It's Fun to Cook, Circa 1959

 A couple years ago I posted a picture of me at a 4-H summer cooking class my neighbor held.  This was our Favorite Foods project guide, produced by the University of Wisconsin Extension Service in Madison.  I don't know what happened to my old copy.  I probably left it with my mother who probably eventually got sick of the food stained yellow booklet and threw it away.  But it's summer, and I got to remembering those cooking classes with my friends, and longed to find a copy.  I scored this one from an online auction site, and then the woman who was the Home Economics agent in Walworth County sent me a photocopy of hers, and so now I have two.

It's ironic that I was so nostalgic for this little booklet, since for the past twenty years or so I have turned over the kitchen to my husband.  He likes preparing food, hunting for recipes, and even shopping, all of which I find to be tremendous drains on time I would rather spend other ways.  I do like to bake occasionally, always have liked baking.  But in summer I get the evil eye from him when I fire up the oven and heat up the house, and neither one of us needs bakery laying around the house.

Still, reading over the booklet, I have the urge to make one of the recipes a week, including the cheese casserole recipe that our 4-H leader despised and skipped over every year. 

An anonymous reader of this blog asked for the muffin recipe, and now I have it.  The recipe looks quite plain, but I bet the muffins are good right out of the oven with a little jam. I remember having an awful time learning to mix them just enough, not too much.  My first ones were dense, heavy, and full of the dreaded tunnels. Eventually I learned to use a lighter touch.

Yummy Muffins

2 cups sifted flour
3 teaspoons baking powder
1/4 cup sugar
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 egg, beaten
1 cup milk
1/4 cup soft or melted fat

1.  Heat the oven.  Set the control for 400 degrees F.
2.  Grease muffin cups using a piece of waxed paper
3.  Sift together the measured flour, baking powder, sugar and salt in a large bowl.  Make a well in the center.

4.  In a small mixing bowl beat the egg until it's foamy.  Add the milk and melted fat.
5.  Add the milk mixture all at once to the dry ingredients.
6.  Stir until the dry ingredients are moist but the mixture is still slightly lumpy.  It takes about 17 to 25 strokes.  Over-mixing will cause tunnels in the muffins and they will be heavy and tough.
7.  Fill the greased muffin cups 1/2 to 2/3 full.
8.  Put in preheated oven. Bake 15-20 minutes.

Variation: You may vary the muffins by adding one of these:
1. 1/2 cup chopped nuts
2.  3/4 cup fresh blueberries
3.  1/2 cup chopped cranberries
4.  3/4 cup cut-up dates

Good muffins are:

Light for their size
Golden brown
Slightly rounded on top - without knobs or peaks
Even in texture - without tunnels running from the botton crust to the top
Pleasing in flavor

Dear Photograph

Our summer heatwave has come and gone, leaving us all a little limp and the grass brown and crunchy under foot.  Yesterday I got a call from a retired teacher friend who runs a construction business, saying he and the crew would be over to work on our deck.  This photo is is me holding a picture I took in 1991 when the crew added the deck to the back of our house.

Now twenty-one years have passed, and the guys are back out there working, except that our friend Jim, shown here minus his shirt, as passed away.  Gone for several years from a heart attack.  We needed them back because they originally built the deck around the silver maple tree, and even though we all thought they left a big enough hole to allow the tree to live and grow, over time its trunk filled the space and its roots began to heave up the deck boards.  So yesterday the crew removed the circular seat built around the trunk, and are rebuilding the section damaged over time by the aging tree.   I can hear them planning, sawing and running the power screwdrivers as I type, and imagine them as I remember them when they first planned our shady summer retreat.

It's funny how nostalgic I feel having them back, and I can imagine Jim, perhaps just stepped away for a minute.  Time passes, things and people age and change, and for me photos make that gradual change more tangible.

Which brings me to a website I discovered recently that gave me the idea to take the picture of a picture.  It's called Dear Photograph, and it is a brainchild of a young man who had the idea to take pictures of the past in the present, then write about the changes that have taken place over time. He started a blog and invited other people to do the same thing, with touching results. It's worth a look.

Dear Photograph,


A house becomes a home when you live in it for years, and when you change it to make it your own. We bought this house on a shady street in an old neighborhood in 1990, and loved the place's nooks and corners, its cove ceilings and wood trim.  We didn't love he back yard so much, especially since we like eating outside in nice weather.  So in 1991 we invited Russ and his crew to build us a deck.  We couldn't stand the idea of cutting down the maple that shaded the back porch, so we had them build the deck around the tree.  Jim designed a wooden seat encircling the trunk, and a railing to keep us from falling off the edge. Two decades have passed, and the tree has gotten wider, too broad for its space, so it's time for a little updating and maintenance.  We all are a little older (and maybe wider too), but we're all still hanging in there, and hoping for many more summers.

Smokin'!

It's really really hot this week in southern Wisconsin.  Today it hit 100 degrees in Janesville, and it was not dry heat.  There's a burning ban in effect in most of the state, and lots of Independence Day fireworks displays have been delayed or canceled.  Not here though - I guess shooting pyrotechnics out over the Rock River is safe enough.

I'm not sure if the ban extends to outdoor grilling; I don't think folks would stand for that.  The heat got me thinking about this 1956 snapshot of Grandpa Tess, dressed up in his Fathers Day apron and cap, cooking burgers on a very low-tech grill. Genius at Work is what the get-up says.  I remember that they set up picnic tables in the garage, and we all settled in for burgers, chips, potato salad, and Cokes.

In the background our old green car is there, heating up in the sun. Nobody had air conditioning, and cars certainly did not have any way to cool down except by rolling down all the windows - by hand.  It made for some steamy vacations.

Immigrant Picnic
By Gregory Djanikian

It's the Fourth of July, the flags
are painting the town,
the plastic forks and knives
are laid out like a parade.

And I'm grilling, I've got my apron,
I've got potato salad, macaroni, relish,
I've got a hat shaped  
like the state of Pennsylvania.

I ask my father what's his pleasure
and he says, "Hot dog, medium rare,"
and then, "Hamburger, sure,  
what's the big difference,"  
as if he's really asking.

I put on hamburgers and hot dogs,  
slice up the sour pickles and Bermudas,
uncap the condiments. The paper napkins  
are fluttering away like lost messages.

"You're running around," my mother says,  
"like a chicken with its head loose."

"Ma," I say, "you mean cut off,
loose and cut off   being as far apart  
as, say, son and daughter."

She gives me a quizzical look as though  
I've been caught in some impropriety.
"I love you and your sister just the same," she says,
"Sure," my grandmother pipes in,
"you're both our children, so why worry?"

That's not the point I begin telling them,
and I'm comparing words to fish now,  
like the ones in the sea at Port Said,  
or like birds among the date palms by the Nile,
unrepentantly elusive, wild.  

"Sonia," my father says to my mother,
"what the hell is he talking about?"
"He's on a ball," my mother says.
                                                     
"That's roll!" I say, throwing up my hands,
"as in hot dog, hamburger, dinner roll...."

"And what about roll out the barrels?" my mother asks,
and my father claps his hands, "Why sure," he says,
"let's have some fun," and launches  
into a polka, twirling my mother  
around and around like the happiest top,  

and my uncle is shaking his head, saying
"You could grow nuts listening to us,"  

and I'm thinking of pistachios in the Sinai
burgeoning without end,  
pecans in the South, the jumbled
flavor of them suddenly in my mouth,
wordless, confusing,
crowding out everything else.