Bread - Applesauce Nut Bread

Well, I've made it through each section (or almost each section since I skipped the canning, and diabetic sections) in the cook book.  That means it is time to go back to the very beginning.  It's a very good place to start, I understand.  Since the Appetizers section is so short, I'm skipping ahead to the Bread section.  Last time we were here I made some rather dense and dry wheat bread.

I've been intending to make this applesauce bread for a few weeks now as I made some applesauce shortly before Thanksgiving.  We were swimming in apples this fall that we picked up from the farmers' market here in St. Paul.  It's difficult to not buy lots and lots of apples in the fall in part because they're so good, but also because soon enough, we are going to be without fresh local fruit for many dark and cold months.  In my exuberance, it isn't uncommon for me to buy more apples than we need though so applesauce is in order.

Here's my recipe for applesauce:
Peel and cut up apples
Cinnamon and maybe ground cloves to taste
A little water
Put it all in a pot and cook until stuff is soft
Squish the biggest pieces.

Easy, simple, delicious

Here's what Mussleman's uses to make applesauce

You know, 'cause apples aren't sweet

What the heck, Mussleman's?  Why add corn syrup?  Wait, I think I know.  Based on your picture, you used sad Red Delicious apples.  Red Delicious apples are a lie.  They are probably the worst apples around.  Why use such crappy apples when there are so many fantastic varieties around, many of which were developed by my alma mater.

There's a reason why kids don't eat their fruits and veggies at school.  It's cause they're served terrible things like Red Delicious apples

Quantity Servings - Coffee

I have snobbish tendencies, I suppose.  My beer should be made by a craft brewery.  My preferred vegetables come from sustainable, local, organic, and biodiverse farms.  My tea should not come in a bag and needs to be brewed at the right temperature for the right amount of time.  My coffee needs to not suck.  With few exceptions, I'd rather have no coffee than bad coffee.  Those exceptions include breakfast with greasy eggs and hashbrowns at a cafe, gas station coffee when I'm on the road and can't find a coffee shop near a freeway exit.  Call me crazy, but I just want my food and drink to be enjoyable.

Unfortunately, for far too many years, the only coffee available was bad coffee.  Thank goodness for the coffee revolution of the 90s where coffee shops with decent coffee sprouted up all over the country.  But there is still no shortage of bad coffee around.

Burnt, cheap, bad coffee at each and every gas station everywhere

Advertising section

Obligatory apologetic statement about infrequency of posts.

The cookbook that the Ladies of Zion assembled was no small undertaking.  Yes, there are some little quirks, but in the end, I don't think the cook book could be called anything but a success.  Doing a little simple research, it looks like a similar book printed online, would cost nearly $20 per book, and if you're doing a production of 100 books, it's a pretty serious order.  I have yet to get my butt in gear and contact the one living member of the Ladies Guild that I have an address for to find out, but I imagine that the cook book was produced as a fund raiser for the Guild.  I can't imagine how production costs would compare between a local brick and mortar print shop in 1951 versus an online shop 63 years later.  Regardless, if the Ladies were using the book as a fund raiser, wanted to keep the book affordable, yet still make some money, they needed to find a way to increase their margin.  Advertising was one of the ways they did this.

Of all of the advertisements in the cook book, I found ten of the businesses still exist and a few dozen that I couldn't find any evidence of.  It is easy to get sentimental about what once was.  There are certainly things and places that I am sentimental about, but it is only natural that things, places, and institutions come and go.  But when a place has family or community connections, the feeling of nostalgia isn't so easily dismissed.  I can only hope however, that the businesses in the cook book that did close weren't forced to close because of the opening of large national chains and big box stores.  I'd much rather go to a store owned and operated by the family down the street, than a giant corporation in another state that only pays its workers minimum wage (I'm lookin' at you, Wal Mart).

Anyway, I thought I'd highlight the businesses that are still around, and post a few old pictures I coud find of some of the others.

Businesses that still exist

Farmers' Union Oil Company looks to now be a part of Cenex.  

Purdy's Shoe Store is still around.

Northern Woodwork Company is clearly proud of their nearly 100 years of existence in Thief River Falls.  

I think it is great that the radio KTRF is still around.  It is a local station that is part of a Minnesota news and farm network of stations.  It is also the local affiliate of the Minnesota Twins.  Go Twins!  Don't suck as much next year!

Northern State Bank has also not been gobbled up by some other large bank, which is nice.  Hooray for keeping your money local, where your savings go to help the growth of the local economy.  Too bad their website is boring though.

