Grandma Cookies

Laura Ingalls Wilder writes of Christmas in one of her book.  I recall that one of the previous gifts was an orange.  How different Christmas gifts are now when many children receive Wiis and iPods.  Yet parts are the same even in the differences.

The making of Grandma cookies is reserved for Christmas time.  They earned their name because only Dad's mother, my grandmother, ever made them.  In my small world.

So in a effort to continue the tradition of Pfeffer Nuss (pepper nuts) I create a couple batches before Christmas.  On the wall hangs a large wooden bowl in which grandma probably mixed the ingredients with a wooden spoon like the one in the crock by the stove.  I, however, use a KitchenAid mixer.  I don't remember seeing her drop the thick cookie batter onto the cookie sheets but whereas I drop the batter from a spoon she might have rolled the batter into smooth balls.  Her cookies were smoother.

After the baking and cooling process, it's time for the chocolate frosting.  The difference here is that she dropped the cookies into the bowl of chocolate and coated all surfaces including her hands.  I dip the top of the cookie into the chocolate and knock off the excess with a spoon.  While licking the chocolate from my fingers is a great joy, I don't find the same joy in emerging my hands completely in the chocolate.

Baking is both a joy of the moment and a connection to the past, but eating them is not recommended for a slender waistline and so the variety we enjoyed as children are not on today's agenda.  Sugar cookies with colored powdered sugar frosting and sparkling candies continue to grace the kitchen around Christmas as well as a batch of gingerbreads.  Others come rarely and exist mostly in memories.

Each Christmas will start a new tradition which will last far into the future.  One we offer is a braided bread with strands of three types of bread, white, whole wheat and rye.  Looking back fifty years from now our descendants will talk about grandma's braided breads.  As well as grandpa's grandma cookies.

Bread for Thanksgiving Day

It's hard to imagine how Thanksgiving Day was celebrated in 1621, the traditional first Thanksgiving, or 150 years ago when President Lincoln declared a national day of Thanksgiving and Praise.  Today, the day before Thanksgiving Day, thoughts of past Thanksgivings come to mind.  In particular, the thoughts come as I pull down the big wooden butter or bread bowl of my grandparents and maybe their grandparents to make bread.  Certainly this was one task common to many years back.

The recipe would be similar to that of our ancestors a century ago; yeast, water, flour, oil, a sweetener and a bit of salt, maybe some special flavorings.  The yeast, probably Fleischmann's, a newly formed New York company trying to create a dependable yeast, would be similar to the yeast by the same name that we use today. Today's flour is probably more refined than that of a century ago although at times we grind our own flour which is no more refined than any time in the past.  Bee's honey and milk from the cow would be similar now and then.  Oil may have been lard rendered from the fat of a pig in the past.

The process is different although both doughs ended up in the same wooden bowl to rest and rise.  The bowl is stained and scratched after decades of use; the edges soft and pitted with age. The larger and perhaps older sister bowl still hanging on the wall has a metal strap holding a crack from splitting further.

The next stage of the bread making is as old and universal as time and space itself, kneading on a board with our bare hands, folding and pushing down, and folding and pushing again and again.  Finally the shaping, placing in pans and baking.  Fortunately for us today's oven is regulated by a thermostat and starts by merely turning a knob or pushing a button, which allows the baker to move to another task instead of stoking the fire with coal or wood and trying to maintain a uniform heat.

I would have loved to share the next moment with our ancestors as they cut a slice of fresh bread or tear off a piece, placing it in their mouths and savoring the taste.  Perhaps they too reflected on their ancestors of a century earlier.  For now the bowl is back on the top pantry shelf and the bread is ready for the celebration of thanks tomorrow.

Fall Canning

Tucked in a far corner of the basement is a little room lined on opposite sides with shelves reaching to the ceiling.  On the shelves sat rows of jars, some full, some empty, some quarts and pints, some smaller with jellies and jams, some larger with pickles.  In our farmhouse there was an additional root cellar dug  out beyond the regular basement which was cool, dark and had a dirt floor.  Against one wall a crib held the potatoes for the year.  In another corner was a box of carrots covered with straw.

