. I shared spoonfuls of the gravy all round the table; my companions scooped up spoons and bowls of it. One lady had no receptacle save her plate, so she lifted her teacup to the tablecloth and accepted a saucerful.

We all dipped and slurped and it made immediate "English dip" for the hearty sandwiches of all others at the table. I managed to down about a third of the rich eggy bready pudding, saturated as it was with the salty sauce, and passed samples to fellow travelers at other tables. When we finally lugged our stuffed selves out and back onto the bus, we left one semi-circle standing like a dough map of Stonehenge, listing toward the gravy. The stuff could have made a Biblical legend, a story passed down through whole families as they gathered on Friday nights, with children for generations asking, “Tell about the gravy which never ran out.”

When we left to go trekking through Wordsworth country, there was STILL a great moat of gravy left on that plate, with the golden pudding swelling and growing limply pale in the light of the grey afternoon.