One of my first stops in Thief River Falls would likely be the Rainbow Pastry Shop, now called Gary's Rainbow Bakery.  I do love my donuts.

Model Laundry is still in business too.

Northland Seed and Produce still seems to be around, but has no website.  Seeing as how it is along the railroad tracks, I'm guessing it's a big old feed mill.  I have only ever been into a couple feed mills in the past, but I've got pretty warm feelings about grain elevators in small towns.  I can't say why though.

Lee Plumbing and Heating is also proud of their long history in Thief River Falls.

Though it doesn't appear that they sell pianos any longer, Poppler Piano and Furniture is still around, now known as Poppler's Home Furnishings.  

Sadly, that's all of the businesses that are still around.  As I mentioned though, I did find some pictures of some of the businesses that are no longer open.  

No longer open, but not forgotten

1959 edition of the Thief River Falls Times

Fancy Cookies - Powdered Sugar Cookies

I'm pretty overdue in cooking and posting.  Taking classes, doing homework, raising children, and attempting to get enough sleep at night often means that other things get pushed to the side.  But fear not, the cookbook is never far from my mind.  With this post, we've reached the last of the cookbook sections that I'll be covering in the book.  There are a few sections and parts of the book that I may talk about next time, but now that I'm done with these cookies, I'll be going back to to the start of the book and working through again.  Once my classes are done in mid December, I'm hoping to do a few posts in pretty quick succession.

I do want to mention again, since I didn't publicize my last post so much, that I'd love a guest cook/writer for the canning section of the cook book.  If you're interested, please let me know.

If you'll recall, I've done a cookie recipe before and wondered what the difference is between the cookies  in the Cookies versus the Fancy Cookies section of the cook book.  I don't know that this recipe will shed any light on the matter.  I suppose that in the end it doesn't matter because more cookies are more cookies, and rarely is that a bad thing.

No I can't.

I was initially going to do one of the sugar cookie recipes on the front page of the section, but when I finally got around to making cookies, I found that I didn't have the ingredients needed for either of those recipes.  The next page had the following recipe, and had the added bonus of needing cherries, which we had in the refrigerator from when I made fruit salad, that have just been taking up space ever since.  There was also a check next to the recipe, which means that Aunt Marlys probably made and liked the recipe.  Oh, and by the way, don't knock over your jar of maraschino cherries without noticing.  The red liquid that leaks out of the bottle is a pain to clean up.

So here's our recipe for today:

A recipe that assumes cookie making knowledge.

Canning - Do you want to do a guest post?

Hello, folks.  Canning is the section after the (frightening) vegetables section in the cook book.  When I set out on this cooking adventure, I intended to give everything a try and to not try to pick the best or worst looking recipes.  That said, canning is a section I am not particularly interested in.  A great majority of the recipes in the section is for different kinds of pickles.  There are a few for jams or even soup too.  I don't particularly want to to make a large recipe of something we are unlikely to ever eat.  I'll eat a pile of carrot ring, but Nine Day Chunk Pickles would sit in our pantry for rather longer than nine years though.  We also don't have any canning materials, though it looks like some of the recipes don't require all of the canning paraphernalia.

So all that said, I would hate to skip the section completely.  If anybody would be interested in doing a guest post, I'd be happy to scan the whole section and let you pick a recipe to make and write up.  If you wanted to scale down a recipe, that would certainly be fine.  A few pictures and your thoughts would be great.  If you're interested, let me know.

Vegetables - Carrot Ring and Creamed Peas

Vegetables.  I like vegetables... mostly.  Cauliflower, rutabegas, and raddishes, I can do without.  But generally, vegetables are great.  One of my favorite things to do here in St. Paul is to go to the farmers' market in Lowertown on the weekends.  Toward the end of summer and early fall, tables are heaped with peppers, squash, tomatoes, potatoes, carrots, greens, and so much more.  One of the things that make it so great too is that it seems like everybody is smiling.  How could one not be happy when surrounded by so much great produce and delicious food is on everybody's mind?  Oh farmers' market.  I will miss you through the winter months.

So I was looking forward to the vegetables section of the cook book.  After a run of mediocre to anxiety-producing dishes, we were due for something good.  How wrong I was.  I can say definitively that we hit a frightening new low this time around.  See the face below?  It is not one of joy and merriment, celebrating a culinary delight.

How could someone do that to such nice innocent vegetables?

