Family recipe Monday: boarding house specials

Women's History Month challenge for March 16 — If you could have lunch with any female family member (living or dead) or any famous female who would it be and why? Where would you go? What would you eat?
March 19 — Have you discovered a surprising fact about one of your female ancestors? What was it and how did you learn it? How did you feel when you found out?
March 20 — Is there a female ancestor who is your brick wall? Why? List possible sources for finding more information.
March 21 — Describe a tender moment one of your female ancestors shared with you or another family member.
(I'll get to March 17 and 18 later. These all fit together nicely.)

Victory Cemetery, Altus, Oklahoma

We're obviously, er, a bit behind on the Women's History Month Challenge and Family Recipe Monday posts, this being March 21, but this gives me a chance to catch up a bit. It's been an intense couple of weeks, both at work and on the international scene, and sometimes the gears don't shift into writing mode easily at the end of the day. Not when they've been in git-er-done and set-your-phaser-to-stun modes all day.

But spring is here. That does not necessarily mean that the blizzards are over and gone up here, but it does mean that the sun is moving back up the sky. On Friday, we leave for the annual Craniac trip to Nebraska. Much MUCH needed, I can assure you. Keep watching this space--or the skies, if you are lucky enought to live along the sandhill crane flyways.

In the meantime, howzabout that lunch with one of the older girls? That's easy. I'd like to go to my great-grandmother Mossie's boarding house in Altus, Oklahoma, and help her cook and serve, then do the clean-up for her while she told me what her recipes were and whence she got them. I don't have that information, since she wrote very little down, and I'd like to know what went into her decision to move back to Oklahoma after her husband's death and open this enterprise. I've hit that brick wall on the details. I want to know the whole story now, and we just don't have that.

Mossie's surprising story is that she homesteaded on her own in Oklahoma as a young single woman, giving up her claim only to marry the cute homesteader next door, Newt Brooks. She could do everything a man could do during the day, from building houses to raising crops, and after hours could do everything a woman was expected to do on top of that. She was a gifted seamstress, needleworker and cook, all with no electricity. I am awed and wonder just what it is I do during the day in comparison to her work day.

So no restaurant for us, thanks. We'll eat in at Widow Brooks's boarding house. I think I'll probably ask for chicken and dumplings, and watch exactly how she makes it. If Mossie was anything like her daughter Vada, she will most likely have a spectacular dessert hidden and ready to serve (but only after saying that she didn't have much in the house, but that we were welcome to share in what little there was. Yeah, right. That boarding house table would have been groaning under the weight of all that "little" food.).

If I could request dessert, I'd want to try her Gold Cake to see how that was made. Here is all that is written down about it. I think I can figure it out, but I'd like to know how she made it.

Gran Brooks’s gold cake

1 ½ cups sugar
1 ½ cups butter
1 cup sweet milk
1 tsp cream of tartar
1 cup jam (any kind)
½ tsp baking soda
½ tsp nutmeg
3 cups flour
6 egg yolks
--Mary Marcella Walker Brooks

We might not get a choice, you understand. We might have to settle for the peach cobbler she had made. I think I could manage that.

Then, for the clean-up, I'd be able to see what her homemade soap was like. This is one of the few things that she did write down. The writing is too faint to scan well.

Soap

Cold soap: 1 can of lye, ½ gallon clear grease, ½ gallon water. Put lye and water into vessel and let cool. (The lye makes it hot) and dissolve. Then add the melted grease just barely warm and stir until thick.

Cooked soap: 1 gallon water, 1 can lye, 5 lb. grease cracklins (an 8 lb. lard bucket is about 5 lb.). Put ½ gallon water and cracklins and lye in pot and cook until cracklins are eaten up then remove from fire and add the other half gal. of water and stir until thick.
--Mary Marcella Walker Brooks

The girls on that side of the family all tend to be strong (that's the diplomatic word), but Mossie's granddaughter Shirley will always be my rock. And they all show tenderness through feeding people. Except for Shirley, who's sweetness itself, they may have been a bit gruff or snappish at times, but the Johnson-Brooks-Walker-Honnoll women never let anyone go hungry. Ever. That's where the tenderness shows.

It's not food. It's edible love. Go have some, and happy Monday.