Root cellars were standard equipment in early North Dakota homes, and fall was the season for canning.  Actually everything revolved around winter; spring, summer and fall were for planting, growing, gathering and preserving food for the winter.  Most of the food was grown in family gardens but some foods that didn't grow locally were ordered and purchased in large boxes from the local grocer.  Fruits like peaches, pears and plums were examples.

Now we are 1500 miles from North Dakota and a half century later but still canning food for the winter.  We picked the peaches from a local farm; the pears and apples from our trees; beans from the local fruit stand and tomatoes from the garden.  Most garden products typically are blanched and frozen these days and spices and herbs are dried for storage.

Water boils on the stove.  Peaches or tomatoes are heated so that they peel easily and then sliced into wedges.  The jars are washed in hot soapy water, rinsed and filled with the wedges which were waiting in a bath of cool water.  Rims are wiped clean for a good seal, boiling water, maybe with a little bit of sugar is poured to fill the jar.  A new cover is dipped in boiling water and secured on the jars with bands.  These then bathe in boiling water for 15 minutes after which they rest and cool down before they are labeled and join the rows of jars in the root cellar.

This may be a far cry from what happens in most contemporary homes and a poor facsimile of what happened more than a half century ago, but it is here.  It's a connection to the past, a family event and way of securing good food with no preservatives.  It's part of who we are and what we consider valuable.  Good eating.

Did I mention the sightings of mice and the evidence that mice were in the root cellar tucked away in the corner?

Threshing Day

Typically the day had the potential of being a hot one, in the nineties or possibly the hundreds.  Even during the morning chores there was a sense of excitement looking to the south and watching between tasks.  It was thrashing day and Uncle Karl, actually Dad's uncle, was going to come from his place a mile south of our farm through the pastures with his low-slung metal codded tires Minneapolis Moline and this thrashing machine.

Once he was in the yard he would walk around the thrasher, checking each gear and chain making certain that everything was probably greased and oiled.  The slow running exposed chain spit the oil that came from the long-nosed oilcan as they quickly turned over the gears.  Each bearing in which the staffs turned was lubricated with grease forced down a small pipe by the tightening of a grease-cap.  After the cap hit it limit, the cap was removed, refilled and replaced on its home ready to force more grease into the bearings.

I was quite young and there was no task for me other than to bring water and sandwiches to the workers so I wasn't on site to be fully involved.  Dad scooped up the bundles of oats, typically, and dumped them into the wagon from which someone pitch-forked them into the throat of the thrasher.  Uncle Karl's tractor sat in front of the thrasher with a very long belt to run the thrasher.  The straw blew out the back through a large pipe which could be manually adjusted to carefully create a stack of straw. The grain itself came out another pipe on the side of the thrasher into awaiting pickups.  Oats was not fun to stand in so I seldom would climb into the pickup to play in the grain.

Besides the work of thrashing, many stories are told about the meals that the farmer wives put together for the thrashing crews.  I can't say that I remember any significant events surrounding those meals which in our case only included Karl, Dad, grandpa and my uncle Heinie.  While the same crew worked all three farms I was allowed only to visit the fields when they thrashed on our farm.

Games

"Rich man, poor man, beggar man, thief,"

Is this even politically correct now?

"Doctor, lawyer, merchant, chief."

As a child I never wanted to be a chief; I wasn't even an Indian much less a chief.

We would recite this lines when we got dressed and counted the buttons on our clothes: button one, rich man; button two, poor man; and so on. Or if noticed that someone had lots of buttons, we would go through the same verse.

If you had more than eight buttons, you'd start over again, but I remember almost never starting over and often stopping in the first line. Girls had a better chance of getting into the second line.

WIth no television and limited access, our heads were filled with little verses and mind games. Cousin Cheryl came with a verse during one of her rare childhood visits from MInneapolis or California. It was designed to appear as a speech:

"Ladies and gentlemen, horses and mules,
I hate to tell you, but you're all darn fools.
I come before you to stand behind you...
Admission free, pay at the door
Grab a chair and sit on the floor!"

That's all I remember but I found this version:

"Ladies and gentlemen, horses and mules
Cross-eyed mosquitos and bold-legged fools
I've come before you to stand behind you
To tell you something I know nothing about
Next Thursday, which is Good Friday
We'll have a father's meeting for mother's only
Admission free, pay at the door
Grab a chair and sit on the floor!"

