Great Grandmother's Kitchen

A lot of food safety rules weren't around when our great-grandmothers were planning their summer picnics, but after having worked almost 6 years in various aspects of food service, keeping food safe is important to me, especially as the temperature climbs!!! Here's a quick refresher for the most important ways to keep everyone healthy this Fourth of July weekend.

It's time for me to get a new sourdough starter going. With my previous experiment, I've been shocked at how easy it is, given the right conditions. My MIL gave me a starter for Amish Friendship Bread that someone at church had given her.

There is an odd juxtaposition about this blog, for me. Cooking, particularly the labor-intense work that our fore-mothers put into cooking daily from scratch, is to most a taxing symbol of a bygone age.

My husband's comment on the above picture: "Is that a threat or a promise?"


Since last time we talked about alcohol substitutions in food, I thought it would be helpful and interesting to do one on what our tea-totaling great-grandmother's would have consumed.

There are many reasons why someone might want to substitute alcohol in a recipe: while the one that comes to mind immediately for me is religious dietary restrictions, it may be as simple as not wanting alcohol in a dish which will be served to children.

How, though, do you know what to substitute, particularly if you, like me, do not consume alcohol, and so do not have an idea of what flavors you are looking for?

The huge gap since my last post is due to a move, so my apologies.

It's a little hard to believe in our modern era of brunch and flowers for Mother's Day, but having a day to honor mothers actually has a long history. The ancient Greeks and Romans honored mother goddesses such as Cybele and Juno during the spring. For our Medieval ancestors, this evolved into celebrating Lady Day on the Spring Equinox (around March 25th), in honor of the Virgin Mary. One of the early calls for a mother's day in America was the impassioned poetry of Julia Ward Howe, author of Battle Hymn of the Republic. In her Mother's Day Proclamation, Howe expresses her horror at the bloodshed of the Civil War, and calls on her fellow mothers to use their role within the home to teach their children peace, as well as to become an active voice for peace outside of that sphere.

On this date in 1802 Lydia Maria Francis Child was born. We don't usually recognize her name now, but your great-great( in my case perhaps one more great) grandmother would have. Her book, printed in 1829, The Frugal Housewife made her the Julia Child of the 1830's-50's.