DAY 69 - COUNTING DOWN TO THE 50TH

Good Morning, Class of '64

Grace - Eric Enstrom

O Lord, who clothes the lilies
And feeds the birds of the sky,
Who leads the lambs to pasture
And the deer to the waterside,
Who has multiplied loaves and fishes
And converted water to wine,
O Lord, come to our table,
As guest and giver, to dine. Amen.
http://home2.pcisys.net/~tbc/mealpryr.htm#prayer11_1

One of the Family - Frederick George Cotman

Sundays with Larry

Daily Meals 

(Part One)

Our food was home-grown. About the only things we bought were sugar, coffee, flour, salt, spices, cereal, and, as a special treat for picnics, longhorn cheese, lunch meat, watermelon, and cantaloupe. We grew and canned, salt cured, dried, or buried everything else.

Meal Time - Bernard de Hoog

A typical breakfast was fried salt-cured ham or pork shoulder, fresh-baked biscuits, redeye gravy, fried eggs, and cereal. I didn’t like breakfast so Mom tried lots of things to get me to eat. Biscuits and redeye gravy or biscuits and molasses were among my favorites.

Grace - Cecelia Brendel

Dinner was at noon; there was no lunch. Supper was at six in the evening. We always had biscuits or cornbread for dinner, meat of some kind and always potatoes, mashed, fried, boiled, or boiled whole with the jackets. We usually had another vegetable. In season there was fresh leaf lettuce, fresh green onions, sliced tomatoes, fried green tomatoes, cucumbers, etc. Mom often fixed a cucumber and onion salad with vinegar and cream or buttermilk dressing. She sometimes sliced tomatoes into that. Potatoes were usually cooked or eaten with freshly churned butter. We ate lots of fried foods, all fried in lard.

Old Woman With Butter Churn - Betina Steinke

Churning butter was one of my first chores as a kid. The soured milk was put into a two-gallon stone jar with a lid that had a one inch hole in the center. The dasher was a wooden cross that fit inside the stone jar with a long wooden handle that came up through the hole in the lid. The dasher had to be forcefully raised and pounded into the sour milk to separate the butter fat from the milk. It seemed to take forever but was probably only 15 - 20 minutes. The butter first appeared as small pellets and had to be gathered together by hand.

Old Woman Churning Butter

 Fresh vegetables in season included peas (creamed peas and new potatoes was a delightful early season treat), roasting ears, beans in several forms, and squash. Applesauce was a staple, fresh in season and canned the rest of the year. Apple butter and various jams, jellies, and preserves were always on the table - delicious eaten with fresh butter and fresh-baked biscuits. In spring, Mom ate a variety of wild greens, but the rest of us didn’t share her fondness for them. We rarely had dessert for dinner, only if there were cookies, pie, or cake left over from the night before. After we ate, Dad always smoked a pipeful of Prince Albert tobacco to “let dinner digest” before going back to work.

Old Man With a Pipe - Dansail

Supper was about 6:00 P.M. It was usually a little heavier and simpler than dinner. Beans and cornbread, fodder beans and cornbread, or hanover (rutabaga) and cornbread were all staples. The fodder beans were dried, mature beans in the pod. They were pole beans usually planted in the corn so that they could climb the corn stalks - hence the name “fodder” beans. They were also called “beans in the britches,”  ”shuck beans” or “beans in the shucks.” They were picked when mature and hung on twine to dry in the sun. Then they were strung and cooked in the pods.  Boiled cabbage was also served with cornbread as were ramps in season. We often had desserts for supper - pie, cake, cookies, or more often, canned berries, peaches, pears, or plums. We ate canned fruit with sugar and cream.

Cooking Leather Britches

http://www.blindpigandtheacorn.com/blind_pig_the_acorn/2010/02/cooking-leather-britches.html

Fodder Beans/Leather Britches Cooking

We always had fresh cream. Cream (actually butterfat) from non-homogenized milk is lighter in weight than the non-fat milk so it rises to the top of a container within a few hours. It can then be skimmed off the milk. It is thicker than the whipping cream found in the dairy counters at supermarkets. It is rich, luscious, and delicious.

Saying Grace - Richard Brooks

For the blessings you've bestowed 

upon this home and on this family,
For all the days we've had together

and all the days to come,
For the joys and sorrows that 

bind us ever closer,
For the trials we've overcome,
And for teaching us that we 

can do no great things,
Only small things with great love,
Lord, we thank you.

http://home2.pcisys.net/~tbc/mealpryr.htm#prayer11_1

Suppertime

Jim Reeves - 1958

When I was just a boy in days of childhood,
I used to play till evening shadows come.
Then winding down an old familiar pathway,
I heard my mother call at set of sun:

Chorus:
Come home, come home,
It's supper time,
The shadows lengthen fast.
Come home, come home,
It's supper time,
We're going home at last.

Supper Time - Patrick Joseph Tuohy