Winnie's Food
Winnifred May Kline's foods reflected a German heritage, and a farm life during the 1930's and 1940's depression era.
What the gardens yielded. A vegetable garden between the front yard and the road produced cabbage, onions, beets, carrots. A kitchen garden behind the house produced leaf lettuce, scallions, tomatoes, cherry tomatoes, yellow tomatoes, dill. Rhubarb and asparagus grew at the lower end of the kitchen garden, next to the chicken house. Pumpkins and potatoes were grown in the fields.
Canning tomatoes, canning cabbage - all of the summer produce had to be peeled, cooked, packed in sterilized jars and canned in sufficient quantity to feed a family of six throughout a full year.
Potatoes were stored in a bin in the cellar. Cooking the evening supper was preceded by going to the cellar with a pan to get the shriveled potatoes, beginning to sprout, bringing them upstairs to the kitchen and peeling them with a paring knife. If your peelings were too thick, she'd say "You'd better marry a rich man". The peels were saved in a bucket, which also received the table scraps, some skim milk and some mash, and was heated on the gas stove in the workroom off the kitchen and across an entryway, called the "outhouse". This was then fed to the hogs when Elgie & Winnie went out to milk cows in the evening.
Orchard and Lane. Beyond the salad garden, chicken coop, and corn crib, was an old orchard with several varieties of apples, and a pear tree. Nearer the house was a yellow plum tree. At the corner of the stone barn foundation grew elderberries. Down the cow lane to the woods were purple plum trees, chokecherries, crab apples and blackberries. At the edge of the woods was a butternut tree and in the woods, hickory nuts. Out the lane by the mailbox there was once a currant bush. Outside the kitchen door was a purple grape arbor, and red grapes grew up a wire fence separating the salad garden from the barn yard. In the middle of the front field, a black cherry tree grew. Maple trees in the woods were tapped for making maple syrup..
Pigs and Chickens. Hogs were butchered and hams & bacon salted and smoked in the smokehouse. A smoked ham always available hanging on a nail, on the wall of the stairway from kitchen to the cellar. At breakfast time, Winnie would slice off enough ham to fry for the meal, to go with eggs or pancakes, or fried potatoes. A ground sausage recipe called Kopffleish was prepared with sage, stewed, baked, canned and stored on the cellar shelves. It too was heated for breakfast, spooned out and spread over pancakes.
The cookstove originally was wood fueled, but by the 1950's was gas fueled. It stood on iron legs, an oven with a warming oven above it, and a range with a shelf above it. On the shelf was kept a jar to hold a fork wrapped with a cloth and tied with string. Melted bacon fat was drained into this jar, and used to grease the griddle, mopped on by the cloth-wrapped fork.
Elgie would catch a chicken, swing it by its feet round and round till dizziness would make it lie still on the tree stump, and he would behead it with a hatchet, releasing it quickly. It would flop about for a minute or two, then he would bring it into the outhouse, where a dousing into a pot of boiling water released the feathers. After plucking the chicken he would hold it by neck and feet directly over the gas flame, to singe off any remaining down. At that point it came into the kitchen and Winnie took over the cleaning. The "innards" were removed. If small egg yolks were in the egg production line, they would be removed and boiled in a pan, for the grandchildren. The gizzard would be opened, the lining and cache of small stones turned out. The heart, liver, and gizzard were saved for giblet gravy. Then the chicken was disjointed and cut into pieces, floured, and fried in shortening.
Milk and Eggs. Six or eight milking cows kept the family in milk, cream, sour cream, and butter. The cows were milked morning and evening, and the milk put through a hand-cranked "separator", that spun the cream to the top and out a spout into jars for refrigerator storage. Then the separator had to be cleaned and scalded.
About once a week Winnie made butter, originally turning a paddle-wheeled churn by hand. Later she had an electric churn. The butter was packed into a rectangular butter form, then pushed out onto a waxed wrapping paper, and refrigerated.
The eggs were gathered daily, and stored in an unheated room. Before "peddling" day, they had to be individually washed with a small rag torn from old sheeting. Saturday, they went to town to deliver eggs, cream and butter to their customers in Emlenton. While there, they went to the bank, and bought flour at the store. The flour sacks were printed with floral patterns, and were used for children's dresses.
Winnie made her own version of cottage cheese, a soft small-curd version which she called smearkase. She pickled beets, and added boiled eggs to the red pickling juices, to make red pickled eggs.
Bread. Once a week Winnie made two loaves of bread and sometimes some dinner rolls. After cooling, these were stored in a tin breadbox in the pantry. The only "snack food" grandchildren had available was jelly bread. Homemade bread, homemade butter, and homemade rhubarb apricot jam.
Dandelion. As soon as the grass was up, and before it was mowed the first time, she would take a knife and a pan out to the yard and pick all the dandelion, including the tender buds. Any that had flowered were discarded; these older plants would have a bitter taste.. She might harvest a gallon or so of greens, then bring them to the kitchen, cut of the muddy stems, and wash them. They were then wilted and creamed in a bacon/ham dish to be served with boiled potatoes at the noontime meal (called dinner).
The Recipe. Fry 4 slices bacon (for grease) & 2 slices ham (for brownness). Allow the bacon to get crisp, and the skillet to get brown. Add enough flour to absorb the grease, and allow the flour to brown. Add enough water to make a very thick gravy paste. Add 1/2 pint of sour cream, about 1/2C. vinegar (to taste), and thin as needed with some water. Pour this sauce over about 6C. cleaned dandelion greens; mix to coat & wilt the greens. Crumble the bacon, if used, into the cream sauce. Do not allow the greens to cook over heat, as they will toughen. First place a serving of boiled potatoes on your plate, and mash down with a fork. Spoon the creamed dandelions over the potatoes. Serve the ham on the side. (This recipe is from her daughter, Ella May Beals Wilson).
In 2007, Winnie, my grandmother, has been dead for 40 years. Their food was what they knew, and what they could afford. Today, we wouldn't view their diet as healthy. Grandma was always overweight, and died of diabetes. On the other hand, Grandpa was always thin and healthy, and lived to be 92. I eat the dandelion dish only once a year, indulging in the richness of dairy and bacon fat and memory. When I was very young, I thought rhubarb & asparagus grew only at her house. Now I know better. It was the salty smoky ham, the kopfleish on pancakes, the butter bread with rhubarb jelly, the red eggs, the "picnics" of fresh off the vine yellow tomatoes and boiled yolks-only eggs eaten while sitting in the garden row, and the dandelion greens that were unique to her particular place and moment in time. E. W. Williams
