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Slice of Life March Challenge. No. 22.

Things Mother Used To Make

I enjoy reading the recipes and helps in this book, published in 1913. I must confess that I read cookbooks for pleasure, much like some people read poetry.

The measurements terms are very interesting: teaspoonful, cupful, a lump, a pinch, and a dessertspoonful. Then there’s “butter the size of an egg” and “butter the size of a walnut” and “butter the size of a marble.” Isn’t it interesting that the butter shapes are rounded?

One recipe calls for “old yeast.” I not sure about that one. The only “old yeast” I know about is yeast that is too old to use.

There’s crust coffee that has no coffee in it.

I’m sure the brown bread was made with whole grains and molasses, and those ingredients probably contribute to the flavor of crust coffee.

And there’s coffee jelly, made from leftover breakfast coffee.

But page 27 was missing in the old book. So I searched and found a page on a blog with interesting information and a recipe for coffee jelly. Also, here’s a recipe that uses coffee jelly to make a frappuccino. I think I will try this in the near future.

Updated on  Wednesday morning. I found a copy of the recipe on page 27. Here it is —

Have you ever heard of Pork Apple Pie? The recipe calls for “12 pieces of fat salt pork, size of a pea” to be sprinkled with cinnamon and sugar on top of apples. The apple pie recipe I use calls for small pieces of butter in the same way.

Talking about pies, when I was visiting  my son in Ecuador earlier this month, he bought purified lard so we could bake some pies. At home, I use butter for my crust, but their butter was a bit different than ours. So he’d picked up some lard. Well, the pie crust was wonderful; good lard does make the best crust — the flaky kind of pie crust my grandmother made. In addition, we had a good laugh over the brand name of the lard — “Three Little Pigs.” Well, since it is in Spanish, it is really “Los 3 Chanchitos.”


We are making a lemon chess pie, using
Los 3 Chanchitos for our crust.

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You may be interested in reading other posts this old book has inspired.

 



Thank you, Two Writing Teachers, for hosting
2017 Slice of Life Story Challenge