Mrs. Miniver, Gluten Free Hot Cross Buns, and The New Normal

Gluten Free Hot Cross Buns (adaptable for plain dinner rolls)

Recipe Below

It's been such a long time since I've posted, being immersed for so long, like so many others in the busyness of daily life, full-time courses, children, husband, pets. 

I had strangely high hopes for this new year, and perhaps, as insane as it sounds, I wasn't that far off, but the goodness didn't quite come in the packages I expected. 

It was a strange feeling to have especially since the year started off quite badly, with losing my beloved companion and friend, my elder Pomeranian, Martha, on January 6.  I had to make what was hands down the hardest and most difficult decision of my life in letting her go.  I still miss her everyday and have moments where I get teared up by her absence.  This all coming from someone who has buried every single member of my immediate family by the time I was 38 (excluding my children.)  I'm also a hospice volunteer, so death and I were already old friends.  I thought certainly, especially since she had been suffering since I'd adopted her six years ago with a collapsed trachea that we had managed with medication, that in expecting the time to come eventually, it would some how be less painful. 

It wasn't.  

Her ashes sit in an urn behind the sofa, the sofa where she slept every night and where she and I enjoyed our quiet time together sans husband, children or our other dog Lucy every morning while I had my coffee.

To say her loss devastated me is an understatement. 

But I soldiered on.

In February, after my other dog exhibited signs of depression and loneliness we adopted another little dog who is simply wonderful.  But she is not and never can be, my beloved Martha. 

So even with that dark start, I still never saw the current conditions of the pandemic we are under coming.  Yet here we are. 

We count ourselves some of the lucky ones.  Having been a home schooling family for 12 years, when my older son got sent home, there was a feeling of familiarity and my younger son is still home schooled.  Because we are gluten free, and I was raised by poor people who survived the depression, I already shop ahead, and always stock up a little, just in case one of us got sick or the unexpected happens. I also am very blessed in having the knowledge of how to turn not much of anything into something to put on the table.  

Still, my children have feelings of uneasiness and we all seem to be holding our breath a little while fighting for a sense of normal as much as we are able. 

After many years of not making them, today I made hot cross buns for Good Friday.  The recipe came out quite perfectly and I can only call it divine intervention because usually gluten free recipes are tremendously unpredictable.  I've included it below. 

Every day, we count our blessings, reminding ourselves of how comparatively easy and 'first world' most of our current problems are.  We are not at war, infrastructure and staples are not in short supply, although we might have to be more patient and frugal.  We have a place to sleep at night.  We are blessed that we will survive on the income we currently have and so far, by the grace of God, we have our health.

If you're looking for something to remind you to count your blessings, I can't recommend Mrs. Miniver highly enough.  A 1942 view of life overseas during WWII.  She is the picture of keeping calm and carrying on.

In the words of W.H. Auden "Stagger onward, rejoicing."

Ingredients for gluten free hot cross buns (for plain dinner rolls omit spices, raisins).

• 2 cups of unbleached flour (Better Batter Gluten Free)
• ½ cup ground oats (whole, not quick) I grind my own in a processor as needed.
• 1/2 cup of sugar
• 1 packet of yeast (3 tsp) (I used Saf brand)
• 1 tsp baking soda
• 2 tsp baking powder
• ½ tsp extra xantham gum
• 1 cup of milk warmed to 110°F (whole)
• 1/2 cup (1 stick) of melted unsalted or salted butter
• 1 egg
• 1 cup of currants (or ½ cup raisins chopped)
• 1 teaspoon of salt (1/2 tsp of salt if using salted butter)
• 1/2 teaspoon of cinnamon
• Dash allspice
• Dash mace

Mix dough together adding ¼ cup loosely packed additional flour.   Scrape down the bowl and let it rest 15 minutes.  Turn dough onto lightly floured surface. Divide dough into portions forming into balls adding flour as necessary for handling. 

Form into 8 to 12 balls.  Place into buttered pan lightly touching. I used a dark spring form pan.

Let rise 40 to 45 minutes covered in plastic wrap in a warm area.  Bake 350 for 15 to 20 minutes, turn down heat to 325 and bake an additional 15 minutes or until knife comes out clean.  Remove from pan and let cool 15 minutes and apply icing.

Ingredients for Icing

• 1/2 cup confectioner's sugar
• 1/8 teaspoon vanilla extract
• 2 teaspoons milk

We Imagine That Time has Passed...

But has it?

The other day my son and I watched The Great Dictator starring Charlie Chaplin.  The year was 1940.  It would be more than a year before the United States would officially join World War II.  The world was reeling from Hitler's rise to power. At home in the United States, it would be another 28 years before Jim Crow laws were legally removed from the books.  We would then go on to enter two more wars, Korea and then Vietnam.  

Some 78 years later we still find ourselves struggling and resisting ideals and beliefs of separateness and hatred, of dissent and violence, and his speech is just as relevant, just as persuasive and just as painful as it was in 1940, when a man in power was calling for the encampment and extermination of a people who were different in religion, in heritage, in culture, and that of people who dissented, opposed or disagreed, and desired a pure, white, fresh faced nation.

