Gramma's Cooking

When hunting down recipes that don't depend on canned soups, processed cheese or other unidentifiable edible food-like product, old cookbooks are an excellent resource. I uncovered one at a rummage sale last week: The Alice Bradley Menu-Cook-Book, published by MacMillan in 1937. This book must have been wildly popular, going through 5 re-printings. Although my 1947 edition came onto the market at the end of WWII, it includes a special section on Wartime Cookery, when homemakers needed ration stamps to purchase sugar, coffee, canned fruits and vegetables, canned and dried soups, fresh or canned meat, cheese, canned fish, and all cooking fats including butter, margarine and lard.

It's hard for us, comfortably situated in the 21st Century, to imagine such rationing in the United States. (So much for whining over the current recession!) I particularly like a list of suggestions including at the end of the Wartime section:

Buy and prepare only what you need.
Plant a Victory garden
Raise chickens or pigs or keep a cow if you can.
Buy what is plentiful, especially wheat.
Use fresh vegetables and fruit.
Follow nutrition rules.
Cooperate on rationing rules.
Remember that food is a weapon.

I'm not quite ready to ask my Home Owners Association for permission to raise a pig in our backyard, but I do expect to find some useful recipes and techniques in this 944 page volume. The hints and tips are fascinating; for example, "The fins or wings of the skate or rajah fish can be cooked and used to replace canned crab meat if fresh crab meat is not in the market." I also discovered, "We have planned for 1/2 cup servings of most cereals, vegetables and desserts, and for 1/4 to 1/3 pound meat or fish per person." Those portion sizes apparently got lost somewhere between the Big Mac and the KFC Double Down.

So what was Gramma serving up for the Ladies Luncheon in 1947? Looking at The Third Saturday in February (the cookbook is arranged in daily menus for the entire calendar year) We find Eggs Baked in Green Peppers with Bacon Sauce, Quick Coffee Cake and Rennet Custard with Fruit. I like the idea of  eggs nestled in halved green peppers, then baked with a bacon garnish. But, then for a New Year's Day open house, there are Banana and Cottage Cheese Sandwiches, cleverly flavored with chopped green olives. Bananas and Green Olives? Must be a misprint. Let's look at the Valentine's Day Dinner.

Here we go:
Grapefruit Cocktail with Hearts Shaped from Cherries
Heart-Shaped Mashed Potato Cakes
Sliced Boiled Beets Cut Heart-Shaped
Raspberry Mousse and Heart-Shaped Cakes

Cute! everything on the menu is red and cut to look like Valentine hearts. Now, what's the entree?
Boiled Calve's Heart with Raisins. 

Okay, maybe we don't need to go overboard in imitating Gramma's cooking.
Instead, I think we'll quickly return to the 21st Century and mix up a nice little pan of Toffee Bars that have no resemblance whatsoever to any internal organs, and will make the kitchen smell the way we all like to remember Gramma's kitchen.

Back to the Bun

The Hot Cross Buns we had on Easter were a big success. In fact, yesterday my husband went rummaging through the kitchen, hunting for stray leftovers. "Where are those good buns we had last week?" What could I say? He'd eaten them all. Today I decided to try the same recipe without the cinnamon and currants that make the buns specific to the Easter holiday.

Lately, I've been pestering like-minded baking friends about how to increase the whole-grain qualities of  breads without ending up with something with the consistency of a brick. We all seem to agree that it just isn't possible to produce a well-risen loaf with tender texture with much less than 50% white flour. At least that pale stuff can be unbleached, though it really cannot be whole grain. OTOH, it is possible to add more nutrition to this half-and-half formula by adding bran, cracked wheat, oats, flax seed and the like.

So while the yeast was proofing, I scoured the pantry and freezer for possibilities. I wanted something with plenty of fiber and recognizable nutrients. Flax seed was my first choice, but that jar was empty. The rolled oats canister suggested possibilities, but oats tend to absorb a lot of moisture, and I didn't want to mess with the basic texture of the rolls. Then I saw the raisin bran cereal.

Notice I am not capitalizing the name of the product. I'd purchased a box of generic breakfast cereal at our "natural foods" store, and the stuff turned out to be so natural that it was close to inedible. But what if I crushed those hefty flakes and sorted out the raisins?

Perfection! The buns are light and fluffy to satisfy the soul, with enough fiber and whole grain goodness to satisfy the conscience. One mistake - I baked them in the toaster oven, but they rose so high that they scorched. My husband, who wants his toast charred, will love them.
 

Now, any suggestions on what to call them, other than "Not-Hot Cross Buns"?

Yesterday's Gone

Yesterday was Easter, and yesterday's gone.

Several years ago I learned from a wonderful doctor that holidays were meant to be enjoyed. She was very strict about nutrition most of the time, but all rules were suspended on holidays. Ham with sweet potatoes? Butter on the rolls and sour cream ambrosia salad? Ice cream with the pie? You bet! and I'll have another glass of wine, please.

But now it's the next day, and the refrigerator is stuffed with fabulous leftovers. There's that ham, which is awfully good cold, with mustard and some cold asparagus. That would be nice and healthy. But there are also mushrooms slick with butter. Potato salad, thick with eggs and mayonnaise. Half of a strawberry pie, two quarts of ice cream and half a dozen hot cross buns. It was all fair game yesterday, but . . . but . . . yesterday's gone.

So the Easter ham has been deconstructed into parcels appropriate labeled "slices," "chunks" and "soup bone." The buns will freeze nicely, to appear on some future Sunday brunch with omelets and a few of the ham slices. But what can I do with those buttery mushrooms, and all the other leftovers that would blow my daily calorie count through the roof?

One solution, I know, is to avoid the leftover problem completely by dining out on holidays. Let's just say that I enjoy cooking too much for that to be an option. So I think I'll offer you a challenge:

Here is the population of my Day-After-the-Holiday refrigerator.  Click on "Comments" and let us all know how you'd use them without having to invest in larger Levis.

Potato Salad - about 2 cups
Hard Cooked Eggs - 8
Candied Yams - about 3 servings
Corn Pudding - 1 1/2 cups
Mushrooms Caps with butter - 1 cup (heaping)
Roasted Asparagus - 9 stalks
7 Soft Dinner Rolls
Ambrosia Salad (mini-marshmallows, coconut, sour cream)
Double Crust Berry Pie - half a pie

Hot Cross Buns

One a penny, Two a penny, Hot Cross Buns!

I was surprised at the difficulty finding a recipe for these traditional Holy Week  buns, but I finally located a simple method in an old Sunset cookbook, Gifts from Your Kitchen, published in 1988. The buns are delicious, the recipe is straightforward, and the technique is easily adaptable to the 21st Century kitchen.

Hot Cross Buns happily incorporate butter, eggs and sugar that were forbidden through the long 6 weeks of Lent. The inclusion of currants and citrus peel reflects the scarcity of other fruit on a date so early in the European spring. BTW, if currants aren't easily available at your market, use raisins or other sweet dried fruit, cut into 1/4" dice.

Hot Cross Buns are legendary for keeping well. One folk tale claims that a Hot Cross Bun baked on Good Friday will keep through Easter of the following year. That may be a bit of an exaggeration, but these buns will remain tasty for a day or so after baking, and freeze quite nicely. I'll take half of this batch to our neighborhood breakfast tomorrow morning and freeze the rest, to be reheated for Easter Sunday dinner.