DAY 79 - COUNTING DOWN TO THE 50TH

Good Morning, Class of '64

Simple Life - Valerie Dayon

"Friends, books, a garden, and perhaps his pen,
Delightful industry enjoy'd at home,
An Nature, in her cultivated trim
Dress'ed to his taste, inviting him abroad -
Can he want occupation who has these?"
William Cowper
The Task 
1780 

"With a few flowers in my garden, 
half a dozen pictures and some books, 
I live without envy."
Lope de Vega 

"Enjoy the little things,
for one day you may look back and
realize they were the big things."
Robert Brault

Country Living - Reta Haube

Another Day with Larry


Memories from the Five Senses
(Part Two) 

Wood and coal smoke, in the house, and outside. The smoke tends to stay close to the ground just before a storm making that odor much stronger.

Winter Cabin - James Michael Johnson

Standing in the middle of a corn field with straight rows of corn in all directions like the tombstones in a military cemetery. That corn represented a lot of work, food for the livestock, and, ultimately, food for us.

Cornfield - Heidi Malott

The way your hands felt after shearing sheep for two or three days. The lanolin in the wool softened even the hardest and thickest calluses.

The Shearing - Mia Delode

 Australian Sheep Shearing Method
A demonstration of the Australian Method 

of sheep shearing, at Young's Dairy Jersey Farm

 in Yellow Springs, Ohio

The explosion of colors from Mom’s dahlias. She raised a large bed along the road approaching the house - what a greeting for visitors! She planted them everywhere she could find a small piece of unoccupied ground.

Dahlia Garden - Paul Berenson

The smell of bread baking, pickles cooking, jam or preserves cooking, cornbread baking, and all those very special aromas in Mom’s kitchen.

The taste of home grown tomatoes - nothing else is so tender, sweet, and tasty. Picking one, wiping it on your shirt, and bursting it open from the stem end and eating it is a taste treat money cannot buy. A hatful of yellow pear tomatoes taken to a shade tree is another. This is a taste treat that only the very rich can enjoy, and 

we were very rich

 in all the things that

 make life worthwhile.

Give Me the Simple Life
Written for the movie musical 

Wake Up and Dream, starring 

June Haver and John Payne.
http://standardoftheday.blogspot.com/2008/11/give-me-simple-life.html
Rosemary Clooney

I don't believe in frettin' and grievin';
Why mess around with strife?
I never was cut out to step and strut out.
Give me the simple life.

Some find it pleasant dining on pheasant.
Those things roll off my knife;
Just serve me tomatoes; and mashed potatoes;
Give me the simple life.
 

A cottage small is all I'm after,
Not one that's spacious and wide.
A house that rings with joy and laughter
And the ones you love inside.
 

Some like the high road, I like the low road,
Free from the care and strife.
Sounds corny and seedy, but yes, indeed-y;
Give me the simple life.

Fried green tomatoes on fresh biscuits is another taste treat.

The taste of fresh apples off the tree from yellow transparent in mid-summer to the last of the Kellys buried in the garden in late winter.

Yellow Transparent Apple

The taste of fresh peaches and plums just off the tree - supermarket produce has only a shadow of that flavor.

The taste of birch twigs and wild peppermint or spearmint, especially when you're thirsty and have no water.

And, of course, the taste of our neighbor Rolin’s grapes. He had several grape arbors along the road that I walked to catch the school bus. Despite being repeatedly told to leave them alone, it was too tempting. Since they were forbidden fruit, they, of course, tasted even sweeter!

Sheep Sorrel

One more taste - sheep sorrel, a very tart weed. I’ve chewed it many times in the middle of the cornfield when I was thirsty. It helps.

Herbal Remedies ~ Sheep Sorrel

http://www.herbalremediesinfo.com/sorrel.html

Fire flies - those, to a child, magical insects that bounce up into the air and light up the night. Come to think of it, they are still magic to me. I love to watch them; summer isn’t really here until they arrive. Unfortunately for them and fortunately for kids, they are very easy to catch. They will often land on a person. Kids have caught them and put them in jars for generations - I hope they always will. I’ve heard that kids caught them during World War II for the military; their luminescent tails were used to mark things. 

Canned Fireflies - Lisa Lea Bemish

 The Glow-Worm 

 Peaked at #1 for 3 weeks on

 Billboard's Most Played in Jukeboxes chart...
Reached #1 for 1 week on the Cash Box 

magazine's 'Best Selling Record' chart...
Between 1931 and 1968 the Mills brothers 

had seventy-one Top 100 hits; 

with twenty-seven making the Top 10 

and five reaching #1.