Sarah looked at the Vegetables section before I did and was drawn to the first recipe.  Carrots, salt, pepper, onion, egg, milk.  We had all these things on hand and it was the first recipe.  Of course we would make a carrot ring.  Why not?  Unfortunately, I didn't look very closely at the recipe, but saw that the ring could be filled with creamed peas.  Luckily for us, there was a recipe for creamed peas right below the carrot ring.  Perfect!  I love creamed peas.  The devil is in the details though, and these weren't pleasant details.

Aaron and Sarah's 4th Annual Pie-Off!

A few years ago, Sarah and hit upon the best unimportant idea that has been thought up in Minnesota in at least twenty years.  We would make pie, invite friends to make pies, and then have a pie "contest" necessitating that we eat lots of pie.  We'd have silly categories that wouldn't remotely be like "best of show".  Essentially, the idea was sanctioned gluttony.  It went over well with perhaps eight pies the first year and all in attendance agreeing that we need to do it again.

So do it again we did, and we've continued doing it again for three more years.  This year's pie-off had sixteen pies and probably 25-ish people in attendance.  Our categories were:  "Baby it's cold outside," "What's in there?," "First date," and "Don't stop 'til you get enough."  The format is easy enough to understand.  Walk around, visit with friends while stuffing your face, and then voting on which pies best fit the categories.

Below are pictures of the pies that were brought to this year's Pie-Off.

My sister's pie.  Well done, Molly.

One of my two pies.  This is out of the cook book, and a recipe I reviewed earlier.

Sarah's pie.  I wasn't upset that there was a little left to bring home.

My second experimental pie.  Sarah came up with the idea for chai whipped cream.  Great idea!  Successful pie.

Jim's pie with probably the prettiest crust of the day.

The candy eyes on the top of this pie were a hit.  This was our friend Sean's son's pie.  Sadly, I don't remember what the filling was.

Anu's pie.  I was also happy to bring leftovers of this one home.  The chocolate layer on the crust made the pie.

Karin's sweet kids and her two nearly as sweet ice cream pies.

I feel like I may have missed a couple pie pictures.  I wish I could remember for sure.

And lastly, our winners.  They were:

Winner for "Baby, it's cold outside" was Melia's cheeseburger pie.  Sriracha was great with this.

Winner for "Whats in there?" was Sean's daughter Emmie's piecaken.  Yes, there's a pie inside that cake.

Winner for "Don't stop 'til you get enough" was Eliza's sweet potato pie.  Delicious!

Unfortunately, I must not have gotten a picture of Ed's boosey, and fantastic pecan pie.  He won in the "First date" category.  If anybody has a picture of his pie, feel free to send it to me 'cause I'd like to put it up here.

Should have taken more pictures.  Oh well.  Here are some of our not-quite-stuffed-yet friends.

I accidentally took a video instead of some pictures.  It's a little random, but why not let you see.

Lastly, what was probably the cutest moment of the afternoon was Thomas making a friend.

Awwwww

Ultimately the real winners were all of us 'cause we got the opportunity to eat so many wonderful pies.  A big thank you to everyone who attended, and we're looking forward to next year!

On the myth of the creation of chocolate chips

Here's a good little article from The Atlantic about the creation of chocolate chips.  At the bottom of the article is the recipe that was used for the first chocolate chip cookies, back in 1938.  Enjoy.

Candy - Chocolate Creams

I've made candy twice before.  My father used to make English toffee just about every winter around Christmas.  He'd make a big batch where he lived in Indiana, and we would eat half of it on the road between there and Perham, MN, where my grandparents lived.  The rest wouldn't last very long once we arrived.  Ohgoditwasgood.  I have made it twice.  The first time, my roommate rescued the recipe (good thing too, since I was bringing it to my future in-laws for Christmas), since I had not heated the toffee enough.  The second time, I nailed it.  Did I mention that this toffee is good?  My sweet tooth probably caused me to eat 75% of that batch of toffee.  It wasn't my fault at all; my teeth made me do it, I swear.

So I was excited to get to the candy section of the cook book.  Whether the recipe I chose turned out or not, it would, at the very least, be sweet.  Oh, and chocolate.  How can a person not like working with chocolate.  Who knows, perhaps this could lead to something greater.

Who wouldn't want a chocolate river and pleasure boat?  I'd be singing Pure Imagination non-stop.

Salads - Fruit Salad

Poetry time!

A gay and crispy salad
Is such a tempting way
To give a fussy family
Green leafies every day.