Family recipe Monday: cakes and angels

Women's History Month challenge for March 7 — Share a favorite recipe from your mother or grandmother’s kitchen. Why is this dish your favorite? If you don’t have one that’s been passed down, describe a favorite holiday or other meal you shared with your family.

Perfectly timed to coincide with the regular Family Recipe Monday here, isn't it?


I have been working on a lot on family genealogy lately (bad cold + great cold meds = phenomenal ability to focus on hundreds of fine-print census records). What is most apparent from the rowdy family history is that Southern cooking may actually be encoded in our genes. Both sides moved south and west as fast as they could, it seems, but not north and not back east. They liked Tennessee, Georgia, Mississippi, and Arkansas a lot, then started taking over Oklahoma and Texas. In the Depression, they headed out for California in large numbers. Some of them stopped for a bit in New Mexico. But few of them ventured north of Oklahoma, and none ever seemed to wander back North. (Being contrary, I did, but then I retraced the wagon routes back west to the Dakotas.)

The older girls in our line were great cooks, but not great believers in writing down things they knew how to do in their sleep. I'm running the Yellow Angel Food Cake recipe first in honor of Gran Brooks (Mary Marcella Walker, for those of you keeping up with this month's saga), who was a phenomenal cook. She moved back to Oklahoma and ran a boarding house when she was widowed. Her claim to fame as a young cook was being able to make a perfect angel food cake on  a wood-fired stove. I heard that when I was little, but it did not register until I was grown, and now I'm just stunned.

Yellow angel food cake

5 eggs
½ cup cold water
1 ½ cups flour
½ tsp baking powder
1 ½ cups sugar, sifted 4 times
¼ tsp salt
1 tsp orange extract
¾ tsp cream of tartar

Separate eggs, beat yolks until foamy, add water and beat until lemon colored. Sift flour to which baking powder has been added. Sift sugar 4 times and add to egg yolks, beating vigorously. Add flour a little at a time, beating well. Flavor, beat egg whites until foamy. Add cream of tartar and beat until stiff. Fold carefully into yellow mixture. Pour into ungreased pan. Bake one hour, increasing heat after the first 15 minutes.

Don't skimp on the sifting, and be sure to use the right pan. If you have and strawberries left over from the next recipe, they'd be good served with the angel food cake.

The next recipe was a very popular one for family birthday cakes. It's definitely a time-saver from the 1950s, with the boxed mix in use. It was still wonderful. The older girls would have been appalled at the idea of buying a birthday cake (or any baked goods). Looking back on it, I think that they were right.

Strawberry cake

1 pkg. white cake mix
1 box strawberry Jell-O
1 cup Wesson oil
½ cup water
3 T flour
4 eggs
½ box frozen strawberries

Dump everything except berries into bowl and mix. Fold in strawberries last. Bake 25 to 30 minutes at 350* F. Makes 3 layers.

Icing

1 box powdered sugar
1 stick margarine
Remaining strawberries

--Lois Holmes, Vada Brooks Johnson


Happy Monday. Indulge a bit.

Family recipe Monday: citrus delights

It's been a long, exhausting week of moving large heavy things in boxes, or on pallets, or by the truckload. The new building is filling up quickly. You'd think that we could plan better so that we are not moving large heavy things in the heat of July, but you'd think wrong, because here we are. Next time around, say, in another lifetime, I am going to focus on tiny fossil pollen grains rather than large fossil bones. I'm not giving up the book collecting, however. Some things are worth their weight in, well, weight.

Field season has started and people are coming into the Badlands and Black Hills from all corners--friends from Texas, Pennsylvania, Illinois and Colorado have come through in the last week alone--surveying, working in caves, and collecting yet more large heavy things for the new building. All too soon, it will be time for the 70th Harley-Davidson rally in Sturgis. Hundreds of thousands of bikers--literally--will be roaring through the area for a couple of weeks. The tourists are driving through in high numbers; a large number of them are heading toward Mt. Rushmore and environs. Mt. Rushmore, or MORU in govspeak, is one of the most frequently visited units in the National Park Service. Summer is frenetically busy like this up here every year.