From the third grade which was at the end of the hall on the second floor of our school and was designed more as a foyer to the fire escape at the rear of the building, I remember:

"Christopher went
When he was sent,
And came when he was told,
And all together
Whatever the weather
Was brave, bright and bold.
When he was nine, or maybe ten,
He traveled the world again and again
With a cape, a cap and a fountain pen."

It's probably the only poem I remember.

Crab Apple Tree

Throughout my summer day I pass by a tree filled with tasty ripe but tart pie cherries. It is simple to reach up, grab a couple and eat the tantalizing miniature orbs. Propelling the seeds across the lawn is a part of the enjoyment even though I'm reminded each time of their potential by the many seedlings in that area.

Some fifty years ago about the same time of the year, late August or early September I would repeat the same moves with some modifications. I would be on a tractor driving to and from the fields towing a wagon either filled with grain from the combine or silage for the silo. If the route took me pass the chokecherry bushes, I would load up on the berries that turned my mouth blue and my throat would, in a sense, choke. Hence, the name of the berry. Later in the season after emptying the silage from the wagon, I would detour under the crab apple tree and grab enough to keep me busy nibbling while driving to the field. They were so tart that they had no other use. But I loved the diversion.

Not many fruit trees survived the North Dakota winters, in fact my favorite crab apple tree had been joined by several plum and pie apple trees at their planting but stood essentially alone as I ate of it. Our Ziegler grandparents enjoyed adventuring into new territory with fruit as they had several apple trees and in the 50's a pear tree that actually produced pears. On the other side of the garden were patches of raspberries and strawberries that were the envy of my childhood. I don't know that the pear tree has survived these 50 years.

There are stories of man who wandered the West sowing apple seeds and who became known as Johnny Appleseed. His good fortune apparently didn't infect our part of North Dakota.

Churning butter

A wandering glance around our kitchen took my eyes momentarily to an old butter churn; the large glass jar has a slight crack. My wondering why we kept this dust collector was immediately overshadowed by a question of who used it and when and even where.

There's something in the rears of my struggling mind that says Mom may have made our butter at one time, after all we were on a dairy farm and always milked cows. Before the years when we were selling raw milk, the milk was separated into skim milk and cream, the source of butter. I know that Mom's mother made their butter.

Walking into grandma's house always smelled like a farm house, but then it was a farm house. The smell might have been stronger here than in other farm houses because they separated their milk in the house. It was the only heated building on their farm.

Passing through the first entrance gave one no warmth from the winter cold as the first room was more of a porch, where one would leave your coat that had brushed against the cows and the boots that followed the pigs to their feed. A single step up and through a second door on your left put you into the big main room of the house. It was the almost "everything" room. Straight ahead was a second room which was the "living" room furnished with a couch, a couple easy chairs, a old ornate china closet and a pump organ which later was replaced by a piano. Uncle Lenhart like to tickle the keyboards.

Off the living room was a small master bedroom, and years later a bathroom was added in one corner. Off to the right in the main room were doors to the upstairs and downstairs and a cooking area. The wood cook stove served to heat the house and prepare the meals. As the house was modernized an electric stove was added beside the wood stove and the hand pump was replaced with faucets for cold and hot running water.

I never got over 12 years old, before grandpa died. He had a big overstuffed rocking chair by the window just to the left of the main entrance. Tall and lanky, as I remember him, and seldom a smile. He had a cane, as I remember, that he'd try to hook us with. Boy, that memory is vague. He always seemed old, but then he was 60 when I was born, and 72 when he died.

During my childhood, the neighbors still gathered together in the late summer for threshing. There's a story about grandma when the threshing crew was at her house and she was responsible for feeding them. I'm sure that the food was home grown and cooked, which included baked bread and homemade butter. As the crew gathered around the table filling their plates, grandma had forgot to put butter on the table and so when one of the crew not seeing any butter, called out, "Please, pass the butter," she was very embarrassed.

So a quick glance around the room took me back some sixty years. And the butter churn continues to gather dust until it instills another memory even though it's owner is still not known.