Leafies!  Everybody loves leafies!  Granted, having two little boys in the house promotes silly language like this.  This happy little poem at the beginning of the Salads section only serves to throw you off your guard for the horrors that lie within.  After looking through the section, Sarah puts it this way, "Looking through the ingredients, everything looks fine and then comes something horrible.  Why would you put that in there?!"

For example, there is a recipe for Black Cherry Salad.  Sounds good, right?  Everybody loves cherries.  Here are the ingredients:  can of pitted bing cherries, lemon juice, orange gelatine, [then here's where things start to go down hill], chopped pecan meats, [and then *cringe*], stuffed olives.

But then there is the truly scary.  Here are the ingredients for Shrimp Salad:  chopped shrimp, chopped celery, stuffed olives, chopped onion, nuts, green pepper, mayonnaise, hard-cooked eggs, cooked macaroni, salt, and pepper.  RUN AWAY!  DON'T TURN BACK!  If that salad starts chasing us down the road, I'm tripping you so it gets you first.

AAAAAAAAH!

Fortunately for us, there was a more or less ok-looking salad on the first page of the Salads section.  We may live to see another day.  I'll be sure to keep an eye on the salad to make sure that it doesn't do anything suspicious.  Here's what we've got.

The dressing recipes are too frightening to display.

Meats & Hot Dishes- Chow Mein Hot Dish

Global cultural exchange is a wonderful thing.  Growing up in Fargo and St. Paul, you might think that there wasn't much opportunity for learning about people that weren't Scandinavian or German.  For the average person growing up in those cities in the mid 80s, that may have been true, but I was lucky.  My step-father was in pre-vet school in Fargo and in vet school in St. Paul.  While he was in school, we lived in married student housing; University Village at NDSU, and the Commonwealth Terrace Co-op.  Instead of being surrounded by people who looked mostly like me and my family, I had friends from all over the world very close at hand.  Let's see how big a list of friends' countries I can put together from 25 years ago:  India, Sri Lanka, Bangladesh, Korea, Japan, Iran, Malaysia, China, Madagascar, Nigeria, Lesotho, Egypt, Peru.  There are probably a few more, but that's a pretty good list.  While we lived among this patchwork quilt of international families, we got to know a bit about them, their heritage, and their food.  Living these places was one of the most formative experiences in my life and has given me a curiosity and appreciation of different cultures.

Now Thief River Falls may not have had the commercial and cultural draws that St. Paul and Fargo did, but there was at the very least awareness of the wider world (how could there not be?).  It may have been a limited knowledge (it seems to me that I recall my father saying that living in Perham, he did not see anybody who wasn't white until he went to college in Fargo/Moorhead), but it was there.  There are six recipes in the Meats & Hot Dishes section that have some clear ethnic connection, if only tenuous.  Chinamen's Hot Dish, has a quarter cup of soy sauce (beware!  flavor!) in it.  Considering that according to the U.S. census there were only just over 33,000 "Asian and Pacific islanders" in the upper Midwest in 1950, it probably shouldn't be surprising that the general knowledge about people from the other side of the world was limited at best, and racist at worst.  But let's give the Ladies the benefit of the doubt, and not ascribe attitudes of the latter sort to them.  At least in the cook book, we're not seeing things like this, which still persisted until not that long ago.

Yipe.  Can you believe it?!

Considering the large population of Chinese immigrants to the west coast in the latter half of the 19th century, it shouldn't be surprising that some aspects of their culture spread across the country.  The food industry did their part, and our Ladies gave it a try.  I can't find any examples of the vintage "Chinese" foods that they may have purchased down at Froseth Food Market and Dairy Bar (phone 115), but I do know that some of the processed and accessible "Chinese" food that I ate growing up is still around.

I used to love this stuff.  That's frightening.

That canned chow mein, the Chow Mein Hot Dish I made, and most Chinese food we see out and about isn't remotely authentic, but if nothing else, it provides a change from the regular meat and potatoes (or does it?).

Norwegian Dishes - Kol Dolmer or Cabbage Rolls

Ah, vacations are wonderful.  They may not necessarily be restful when you're sharing a tiny cabin with a toddler and a pre-schooler, but they're pretty great nonetheless.  Here's a picture of my family with the local giant of the Northwoods, Paul Bunyan in Akeley, MN.

I bet Paul would have loved some cabbage rolls after cutting down all the trees in the Dakotas.

