I Have Discovered the Enemy

I finally know its name and it shall be war between us.

A recipe from a Depression Era Memoir and Cookbook

From Rita Van Amber's "Stories and Recipes of the Great Depression.

Sour Cream and Raisin Pie

Mix and cook until it begins to thicken:

1cup sour cream
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 and 1/2 teaspoon cinnamon
2 tablespoons cornstarch
1/3 cup sugar

Then add 2 egg yolks and 1/3 cup milk.

Cook about 2 minutes. Fold in 1 cup raisins which have been rinsed and soaked in hot water and towel dried. Make meringue out of egg whites and bake for 30 minutes or until nicely browned.

I just ran across Sour Cream and Raisin pie at a restaurant in Grants Pass, Oregon. When the waitress mentioned it I suspected it was an old time recipe that had somehow managed to survive because the restaurant was a small privately owned business. It's uniqueness also told me that they baked their own desserts rather than ordering them from a local bakery or supermarket, so I gave it a try. It was very tasty and as you can see from above, also thrifty. The version I enjoyed did not have a meringue top but was topped with whipped cream instead.

Bank Failure

How eerie, coming the same day as the post above.

http://money.cnn.com/2008/07/12/news/companies/indymac_fdic/index.htm?postversion=2008071210

and then there is this building to a boil:

http://money.cnn.com/2008/07/11/news/companies/fannie_freddie_shares/index.htm?postversion=2008071209


Well, yesterday I was paid and sent $850 dollars to my last outstanding debt. Today I am going with friends to pick berries. The cherries and blueberries are in season, as well as raspberries. Theses cost as much as $5 or more in stores but are around $1 a pound if you pick yourself. I am planning to can 12 pints and 3 quarts of blueberries and around 4 pints or so of raspberries as jam and/or jelly. That will allow for 2 batches of blueberry muffins each month (1 cup per batch, freezing the second cup til needed) and 3 pies for special occasions. I estimate we go through maybe 2 jars of jam a year, but that will go up as the eating of cheap peanut butter and jelly sandwiches rises as well as cheap toast and tea breakfasts and so forth so I am can a little more. Also homemake baking for potlucks will increase, along with the actual potlucks so I may can more. Raspberry perserves lend themselves well to baking. I am also considering canning small jars for Christmas gifts.

Next week I will go for cherries and I want to check the local forests and see where the huckleberries and blackberries stand. Those are free so I will can quite a bit if I can find it. I also want to check a particular apple tree I know of in a state park. It used to be part of a homestead but still grows lovely apples.

Some of my friends have lately taken to laughing in their sleeves at my preparations, thinking them unnecessary. To them I respond "Maybe you are right. Maybe it will be nothing worse than a rise in prices. In that case I will have no debt and a well stocked panty, which will be just as useful in good times as in bad." Prepare for the worse but expect the best. Trust in God and do not fear.

Proverbs 27:12
A prudent man sees evil and hides himself, the naive proceed and pay the penalty.

Preparing for the Next Great Depression?

While I don't believe things are so far gone yet, I can't help looking around and wondering how bad is it going to get? I was a child during the Regan recession and, for my family, it was our own little Great Depression. We lost the house, but not before working in the fields with migrant workers, having no phone, no television, no hot water, and often no electricity. We had to heat water on the stove for baths. There was a large hole in the roof and another in the floor. I learned how to pick wild mushrooms for money, fish, catch crawdads, scavange for wild fruit, dumpster dive and that every single can is worth a nickel so pick them all up. The only clothes we had were those that other people gave us. Most of our food was goverment surplus from the food bank, or what we could scrounge and my mom often went without so we children could eat. It was a very ugly time and it lasted for years.

While I am no economist, I notice many similarities between the Roaring 20s and Great Depression and our own time. Up until last year we certainly were Roaring. Like the 20s we have been using credit for everything. Like the 20s there has been a huge amount of real estate and stock market speculation. The distribution of wealth is becoming more unequal with each passing day and this also occured in the 20s. Savings is at an all time low and just before the Great Depression 80% of the population had no savings at all. People then, as now, were spending their entire yearly income on consumable goods.

