IF I KNEW YOU WERE COMIN' I'D'AVE BAKED YOU A CAKE
Ah, Cooking! Cooking is something I do, that I have not always done well...Cooking is an up-and-down sort of activity for me. Baking is too.
Cooking and Baking begins for girls at a very young age. My sister and I were in the kitchen all of our young lives. We were cutting things up and setting tables, and clearing tables, and washing dishes, and drying dishes. Sometimes we were boiling things. But, you know, I don't quite remember actual "cooking". My mom did all the real 'cooking'...
We could decorate the cookies or the cakes, but she baked them. I don't think she actually taught us cooking! Or baking! I may be wrong about that, but I'm sure I would remember...
Did I earn a Girl Scout badge for cooking or baking? I think I did! So, someone must have taught me something! But, Who? and, When?
It was not until Nursing School that I learned anything about cooking, and then it was in the Student Nurse Kitchen. I was known for making delicious meals out of nothing. I must have watched my mom. I was somehow able to take items like eggs...or, small slices of cheese and old rye, and some mustard, and make a wondrous grilled cheese sandwich! I felt quite capable of graceful survival in the adult world! There were always peanut butter and jelly sandwiches...tuna noodle/somethings...hamburgers...omelets....
So, OK then. Nursing School was over. I had a room-mate: Pamela. She had an apartment, and was going to marry Richard. To prepare for this domestic disaster, she and I were teaching ourselves to cook. Two brilliantly intelligent young ladies. For sure we could decipher recipes! But, No go. We were Burners. We both burned things that would have been edible. had we not burned them. We were usually reading books when we should have been watching the clock or the stove or something in the kitchen....
Now I moved in with Barbara. Pam and Richard had gotten married. I think she eventually cooked things...Barbara definitely cooked things. She was an incredibly eclectic and even eccentric cook. To this day, she definitely cooks the most unusual dishes possible. I was unlikely to learn cooking skills at Barbara's. I mainly ate vanilla/orange ice cream push-ups and steak, medium rare. Ice cream and steak were two foods I had never had enough of as a child. I was making up for that deprivation...and, salads. Lots of salads.
Next, I was with Robert and Tio Rico. We ate roasted potatoes, roasted sweet potatoes, roasted beef, boiled-to-death cabbage, salads galore, and roasted chicken...then I married Robert. We moved to Wisconsin. In Wisconsin, it turns out that Women Cook....
They cook and bake and preserve foods as well...three times a day, regularly. These Wonderful Women were fully judgmental of each other all of the time, but, for some reason they were charmed by my ignorance about Being A Good Wife. It fit their construct that too much education was harmful to a young girl. I agreed with everything they said. I suddenly wanted to learn Everything There Is To Know About Cooking And Baking and Preserving Foods.
This sudden conversion on the Road to Portage was a true Miracle! Here is what I learned:
How to cook all meats: roasting, braising, frying, sauteing, brining, smoking, salting, mince-meating: every which way to work with meats!
How to make butter, cottage cheese, farmers cheese, ice creams, sherbets, cream cheese, clotting cream, Scottish crowdie, potted cheese, basic fondue; egg and milk custards of every flavor...custard pie!... so many ways to prepare milk products!
How to bake unleavened breads: baking powder biscuits, Irish bread, cream scones, popovers, johnnycake, Boston brown bread, muffins, zucchini bread, banana bread, persimmon bread, corn bread, orange bread: all the breads people really love!
Leavened breads: mainly, plain whole wheat and plain unbleached flour white bread...: the fresh out-of-the-oven-must-eat breads!
Vegetables: fresh from the garden, in-season, root crops, and Wisconsin bounty: corn, cucumbers, tomatoes, pickle-cukes, cabbages, especially for sauerkraut: preserved in these ways:
Pickles, especially bread-and-butter and dill, piccalilli,dilly beans, chow-chows, crock pickles, beet pickles, icicle pickles, watermelon pickles, even pickled nasturtium buds!
Relishes: carrot relish, green tomatoe relish, raw cuke relish, horseradish relish, red pepper relish, zuke relish, hot dog relish!