Wikipedia says that according to the 2000 census, 50% of the residents of Thief River Falls consider themselves Norwegian-American making the town "one of the most ethnically concentrated town in the nation."  Those poor Swedes and Danes probably feel rather set-upon.  With such a high concentration of Norwegians, it should come as no surprise that there is a Norwegian Dishes section of the cook book.  This section starts with another poem, one I can't read.  So I did what all high school language students do.  I turned to Google Translate.  First the poem as it appears, then the translation.

Du hente kan

Lidt ve og van,

Jeg Kaffen snart

Skal faa istan.

Google Translate detected Danish (hmmmm...), and spit out the following:

You can download

little woe and van,

I coffee soon

Must have Istan.

I couldn't agree more.  On to the recipe!

Vacation Time - Blog Hiatus

We're heading out of town tomorrow for a few nights in a cabin on a lake.  Not going to get to any of the Scandinavian recipes that are next up in the book for a little while here.  In the mean time, here's an interview of the owners of Back in the Day Bakery from Savannah, Georgia by Lynne Rossetto Kasper on The Splendid Table.  The Splendid Table is one of my favorite radio shows.  Enjoy!  See you in a week or two.

Here's the interview.

Beverages - Egg Milk Shake

Bonus post this week since this is such a short and quick recipe.  In looking through the cook book, I was quickly drawn to the beverages section.  Though I was hoping to find some vintage cocktail recipes, it probably shouldn't be too surprising that there are none.  Since I am more of a beer and whiskey person, it is probably good there are no cocktail recipes.  Going out to buy a bottle of booze we may not finish is not something I need to do.

There was a "recipe" that I had made MANY times though when I would visit my grandparents in Perham, MN.  They belonged to St. Paul's Lutheran Church and though it is a Missouri Synod church, I think that aside from a few theological differences that the church community they were a part of wasn't all that different than that of Zion in Thief River Falls just over two hours away.  On my shelf, I have a battered old recipe box of my grandmothers.  There are plenty of recipes in there that look like they would fit right in with the recipes in our cookbook.  But for all the time I spent in their house, I don't think I ever saw my grandmother use a recipe.  I wouldn't say that she was gourmet or anything, but she was certainly competent. Whenever I would visit when I was young, there were freshly baked cookies, and often fresh bread, and she would always make at least one big meal.  "Creampeasmashedpotatoesandgravy" is what I would invariably say when she asked me what meal I wanted.  The gravy usually came from a nice juicy roast.  But it was mixing up the creamed sweet garden peas with my mashed potatoes and gravy that brought me the most joy at dinner.  Then there would be something like a very large slice of cherry ice cream pie (which is straight out of the 50s, and very delicious. for me after dinner.  I never went hungry at my grandparents house.

This is a test pie from before our Pie-Off last fall.  YUM.

Pies & Desserts - Mock Apple Pie

It's poetry time again!

Sweets, they say, give energy,
So surely it won't hurt
To ease up on the first course and
Leave room for dessert.

Wrong.  All wrong.  Good sentiment, Ladies, but you can do better.  I prefer chef Jacques Torres's philosophy.

Truth... at least when you're not having dinner with little boys and you must *sigh* set a good example.

The best dessert to eat first, in my opinion is pie.  I love pie.  There are few desserts that are actually bad, but given the choice, I will frequently choose pie.  I love pie so much that Sarah and I are planning our fourth annual Pie-Off.  Here's how it works.  People bring a pie.  We all take time to eat way too much pie.  Then we vote on the best pies for silly categories, e.g. "Pie, It's What's for Dinner", "Impress the Mother-in-Law", "Science!".  Then we have little prizes for the pies that won.  Our Pie-Off is quite possibly the best idea anybody has ever had.  If you're reading this, you're invited.  I'll probably post some more details in a week or two.

Background

I'm making Mock Apple Pie this week.  Sadly, it's not made of mock apples like this.

It is a pie I've heard of a couple times, but have never tried.  Here is the recipe.

Doughnuts - Untitled

I love donuts*.  Ten years ago, there were only a small handful of bakeries that had been around for years and years that made donuts.  In the past five years or so, there has been a donut explosion.  Most of the places that have opened up in the past few years have reflected the rise in foodie culture in the Cities.  Places like Mojo Monkey, and Glam Doll have taken the humble donut and filled them with things like mocha cream, or topped them with peanut butter, sriracha glaze.  They are good to be sure, but in my mind in order for a donut shop to be any good, they have to have high quality plain cake and raised donuts.  Cake donuts should be a little sweet, but not make me race for coffee.  They should have a very slightly crunchy exterior with a soft, tender crumb inside.  Bonus points for a bit of spice inside.  Raised donuts should not shy away from their bready ancestory.  They should be a little chewy and also not hit me over the head with sweetness.  The exterior crust shouldn't be too crunchy and the interior should provide a nice depth of flavor.