 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Glow-Worm

The Mills Brothers - 1952

 Shine little glow-worm, glimmer, glimmer
Shine little glow-worm, glimmer, glimmer
Lead us lest too far we wander
Love's sweet voice is callin' yonder
Shine little glow-worm, glimmer, glimmer
Hey, there don't get dimmer, dimmer
Light the path below, above
And lead us on to love

Glow little glow-worm, fly of fire
Glow like an incandescent wire
Glow for the female of the species
Turn on the AC and the DC
This night could use a little brightnin'
Light up you little ol' bug of lightnin'
When you gotta glow, you gotta glow
Glow little glow-worm, glow

Glow little glow-worm, glow and glimmer
Swim through the sea of night, little swimmer
Thou aeronautical boll weevil
Illuminate yon woods primeval
See how the shadows deep and darken
You and your chick should get to sparkin'
I got a gal that I love so
Glow little glow-worm, glow

Glow little glow-worm, turn the key on
You are equipped with taillight neon
You got a cute vest-pocket *Mazda*
Which you can make both slow and faster
I don't know who you took the shine to
Or who you're out to make a sign to
I got a gal that I love so
Glow little glow-worm, glow
Glow little glow-worm, glow
Glow little glow-worm, glow
Glow little glow-worm, glow

I’ve also heard that people collected mature milk weed pods during WWII. The seeds are spread by wind much like dandelion seeds. Each milk weed seed is attached to a fluffy, wool-like tail. The fluffy material was used in Mae West life vests. The government paid a few pennies a pound for the mature pods.

 

The pungent, yet comforting smell of horse sweat and feces - beats all over hot oil, gasoline, and exhaust from a tractor.

The powerful engine sound of the road grader or a bull dozer when we were snowed in.

The taste and smell of Mom's Orange Kiss-Me Cake - the combination of hickory nuts, orange, raisins, and cinnamon was special.

Orange Kiss Me Cake (1950 Winner)

http://www.justapinch.com/recipes/dessert/cake/orange-kiss-me-cake-1950-winner.html 
http://www.pillsbury.com/recipes/orange-kiss-me-cake/8815ee24-37ee-4646-a989-8c993d2cdac4 

The winner of the 1950 Pillsbury Bake-Off Contest.
Bake-Off® Contest 02, 1950
Lily Wuebel
Redwood City, California
It might have been named after the Broadway
musical "Kiss Me Kate" which had opened in 1948.

Ingredients:

GRIND TOGETHER AND SET ASIDE:

1 large orange (pulp and rind) reserve juice for topping

1 c raisins (any kind)

1/3 c walnuts (pecans are ok, too)

CAKE BATTER:

2 c sifted ap flour

1 tsp baking soda

1 tsp salt

1 c sugar

1/2 c butter

1 1/4 c milk (divided)

2 whole eggs, unbeaten

TOPPING:

juice from above orange

1/3 c sugar

1 tsp cinnamon

1/4 c chopped walnuts

1 orange -- sliced very thin for decorating

1. Preheat oven to 350 F -- makes 12x8x2 or 13x9x2 cake -- Grease and lightly flour baking pan -- For best results all ingredients should be room temperature

2. Juice the orange and set aside for the topping.

3. GRIND the orange pulp and rind in a grinder or food processor along with the raisins and walnuts

4. SIFT together the flour, soda, salt and sugar Note: If you use Self Rising flour omit the salt and decrease the soda to 1/4 teaspoon.

5. ADD the butter and 3/4 cup of the milk

6. Beat for 2 minutes on slow speed, then beat 2 minutes at medium speed

7. ADD the eggs and the rest of the milk (1/2 C) and beat for 2 more minutes

8. FOLD in the orange/raisin/nut mixture then pour into well-greased and lightly floured pan

9. Bake 350 F for 40-50 minutes

10. DRIZZLE the orange juice over the warm cake (probably about 1/3 of a cup)

11. COMBINE topping ingredients and sprinkle them over the cake

12. DECORATE with very thin orange slices and let it finish cooling -- some people do not like the orange slices on the cake so they simply leave them off -- up to you.

13. ALTERNATIVE #1: Some people are more sensitive to the taste of the ground up orange rind with the pith which is what adds the slightly bitter after taste, for them, so they substitute the following for the ground up pulp and rind: 2 tsp grated orange zest, 1/4 cup fresh orange juice.

14. ALTERNATIVE #2: Some people simply use 6 oz. frozen orange juice concentrate, thawed, divided -- instead of the orange, or the zest -- this would make preparation much speedier, too.

15. ALTERNATIVE #3: Kathryn May 4, 2012 at 8:25 PM said: my mom had this same recipe... almost. All the ingredients are identical except the nut topping in her recipe called for: 1/3 cup sugar, 1/3 cup chopped walnuts, and 1 tsp vinegar. Mixing them together makes a crumbly topping you sprinkle over the top while still warm after drizzling the OJ concentrate.

John Sloane

"You have succeeded in life 

when all you really want is

  only what you really need."
Vernon Howard

"I never had any other desire so strong, 

and so like covetousness, as that.... 

I might be master at last of a small house 

and a large garden, with very moderate 

conveniences joined to them, and there 

dedicate the remainder of my life to the 

 culture of them and the study of nature."
Abraham Cowley

"Reduce the complexity of life by eliminating
the needless wants of life, and the labors
of life reduce themselves."
Edwin Way Teale

The Simple Life - Unknown