Tomato catsup and Wisconsin mustard! ...Apple cider Vinegars and Tarragon Vinegar...how to make vinegar from the wine "mother"...
How to can Veges...tomatoes, green beans, corn!...How to use the pressure canner to can every vegetable in sight!
Drying veges: shelled beans, snap beans, beets, carrots, corn, onions, garlic, tomato slices, summer squash, winter squash, and pumpkin strips...
How to maintain and store vegetables in a fruit cellar, which had already been built into Bumpity Road Farm's infrastructure, where we lived...
How to use potatoes: scalloped, fried, boiled, mashed, pancaked, made into 'flour' as a thickening agent, potato kugel...How to crock-up and brew and store sauerkraut!
Most importantly: how to raise all these vegetables in a Garden!....when to till, when to sow, when to fertilize, when to harvest...even how to save seed!
Fruits! pies! let's start with Pies! : shoofly pie, mince meat pie, mock mince meat pie, rhubarb and strawberry pie, blueberry pie, strawberry, ground cherry pie, gooseberry pie!
Now, Jams: apple-ginger, apple-pear,, apricot, blueberry, persimmon, peach, plum, rhubarb, watermelon, pineapple, elderberry rhubarb, sour cherry, cinnamon ginger peach, rose hip tomato, damson plum, raspberry, strawberry, loganberry, black cherry, blackberry, fig,...all, wonderful jams!
Marmalades: green tomato, three fruit, orange, honey orange, orange lemon, lemon...Butters! apple, concord grape, dried fruit, gingered tomato, apricot conserve, pear, plum, peach, chestnut...the Relishes! Cherry, sweet fruit pickle, spiced crab apple, lemon....
Conserves: raw pear, raw apricot, apple pear, ground cherry...and even...Fruit in Spirits! tutti frutte, brandied dried fruit, brandied fresh figs, cherries!...
I learned all the ways to can fruits in simple syrups and how to can and process them...all the ways to dry fruit slices and leathers...all the fruits that could be stored in the fruit cellar...
Jellies: apple mint, mint, raspberry geranium, quince apple, tomato, sweet pickle, lemon honey, cinnamon, cranberry, green grape, lemon, wine, mixed berries, rose hips...
Fruit Shrubs! yum!...alcoholic and a lot like liqueurs! blackberry, raspberry, strawberry, angelica, current...and cordials... quince, elderberry, especially! Oh, and Ginger Brandy, Mead! and the best of all, Dandelion Wine...then, the basic grape juice, so fresh and sweet!...other juices: plum berries of all kinds, peach, pear, tomato, nectarine, apple...and how could I forget Switchels! those molasses and vinegar refreshing drinks served to quench the thirst of the farmers and their hands out in the fields!
Steamed Puddings! I still have my two molds...filled with fruits and nuts and flour...Figgy Pudding!
Jellos! molded with and without fruits and vegetables in layer after layer...Tomato aspic! Chicken aspic! Salads...iceberg lettuce and cukes and tomatoes from the garden with canned slices of beets carefully dried and laid on the top...
The Baked Goods: fruit breads sopped in brandy, apple pan dowdy, cobblers of berries, peaches, apples, corn breads, ginger bread, cookies galore..especially oatmeal and chocolate chip, toffee bars, persimmon cake, my favorite cake of all: Lightning Cake, upside-down cake, coffee cakes, shortbread, sponge cake, angel food cake, devils food cake, cinnamon rolls, bread pudding, rice pudding, and, the Family Favorite: Wisconsin Too-many-eggs Bumpity Pound Cake...divinity fudge, and the best old-fashioned white cake recipe in the world...! The frosting! the wonderful fruit fillings...and poppy seed filling...poppy seed cake...
I know this list sound quite impossible...but you are looking at eight years of incredible Teachers...the Women of Wisconsin. I believe the Women I learned to cook with, for they always cooked and preserved with me, to "show you, Katey!", were the Best of the Salt of the Earth...