Banks began to collapse and then the drought came. Today, much of the regulation that prevented a repeat of the bank collapses has been repealled or rewritten by pro-business administrations (like the 1920s) and our banks are looking shakey. We've had no droubt but hurricanes, floods and fires and wrecking an similar devistation. It is also my understanding that wages not keeping up with costs and war debt also played a role along with problems in foreign trade. All in all rather worrying.

So will it happen again? I don't know. I know history, not economics. Some things are different today than they were back then. The gold standard for one. I have read theories that the gold standard actually exacerbated the problem, but then others speculate our faith based money system will make things even worse. Our market is much more global and fluid today and maybe that will make a difference. I just don't know. I do know that there are enough visible parallels between today and the 20s and 30s to make me concerned and feeling the need to prepare.

So how does one prepare for the possibility of very hard times. Well, having lived through such times on a smaller scale and being aware of history I have a pretty good idea of were to start.

1. Don't be afraid. Trust the Lord and pray.

God never sends us more than we can handle and everything He gives us it designed to strengthen our faith and make us grow in holiness. Even those things that He does not send but permits to occur due to the actions of our fellow man contain ways to help us grow as Christians. For a person who has faith in the Lord hard times are nothing to fear.

2. Get out of debt ASAP!

When times get hard debt load will make the difference between keeping your head above water and total devistation. My parents had a large amount of debt along with a mortgage when my Dad got laid off and things started going down hill. If the would have been able to focus on just making ends meet things would have been much different. Instead they did what most folks would do and tried to keep up appearences, spending money on credit card debt that should have been going to daily living expenses.

3. Save! Save! Save!

My parents had little or no savings. No cushion when hard times arrived so they hit the ground much harder and more quickly than they might of otherwise. If a person has a good safety net saved (3 to 6 months gross income) then being laid off is not the end of the world. With a part time job, even at minimum wage that 6 month cushion can be stretched even farther. Especially if one owes no debt and cuts out everything but the necessities, i.e. food, shelter and heat. Although many will not find it hard to believe, TVs, computers, video games, ipods and the rest are all optional. Period.

The three steps listed above are the most critical, but there are other things you can do before times get hard to help prepare yourself as well.

4. Trim your grocery budget.

Learn to calculate meal costs and work on reducing your overall grocery budget. Do your experimenting now so if you should ever need the knowledge you will know how to do bare bones nutritious cooking. Start adding one or two black belt frugal meals a week into your families rotation to get them used to the food.

5. Stockpile

Get a stockpile of non-perishable foods going. Things you use every week and pantry staples. Think flour, dry beans, rice, baking supplies, canned goods - meat, fruit and veggies, as well as non- consumables like laundry detergent, dishsoap, hygiene products and pet food. A good stock pile takes time to build but will be a life saver if you ever find that the paycheck will only cover rent and gas to get to work.

6. Learn to can and preserve food.

There is free food to be had all over the place and learning to can will allow you take advantage of this. In my area I know of blackberry and huckleberry patches as well as a couple of old abandoned orchards. Crab apples aren't good to eat but they make great jelly. Did you know you can make preserves from rose petals and during Halloween most people just get rid of their decorative pumpkins. If you ask they will give them to you and they can be canned for pies, muffins, puddings and custard.

7. Plant a garden.

This can be done in the tiniest space, a balconey, the postage stamp sized front yard. You will be able to cut your grocery budget with the fresh produce and add the extra to your stockpile with those canning skills you've learned.

8. Stop driving.

Get used to it now. Only drive for work and absolutely necessary trips. If you don't leave home you won't spend money. If times are really hard you won't be able to go even if you want to.

There is still much more a person could do and I hope to explore this subject more fully as it seems very timely. Any ideas are certainly welcome.

Modern Apple Dumplings

In cleaning out the refridgerator last night I discovered 2 apples, a pear and a single store bought pie crust that were not long for this world. Since the fruit was to soft for eating I decided to see what I could come up on my own in the way of apple dumplings.

Having read several recipies for dumplings in the last few weeks I knew that the general idea is fruit in a pie crust-ish envelope of some kind. With this in view I cored and cut up the apples and pear in to chuncks and placed them into a pot with a bit of water, brown sugar, pumpkin pie spice, raisins and butter. I heated this to a boil and then turned down the heat to low, covered and went about finishing up my laundry.