Matt Groening based this aspect of Homer on me.

I've got expectations with my donuts.  While I was looking forward to making donuts from the cook book, I wasn't going to hold my breath for something that really shines.

The recipe I'm using for donuts today doesn't have a title.  So presumably, they're donuts.  I've only ever made donuts once before, and those were ok.  The process was fun and the result was good enough, but I wouldn't call them good donuts.  The recipe was for raised donuts and were from Flour by Joanne Chang.  I wouldn't in a million years say that the recipe was bad because this is a fantastic cook book.  The experience left me wanting to try frying donuts again some time, so here we are.  Today instead of raised donuts, we're making cake donuts and we're turning to Mrs. Carl M. Green.  Wish us luck, Mrs. Green.

Writing as I cook here.  First impression:  Heck yeah!

We'll call that foreshadowing, or something.

New Book: Something from the Oven: Reinventing Dinner in 1950s America - UPDATED

A new food post will be coming in a few days.  I'll be making donuts for the second time and I'm pretty excited about it.  In the mean time, I am starting a new book from the library.  Something from the Oven:  Reinventing Dinner in 1950s America.  This should provide some good background and insight into the Ladies, their thoughts, and what kitchens were like sixty years ago.

Here's an excerpt from the introduction:

Hmong farmers in Minnesota

Perhaps now and then I'll post a link to a blog or article I find interesting or enjoy.  From Minnesota Public Radio comes this article about Hmong farmers around Minnesota.  We enjoy going to the farmers' markets in St. Paul and a majority of the produce stands there are run by Hmong families.  The Hmong are an ethnic group from southeast Asia that began coming to Minnesota after the Vietnam War and were probably an unknown people to the Ladies of Zion.  In the last couple decades, the Twin Cities have grown to have one of the largest Hmong communities in the nation, and have become all the better for it.

There are a couple recipes at the bottom of the article.  I may have to try them.  Enjoy!

Appetites: Hmong influence strong in Minnesota farmers markets

Bakery For Sale

I got the following email from my mom this morning.  The bakery in Moose Lake, MN is for sale.  I've got a soft spot in my heart for small town bakeries.  The donuts are usually simple and good, and there always seems to be a troupe of regular customers sharing stories and drinking their coffee.  I've stopped in here a small handful of times and was totally charmed.  Fancy and gourmet donuts like are found at Mojo Monkey and Glam Doll are great, but there's just something about simple, tried and true donuts that is hard to beat.  If we were ready for a complete change in lifestyle and Sarah or I had the first clue about running a business, we might consider it, but we aren't and we don't.  I just hope someone does.

Here's the email from my mom.

$30K for all the equipment, training to do the baking, all recipes, sit-down area, established customers, better in summer. open 7-3 in summer, 7-noon in winter. They need to hear from someone about a sale by the end of the month! (Yikes) I talked to her People here don't know they plan to close this Saturday. Owner is 72 and his wife and he are sweeties! They live in town and are involved in the community. 
Lindsey, you are an experienced cook, Aaron, you do a cooking blog and like doughnuts... Welllll? : ) 
Dean, Kari, Molly & Chris, Think about it. Or tell your friends this is a good gamble for an awesome home-town life. They have a posse of PT helpers already, who I'm sure want to continue with the job. I told her that I would send out some pix, so maybe I should put this on FB. What do you think?! Maybe pass this on to other people at Holden.
I am attaching photos for you to enjoy and be tempted. xxoo I know that I am tempted!!! If I didn't have a job waiting, I WOULD DO IT!!!
Burnell says he would put in the option of better coffee though, and maybe some snowshoes on the wall. Currently there are shelves with donated cookie jars from all over the town.
Mom

Anybody ready for their own personal culinary adventure?

Cookies - Fancy Chocolate Refrigerator Cookies

There's a taste of cultural history at the start of the Cookies section of the cook book; it is another poem.

A house should have a cookie jar,
For when it's half-past three,
And children hurry home from school
As hungry as can be,
There's nothing quite so splendid
In filling children up,
As spicy, fluffy ginger cakes,
And sweet milk in a cup.