I never cooked and preserved and baked as much again as I did in those eight years...I've written down all their recipes in two note books: Putting Things By, Tried and True, and Baked Goods, Tried and True...I have never forgotten everything they taught me...every food I ever cooked for the rest of my life so far, was influenced solely by them...my gratitude to them is forever...
....especially to Aunt Verna...she was a very, very tough old farm woman, who sorrow had made bitter. but, she was always wonderful to me, and taught me everything to do to be a farm wife! even how to milk a cow!...She is a 'story' all by herself....
I wish I could say I learned a whole lot more about cooking over the years, but I didn't!
I did learn many recipes for Mexican foods from the Migrant Worker Women in Cambria, Wisconsin, where I ran the Migrant Family Health Trailer for four summers in the 70s...
Also, in the mid-70s, I learned quite a few Cuban dishes from the Cuban Educators in the Bi-lingual Programs my husband-at-the-time directed in Chicago, Illinois...
Then there was Uma Balusubrahman, a SouthEast Indian woman who lived with us for a year with her husband, Balu, who taught me all her Punjabi curries and masalas and the cooking techniques of India...
All these cuisines are still at my fingertips whenever I want to cook them...they are natural to me now...
But, ah...poor baking! Baking takes Time...it really does...I filled my life with so many activities, with tons of work, with so much child-rearing, so much reading and school and avocations... that there was rarely time to bake... By that time the 80s came along: my oldest daughter became the Family Baker instead...and she's really good!
Then, an unusual phenomenon began, which has persisted into each live-in relationship I've had since...until this latest one...where I have to learn to cook again - all the time - cuz he doesn't...for years:
I married, or lived with, other people who also could, and who Wanted-to, Cook! They all Wanted to cook and bake Way more than I did, in fact...one husband, all the 80s...one boyfriend, all the nineties...and my last husband, since 2001, have all been Avid Cooks, and have all, to a man, taken over the kitchen for over Half of the Cooking! They all have deferred to me for special dishes here and there, and for Huge Feeds... but, in the main, they have become good cooks over time, and just...well...they were just...the Chefs. I am relegated to Sui chef most of the time...I am allowed to cook and bake occasionally though during any month, mainly for dinners with others, or for big events...and, of course, over the weekend when I'm home...
It was a bit nice not to have to cook all of the time...but I sometimes missed it, and could get back into it again in a flash...if my men would have let me! well...careful what'cha wish for! Now I want to just Write all the time! But! gotta cook Dinner!....
I have a Huge Collection of Cookbooks that I have read as if they were novels...Food Porn, my friend Lee used to call it...but, I love to read recipes and books about food, or see films about food, and so on....I watch the Italian Cooking Shows when I can on TV...Lydia is my favorite...I've taken to more Mediterranean cooking over time...Algerian, Italian, Greek...delicious, fresh foods...
Cajun and Southern Cooking...o yeah, joe! My dad's love for the foods of his youth in Louisiana led to my mom's cooking foods that I'm Sure no one else in St. Charles, Illinois was Ever cooking! She never taught us this cuisine, but I saw it prepared for all those years, and picked-it-up by myself here and there as the decades went by. I can turn out a Fantastic File Gumbo in about six variations. a good jambalaya. great black-eyed peas. fried-breaded okra and fried green tomatoes that will knock your socks off. collard greens and ham hocks that will make you beg for more. my sweet potato pie is passable. hominy grits are just normal, which is better than horrible, I guess. sometimes they taste horrible. I do poached eggs on them with a slice of honey-cloved ham. fried Southern-style chicken. praline ice cream. It's some spread...I once prepared this meal for a friend dying of cancer, at his request. I taught his kids how to do it. They chopped all the veges and meats and shelled the shrimp for the gumbo, and I taught them how to make a roux correctly. They were happy and so was he!
So far, that's how cooking has gone for me...It's odd. I still have the talent of my Nursing School days of being able to make a good meal out of practically nothing at all! It's a talent that has served me well, especially in the lean times, when all I could afford for the Kids and me was simple, nutritious foods. We all made it through, healthy, tho not indulged!
But then, that is probably truly what any 'good' cooking is all about...foods of any kind, any culture, prepared with love...
making love...out of nothing at all....
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