About 20 minutes later I checked on the fruit and it was cooked through so I mashed it lightly with a potato masher and added some more raisnins since they were looking kind of sparse. As the mixture was runny (too much water I guess) I cooked it on low with the lid off for another half hour or so and then removed it from the heat to cool.

I then rolled out the pie crust and cut several disks with my biscuit cutter, then putting the scraps together I rolled out a sheet about 6 inches long as well, since this is the more traditional size for an apple dumpling. A dollop of fruit mixture was placed in the center of three disks and then topped and sealed with additional crust discs. Then one side of the six inch piece was filled with fruit and the other side folded over and sealed it with a fork. All this I baked at 350 degrees until the crust was nicely browned.

Testing revealed that the crust discs don't work very well. They are too small and the crust to filling ratio is not balanced well. They were rather dry. The larger, more traditional sized one had a good crust to filling ratio and made a very good breakfast for me this morning. The filling turned out quite well and was very tasty. There was a good amount left over which I freezed and intend to use later as I believe it will serve for many purposes, being good as another filling, as a sauce with pork or perhaps chicken, possibly a topping for pancakes or french toast, or even as a stand alone applesauce type dish for breakfast or dessert.

The store bought crust was wretched and I remembered why the second one never got used when I tasted it. I must learn to make a proper pie crust from scratch, although I understand this can be a challenge.

Sunny Valley

Summer is a wonderful time because it means I can go and visit my father again. He lives in the mountains above a little spot called Sunny Valley. He and Leslie, my step-mother, are not connected to the grid in any way. They get their electricity from solor panels and generators. Hot water comes via propane and heat from the wood stove. My father has even rigged an old hot water heater to run off propane so they have a bathtub which sits in the middle of yard with a lovely view of the creek. They also have the traditional outhouse just a ways off from everything else, because, as my father says, only disgusting city people would do "that" inside the house.

They live in a very small trailer and that doesn't leave much room for guests so when I visit I generally sleep outside. When the weather is bad I can bed down on the living room floor, but this is inconvient for everyone one as the room is so very small and they are generally awake by 5 a.m. or earlier. Having grown accustom to slothful city habits I generally want to sleep in until 7 a.m. and I certainly don't want to go to bed by 8 p.m. Add to this the several feet of snow and ice that can fill the pass and block their roads in the wintertime coupled with the fact that I drive an old toyota tercel and it becomes easy to see why visits are best left until the snow and rain largely dissapear for the summer.

Sunny Valley is aptly named, for it is indeed a small, sunny valley containing mostly fields, trees, homes and often deer and elk. The "town" consists of one old country store with a filling station with a motel across the way. Although it is only about 15 or 20 minutes from my Dad's place we never stay there because everyone on knows it's frequented by less than savory folk. Just down from the store is the old "radio hall" where folks used to meet in the 20s and 30s to listen to the only radio around. Its not used much any more but kept in good repair. Then there is the one room cabin that is "City Hall" which is also not used much, but did see a lot of action a few years back when the state tried to close down their covered bridge. Next to City Hall is the town museum and the covered bridge. There are also two churches, one burger stand that is open whenever the lady who runs it feels like showing up and a bar that is closed down. Some out of town folk bought it and tried to make it a strip club and quickly discovered Sunny Valley folk don't give their money to such trade, so the building waits for a new owner. Its a friendly place and even though I did not grow up there and only visit in the summer, people remember me as "Terry's daughter" and always say hello.

During my last visit I decided to finally stop and see the museum. The valley folks are pretty proud of it and put a lot of work into the project to get it off the ground. I have driven past it often but never stopped, however; I recently have become very interested in the Oregon Trail and since their focus is the Applegate Trail I decided to stop and give it a look see.



The museum is a small one but modern and fairly well done. There is a gentleman who mans the musem and he is very nice and knowledgeble. I wish I could remember his name, but regardless, you won't miss him since he wears pioneer garb. Most of the displays were donated by locals and the Oregon Historical Society also assisted in getting them copies of relivent paintings, photos and such. There are some radom taxidermy displays that don't give too much information but are fun in their way, if one does not have issue with dead animal displays. They have two stuffed oxen hooked up to a light covered wagon and when you come close a motion sensor makes cow and wagon noises at you, which I suspect children would enjoy. There is a short movie to watch about the Applegate Trail with local folks playing the pioneers.