Add to that a stray kitten who is showing no signs of leaving our deck...note to self: schedule that brisk talk with St. Francis soon. We need a kitten like we need a Harley, which is to say not.at.all. She purrs loudly enough to have her own slot in the rally, that's for sure. Stray animals find us at the oddest and most inconvenient times. We still have not found a home for the last kitten we took in temporarily....nine years ago. (Okay, so we never even tried...)

Our last stray: Mel Blanc in Delaware, age six months. Check those feet. He is twice this size now in all dimensions.

But the farmers' market is booming and the produce is wonderful. Last night was a locavores' feast: roast Hutterite chicken, roasted new potatoes with rosemary, and the first young corn of the season, followed by a raspberry cobbler, all locally grown or raised, nothing except the chicken ever refrigerated. The cats are apparently Hutterites themselves, because they thoroughly approved of the chicken. So did the kitten. Maybe I'm using the wrong methods to get her to leave? ...naaahhh...

Summer baking tends to focus on light dishes, desserts that can be served cool, and lots of fruit. Citrus-based treats are particularly appealing right now. Here are a few citrus-based desserts from the Simple Gifts files.The first two are variations on the same theme: orange cake with dried fruit (dates or raisins) included. The first is a sheet cake, the second a tube-pan cake. Notice that both use either juice or peel from citrus fruit, not extract-based flavorings. It's summer. Use the real thing.

Coy’s orange cake

Cream 1/3 cup butter, 1 cup sugar, 1 egg. Add 2 cups flour, 1 tsp baking soda, 1 cup raisins, ½ grated lemon rind, 1 grated orange rind, 1 cup buttermilk. Add 1 tsp cinnamon and nuts as desired. Pour into 9”x13” cake pan. Bake in moderate oven until done. For topping, pour ¼ cup lemon juice and 1/2 cup orange juice over 1 cup sugar. Let stand while cake is baking. Blend and pour over cake as soon as removed from oven. Let stand several hours or overnight. Serve with whipped cream.
—Coy McLean Brooks

Orange cake

Cream together 2 cups sugar and 1 cup shortening. Then add 4 eggs, one at a time. Then add 3 T grated orange peel and 1 tsp grated lemon peel. Sift together 4 cups flour, and 1 tsp baking soda. Add this to the mix alternately with 1 ½ cups buttermilk. Then add 1 cup dates, 1 cup nuts (chopped) and 1 cup coconut (a heaping T of flour sprinkled on these will keep them from settling). Bake in tube pan for about 1 hour at 325* to 375* F. Cake should be well browned.

For a change of pace, try these light cookies, which will keep for a week or two. These make thin, crisp cookies (as the name suggests). If you are not a margarine fan, you can experiment with butter to get the texture right. Remember that this recipe was being typed up by my mother in the 1940s, from older recipes, and rationing was on. Margarine was the main option then.

Orange crispies

1 cup margarine
2/3 cup sugar
1 egg
3 to 4 tsp. orange rind
2 ½ cups flour
Pinch salt
½ tsp. baking powder

Grease pan for first cooking. Pinch off tiny bits and mash with fork crosswise. Bake in slow to moderate oven.
--Vada Brooks Johnson

Happy Monday. Need a kitten?

Family recipe Monday: more classic cakes

The oatmeal cake recipe

Yes, it is written on the back of a blank check, just as you suspected.

We are still adding to the Simple Gifts files of recipes and stories from the extended families in all directions. That would be a lot of directions, as we now have to factor in the stories from Minnesota, Pennsylvania, Delaware, and New Mexico, in addition to the Texas, Arkansas and Oklahoma files. Many of the best ones were never written down, as previously noted. We're finding that to be a truism on many of the fronts.

Cakes always seem to take up a disproportionate amount of space in the written files, though. They seem to have been viewed as the true tests of baking skill. Here are three arranged in order, from simplest to fanciest.

Oatmeal cake

Pour 1 ½ cups boiling water over 1 cup oatmeal and I stick butter or margarine. Do not stir. Let stand covered for 20 minutes. Mix

1 cup white sugar
1 cup brown sugar
2 eggs
1 tsp nutmeg
1 ½ cups flour
1 tsp baking soda
½ tsp salt
1 tsp cinnamon

Mix oatmeal and above. Mix together and bake in greased biscuit pan for 30 minutes at 350* F.

