ashmanra

My grandmother did EVERYTHING and I didn’t even know how to do the simple things when I went on my own. I even remember being terrified of the washing machine! Poor David did the laundry for the first 6 months or so before I was ready to learn. David did most of the cooking too – I literally didn’t know how to boil an egg. Seems like a million years ago! I think my grandmother thought she was doing things for me to save me the trouble since I was an earnest student and was always doing homework, but she really did me a disservice because it was twice as hard to learn everything all at one time when I started my own home!

This book would have come in handy! Mrs. Dunwoody is a fictional Southern Belle who put these hints together in 1866 in her old age for posterity. It has everything from recipes for housecleaning solutions to etiquette to organization. It is certainly very old-fashioned, but there is a wealth of great advice in it!

To this day, every time I gingerly attempt to deconstruct a cooked whole chicken, I can just see both grandmothers looking down and laughing hysterically at me.

“Cut AGAINST the grain, dear!” I can hear my mom when I carve a bird! And “You’re throwing that away? There is still a lot of meat left on that carcass. Here, let me….” or how about “Be careful not to overbeat that pound cake!” But I must say that by the time I was housekeeping on my own, my mom ended up liking my cooking better than her own!

:) …and then there’s my feeble attempts to bake homemade bread…but let’s not go there…

Now that is one area where I succeeded! My mother used to say, and I quote, “I’m scared of yeast!” She wouldn’t bake with it because she would put a lot of work into something and then it would fall.

I think the yeast is much more dependable these days – I remember even in the 90s going to the supermarket and buying yeast. THere was always a huge possibility it was “dead” from improper storage and sitting on the shelf forever. Now I use instant yeast – I get the big bag from King Arthur and keep it in the freezer in a special container. Lasts so long and you know King Arthur treats their yeast beasts right!

Yeast beasts—-I like that. (I’m collecting tongue twisters for a kids’ writing assignment.)

We bake so much, especially home made bread, that I buy the Sam’s Club double pack – two pounds! I keep the open one in the refrigerator and the other in the pantry since it is vacuum sealed. I used to use Perfect Rise but the only local source is pretty expensive for the amount we use, and the one at Sam’s has worked well for us. Perhaps it is more stable now – plus my mom was raised in an orphanage and didn’t have anyone to teach her to cook! And down here in the country, especially back then, they made cornbread and bsicuits that didn’t require yeast, so probably even her older relatives barely used it.