A house should have a mother,
Waiting with a hug,
No matter what a boy brings home,
A puppy or a bug.
For children only loiter
When the bell rings to dismiss
If no one's home to greet them
With a cookie or a kiss!

Boy, if that doesn't just conjure up a picture of June Cleaver, I don't know what would.  I'll pass on a commentary on gender roles and sentimental conceptions of an idealized past.  That goes without saying.  What does need mentioning though is the whole ginger cakes bit.  Bleh.  If you're waiting with ginger cakes for your bug-toting boy, you'll be waiting for a long time.  I can't argue with cookies and kisses, though.

Cakes - Scripture Cake

As with the Breads section, the Cakes section (one of the longest sections of the books.  We're going to be eating a lot of cake over the course of this blog) opens with a little poem:

"With weights and measures just and true,
Oven of even heat
Well-buttered tin and quiet nerve,
Success will be complete."

Weights and measures?  Check.
Oven of even heat?  Check.
Well-buttered tin?  Check.
Quiet nerve?  It depends on what the boys are up to, but we'll check this one off too.
Success?  Erm... I'm not so confident.  We'll see what Amos, Nahum, Jeremiah, and Samuel have to say about it.

Breakfast Cakes - Potato Pancakes

I wasn't intending to make something out of the cook book again until next week, but Sarah suggested that we have sourdough pancakes for dinner.  As I mentioned last time though, Audreytoo is in pretty sorry shape.  She needs some TLC before I try to do anything with her.  We did have a few potatoes in the pantry that needed to be eaten, so potato pancakes were on the docket.

I was going to do Sour Milk Pancakes or Griddle Cake first, but we needed to use up potatoes.

Bread - Whole Wheat Bread

When the boys wake up at 5:40 in the morning, you don't have anywhere you need to be until late morning, and you are almost out of bread, what should you do?  Get dressed, get kid 2 out of the crib, change kid 2's diaper, dress kid 2, inform kid 1 that he should really sleep longer since it is so early, inform kid 1 that his whining won't change your mind, set a timer for kid 1 so he knows when it is ok to come downstairs, heat up leftover coffee from yesterday, forget about coffee while dealing with kid 2's nasty diaper, put kid 2 in his high chair and look at food options that won't be too difficult to clean up off the floor, go upstairs to convince kid 1 that yes he does need to try to rest longer because it'll make the rest of the day better for everybody, attend to kid 2's screeching so mom doesn't wake up (it's her turn to sleep in today), check weather forecast for a possible outing later in the day, remember coffee and heat it up again, stop kid 2 from making a big mess with his sippy cup, drink that first sip of coffee... aaaaaaaaah, sit for a moment, pick up pancake pieces off the floor, gather bread ingredients, attend to kid 1 who is insisting his timer went off when it hasn't yet, get more food for kid 2, have another drink of coffee... aaaaaaah, get kid 2 down from his high chair, get kid 2 down from the coffee table he just climbed, pull out a couple toys kid 2 likes, go upstairs to confirm with kid 1 that he may now come downstairs, turn on Sesame Street, finally start making bread.

It is a wonder that anything gets done in this house.  It is now 8:00, and bread is rising and I am wondering if I'll be able to finish this bread before we need to meet family later this morning.  But I am getting ahead of myself.

Background and Preparation

At the start of the Bread section, the Ladies included the following little poem:

It really is a compliment
To have a guest to tea
Who says, "This is delicious.
I'd like the recipe."

Appetizer - Stuffed Cucumber

Sarah was looking over my shoulder while I was looking over the appetizers sections of the cook book.  She quickly zeroed in on one recipe and requested the following recipe.

She doesn't even like tuna.  Why'd she pick this one?

It seems easy enough, but I was concerned about the mayonnaise.  I have never cared for mayo.  Presumably home made mayonnaise is consumable, but there have been a few encounters with mayonnaise that have left me with my aversion for this condiment.  Firstly, it is kind of slimy.  Now there are plenty of sauces and condiments that are similar in this, but mayo seems particularly slimy.  Secondly, it is often hidden in sandwiches without my permission.  Not cool, sandwich makers.  The third reason I don't care for mayo is a bit more complicated, and it also involves canned tuna.