While most of the displays are not attributed to any particular pioneers, they do have a very good display of James Twogoods things, on loan from his family. Mr Twogood was the first person to make a land claim in Sunny Valley and the museum acutally sits on part of his original claim. They also have the ledgers from the original store. It seems the gentleman who ran it kept very detailed accounts for most of his life and the volumes give a very good picture of what local folks bought and the nature to the local economy.

There is also a pioneer woman's grave just down the way from the museum, past the covered bridge. It belongs to Martha Leland Crowley who died in the valley from typhoid when she was just 16. She was part of the first wagon train to travel the Applegate Trail, which was built as an alternate route, so that folks could avoid the dangerous float down the Columbia River. She was buried near an oak tree in a coffin her intended, David M. Guthrie, made for her from parts of old boxes, as the party had no boards left to spare from the wagons by the time she passed away.



The settlers penned their cattle over her gave after she was buried in hopes that it would keep animals and Indians from finding and disturbing it. Sadly this did not work because a later party found her scattered bones in the valley and reburied her. Since that time the creek has always been called Grave Creek. For a while the state attempted to name if something less "morbid" but everyone just kept calling it Grave Creek so eventually they gave up.Martha was said to be very beautiful and well loved by all who knew her. Her family always ment to come back for her once they were settled but sadly her father died just a few short months after they made it to the Willemette Valley so that never happened.

Apple Dumplings Part I

I have long been wanting to try my hand at some of the recipes in my collection of old cookbooks and household manuals, but somehow the project has never seemed to materialize. Many of the recipes are very time intensive if one wants to be authentic and it takes a certain amount of moxie to dive into a recipe that starts "Take a calf's head, boil for three hours and then remove the brain, tongue and eyes..." Even if I should manage to screw up the courage necessary to go to the butcher and ask to purchase a calf's head, I don't own a pot big enough to boil it in and even if I did, how would I manage to do it on the tiny burners of my modern electric stove? And what about mad cow's disease? As you can see, there is much to consider.

I recently obtained a copy of "Grandma's Wartime Kitchen" by Joanne Lamb Hayes which was published in 2000. I first ran across this volume in my public library and was so reluctant to return it that I ran up a rather large overdue fee. I decided that I needed to own my own copy and so went searching. You will understand my surprise when I discovered this book, although only eight years old, is already selling for almost $200 dollars on ABE. That is almost as much as I paid for my Mrs. Beeton and so, for a brief second I confess, I contemplated taking it out on "permanent loan" from the library. They have two copies after all and I know that I have given them much more than that in over due fees during the course of our relationship.

Fortunately I was able to shake off my book lust, or at least tamp it down enough, to realize that cookbook theft would hardly being the crowning point of my spiritual life. So the only other option was to hawk ABE and wait for a bookseller to post of copy without checking the market first, which I did. Fortunately this happened rather quickly and so I was able to gain a copy for the bargain price of $14.95 and avoid committing a rather silly sin all at the same time. Don't laugh. Book lust is a serious problem for a certain section of the population. I think I may need to start a 12 step program. I'm that far gone... seriously, or maybe not so much.

However, long convoluted story aside, "Grandma's Wartime Kitchen" has given me a jumping off point for my historical cooking experiments. In it is a recipe for apple dumplings and I remembered seeing another recipe for the same in Mrs. Beeton. As I thought about it I realized that apple dumplings are a food one runs across often in books, both fiction and historical, but I don't know a single woman who makes them today. I wonder why they fell out of fashion? Or maybe they have only fallen by the wayside in my part of the country? It's hard to say as I don't believe there are scholars tracking the rise and demise of popular recipes in the United States.

So, in light of the apparent lack of kitchen based scholarship, I did a little more checking and found I have several recipes spanning many years for Apple Dumplings so there I will start. I propose to cook several batches of Apple Dumplings over the next few weeks starting with Grandma's Kitchen and a 1940s version. Then I will move on the Mrs. Beeton's recipe and finish up with the version found in Mrs. Lea's 1845 Domestic Cookery. (This book is currently available in reprint under the title "A Quaker Woman's Cookbook".) These three recipes will cover the years 1845, 1888 and 1945(ish) and allow for contrasting any significant changes that may have occurred in cooking this particular dish over the years. If I can find recipes from around 1900 and earlier than about 1820 I will try and include those as well.