Top with mixture of
¾ stick butter or margarine
¼ cup Pet (evaporated) milk
½ cup sugar
1 cup chopped pecans
1 cup coconut
1 tsp vanilla

Spread on cake while hot and brown under broiler.
--Lela Lawson, Vada Brooks Johnson

Note: The biscuit pan referred to above is not a pan with individual biscuit/muffin cups; it is simply a 9" diameter round metal pan, like a cake layer pan but a bit shallower. You can use a pie pan or plate to get the same results. That broiler time should be extremely short, maybe a minute.

I don't remember when carrot cakes started popping up in the family cooking options, but here is a bit of history from Candis Reade: "Carrot cake is a confectionery conundrum: it seems you either love it, or you hate it. But either way, theres no denying the appeal of this rich dessert throughout history. Food historians tell us that the origins of carrot cake were likely a type of carrot pudding enjoyed during medieval times. Later, during the Middle Ages, sweetening agents were hard to come by in Britain and quite expensive, so as a result, carrots were often used in place of sweeteners. Interestingly, despite being such a longstanding mainstay in Europe, American cookbooks didnt start listing carrot cake recipes until the early 1900s. And, it was actually in the 1960s before carrot cake began becoming a more common cake in the United States, soon becoming the dessert of choice at summer family reunions picnics and Mothers Day celebrations." Add a few commas and apostrophes there, and you're all set.

This is Carol's Carrot Cake. I am not sure who Carol is (I assume that she is the "she" referred to), but apparently someone in our line disagreed with her on the amount of cream cheese in the frosting, enough to mention it twice. Note on the other side of the recipe: “The original cook used only a 3-oz. package of cream cheese, but we prefer more cheese.” Sorry, Carol. We're nothing if not self-indulgent. So there.

Carol's carrot cake

2 cups flour
2 cups sugar
2 tsp cinnamon
½ tsp salt
2 tsp soda
1 tsp baking powder
3 cups grated carrot
1 ½ cups corn oil
4 eggs
1 tsp vanilla

Mix all dry ingredients together. Add oil, eggs and vanilla and blend well. Bake in three 9” pans at 350* F for 30 minutes or until done.

Frosting
1 8-oz. package cream cheese
1 stick butter or margarine
1 box powdered sugar
1 tsp vanilla
1 cup chopped pecans

Cream the cheese and butter. Add sugar, vanilla and pecans. Blend well. Add milk if necessary and spread.

P. S. Grate carrots real fine and pack in cup--usually takes a whole bunch. Also she uses 3 oz. cream cheese instead of the 8 oz.
--via Shirley Johnson Shelton

Finally, here is one of the recipes that won a blue ribbon for my grandmother at the South Plains Fair. This one is a real test of skill. Warning: Any recipe with parts listed in Roman numerals is going to take up most of your baking day. I don't know what the name of it was before the Fair, but it was never going to have any other name afterward.

Prize chocolate cake

Part I
¾ cup sugar
1 ½ cups sweet milk
¾ cup cocoa
Cook these ingredients to a medium thick syrup and allow to cool. Add 1 tsp vanilla.

Part II
¾ cup butter
3 eggs
1 ½ cups sugar
1 ½ tsp baking soda
4 T cold water
¾ cup sour milk
3 cups flour

Cream butter and sugar until light and puffy, and add eggs not separated. Next the water with soda dissolved in it. Mix well. Add flour and milk alternately and beat well. Now add part I and beat again. Pour into lined cake pan and bake at 350* F 40 minutes.

Filling
2 cups brown sugar
½ cup rich milk
2 T butter

Cook to soft ball in cold water. Beat until creamy.
--Vada Brooks Johnson

Caveat I: If you're not familiar with the art of cooking sugar and candy, don't start this recipe just yet. Of all places, the Exploratorium in San Francisco has the best instructions on the science of candy here. This entire Science of Cooking section is terrific.

Caveat II: Sour milk is not the same as buttermilk. It was originally literally milk that had started to turn. You don't have to wait for milk to go bad, though. Add a bit of lemon juice or vinegar to fresh milk instead, as detailed here.

The note "add eggs not separated" is an interesting turn of phrase. I notice that this is the second recipe posted here with instructions for making "filling" rather than "frosting" or "icing." Wonder if this was an Oklahoma colloquialism that we've lost the use of today?

Happy Memorial Day, all.