Once upon a time, I worked in four different Subway shops in three different states.  As a teenager, if you've got experience in one store of a franchise, there's almost no reason why you wouldn't get hired at another store.  That's exactly what I did.  As far as food service goes, it wasn't too bad.  There weren't any fryers, no griddles, nor other things that would require extensive scrubbing of splattered grease.  But there was the tuna salad.  Making the tuna salad required taking handfuls of tuna out of a #10 can (thanks Ladies for that useful tidbit of information), and squeezing out the water over a big colander.  Then you had to open a gallon-sized jar of mayo and squish it all out into a big bowl.  The best way to mix the mayo and the tuna was by hand, so jump right in and start squishing.  It all smelled rather gross, and lifting tuna and mayo coated hands out of the bowl wasn't much better.

Not my image.  http://www.flickr.com/photos/like_the_grand_canyon/2528269003/

Thanks Subway, for making me think tuna salad is far more gross than it has to be.

Preparation

Here's the Story

There are a few quirky things about the Ladies Guild Cook Book (I'll probably just stick to calling it the cook book from here on out) aside from the unusual amount of pimientos, and gelatin.  The first thing that really sticks out is the table of contents.  Unlike most cook books, the contents are listed in alphabetical order.  I suppose that sort of makes sense, but it's not very intuitive.

What was the reasoning behind ordering the sections this way?  I'm not sure.

There is also the section labeled "How to follow the recipes".  You would think that this section would be put before there are any recipes.  But more interestingly, it gives us a glimpse into post war kitchens.  Some of what is listed is pretty good, especially the measurement equivalents.  We've got a cook book stand that has some equivalents listed on it, and I've got a bookmark on my web browser where I can find equivalents as well, so having a good list is pretty handy.  Thumbs up, Ladies.  What I find more interesting though, is the list of can sizes.  I think this is the first reference I've ever seen to can sizes.  Now certainly we must have a larger variety of things in cans today than there was 60 years ago, but to me this shows how important the industrialization of food had become.  I really ought to find some food history to read.  Aside from canned tomatoes, beans, and boxes of broth, I can't think of any cook books that we own that use cans.  I wonder if the canned vegetables of the 1950s were as mushy and over-salted as I remember them being from when I was growing up.  As I work through this cook book though, we will probably have a few more cans than normal in our pantry.

Why is this on page 16?

Another interesting bit here is the list of oven temperatures.  I have no concept of what ovens were like 60 years ago.  Were these heat categories listed on the oven instead of degrees?  Or is this perhaps a throw back to earlier kitchens when they were heated by wood or coal?  I can't imagine skillful cooking on a range/oven like that.  Practice makes perfect, I suppose.  This is going to be a useful thing since there are not a small number of recipes that direct you to use a "moderate" or "hot" oven.

Next, I probably need to establish some kind of methods for this project.  Though I may not stick to this plan perfectly, I'll do my best.

Blog Format and Comments

I am still figuring out this blog platform and some of the functionality.  As I play with different settings, especially with comments (which are totally welcomed, by the way), may change, or move, or disappear, or who knows.  This has to do with Google+ in particular.  Ideally comments made anywhere this is shared will show up on the blog, but where nobody is required to set up a Google+ account.  Maybe it's possible.  Maybe it's not.  Beats me.  So please bare with me as I continue to monkey around with this site.

Welcome to Cook Book Time Machine

About a year ago while visiting my family's cabin, we came across a cook book that looked to be interesting.  It belonged to my mother's aunt (great-aunt?) who lived in Thief River Falls, Minnesota and was published in 1951.  My impression of Thief River Falls is that it is a hockey town out on the prairie without much to do except ummm... play hockey, have a farm, and not freeze to death between October and April.  Having looked through old cook books in the past, I expected to find some pretty atrocious recipes.  I was not disappointed.  The use of gelatin, mayonnaise, and the latest and greatest industrial foods are found throughout the book (Molded Tuna Salad, anyone?).  But at the same time, there are quite a few good looking recipes in there too.  So after mulling it over for a while, I've decided to create a blog where I will work through the cook book and make these dishes for my family.

So, please meet the cook book that belonged to my great (great?) aunt Marlys Carlander.

Is that bit on the top torn off so when the book is brought down to the church basement that it is clear who the book belongs to?

Now in order to do this blog properly, it would probably be a good idea to do some research on the role of churches in small-town America during the middle of the 20th century.  It would also probably be good to research gender roles and expectations.  Additionally, I should do some reading on the development of the industrial food industry after World War Two.  Maybe I'll get around to that.  Suffice it to say that all of these things make an appearance and inform this cook book to one degree or another.  For now, I will likely operate with my caricature knowledge of the time and its influences.