It wasn't until 1920 that women received the right to vote and we fought hard for that right.  I hope that we as women will use our voting power to vote for good and righteousness.  After all, it was not so long ago that we were marginalized and unable to make our voices heard.  When we vote to remove rights away from one, we move towards removing rights for all. Let us learn and know our own histories and strive not to repeat them. 

On Tuesday November 6, here in the United States we have the opportunity to vote. 

I will be voting and I hope you will too. 

The Poetry of Life

"I'd rather be knitting." ~ Me

"The poetry of life always has a practical side to it, and most practical affairs rightly worked out are full of poetry."

(Lippincott's Home Manuals ~Housewifery by L Ray Balderston, A.M. ~ 1919)

In the midst of wearing more hats than the cap salesman  in Esphyr-Slobodkina's 'Caps for Sale,' (which was one of my older son's most favorite books when he was little) and feeling more like the monkey than the cap salesman, I took a few minutes to take a break and post on more pleasant and comforting mundane things.

In case you haven't noticed, America seems to be in awful state right now, so I'm not complaining for the gift of being rather busy.  Very busy in fact and very glad to be so.

The school year usually means a return to 'the busy,' but this year is particularly so, as I myself am also back to a full class load, partially on-line and in person, including a full-day Saturday Anatomy and Physiology class. So, my days go somewhat like this:

Monday through Saturday, alarm goes off at 4:30 a.m, and I am up by my second alarm at 4:45.  Monday through Friday, I get up and prepare husband's breakfast and oldest son's.  I also prepare their lunches.  I get them off to work and school, and most days both are gone by 6:30.  My husband's schedule varies.  Saturdays I get up and prepare breakfast for everyone to leave out for when they get up, eat, get myself together and leave for class at 7:00 a.m, waking my husband up when I go.

Sundays, I allow myself the luxury of sleeping in until 6 a.m. I prepare everyone's breakfast, try to slow down a little and plan my day.

Monday, my younger son who I home school, is normally at his father's house doing his schoolwork there.  That is my day to run errands, make appointments, get groceries or work on my own home work.  I get my older son off the bus every day around 2:30 or so.  and on Monday's he goes to his father's that night for dinner.   I still have my husband's dinner to prepare. Monday is also my baking and meal prep day if I'm going to make anything ahead.  I've hopefully planned our menu the afternoon before on Sunday.

Tuesday through Friday I normally have both children staying with me.  The youngest gets up around 8, has his breakfast (which I normally make, but he sometimes prefers to grab his own,) and does his morning routine and begins his schoolwork which is in a planner prepared each week by me on Sunday afternoons. He is fairly independent in most cases, and about half the things we go over together. He also takes some classes on-line.

I have the house cleaning and laundry broken out to a few items a day so I'm not overwhelmed. If I stick to this I'm in relatively good shape.  The dogs and birds get daily care.

Assuming there are no pressing mid-week appointments, I start the day with the making of the beds (my younger son makes his own), start any laundry if it's a laundry day, tidy the upstairs and baths, and then check the calendar, take anything from the freezer or prep for dinner if needed, have my own breakfast if I haven't already, and get to work.

I work most of the day on my own course work and household things that need to be done.  Because I'm up so early, I strive for at least a 20 minute nap in the early afternoon.  That doesn't always happen.  I try to shower either just before bed, or first thing in the morning after my husband and older son have left and my little one wakes up.   Then the afternoon is bus duty, more school work of my own and then dinner preparation and clean up.  My husband and sons do help where they can.

Bills, appointments, extra-curricular activities are all in the digital and paper calendars.  I have a third weekly calendar where I note what assignments I have due.

By Friday, my sons are either with me or their father every other weekend.  During the school semester, most of the weekend will be spent on coursework for me. When I have the boys, I try to keep that to early mornings and later evenings and make sure we have some fun time together.  I am of course in class on Saturdays from 8-2 from now through the Spring semester.

On Sundays, my boys are normally with their father and I try to visit a hospice patient if I have one.  I also do my weekly calendar, meal planning and my son's lesson plans for the week (which I've already prepared ahead of time during the summer months.)

Somewhere in there I try to rest.

I don't know that I've quite reached the level of poetry, but I have at least established a mostly reliable routine. My sons and husband do their share, and my youngest is learning to help with the cooking where he can.  (A blessing for his future wife.)

In between I squeeze in a bit of gardening, and was able to put up some elder flower and elderberry and wild black raspberry goodies this year, the Rumptof of course and hope to dry a batch of hops for tea, and I also to keep up with the inevitable little touches that make a house a home.

I have learned the hard way to let nothing wait until tomorrow if I can help it.  I planned for Halloween mid-September.  The decorations (although few in number and mostly vintage style black cats) were out almost a month ago.  Why? Practicality.  We cleaned out the garage at the end of August, and there was no good practical sense in taking things out and putting them back again only to take them out again three weeks later.

If it's dirty and I have a minute, I clean it.  If I find myself idle (say waiting for something to cook,) I put something away, or take a few minutes to read an assignment.  Somewhere in there, I also try to maintain contact with my older daughters, by at least texting or phoning weekly.  Sundays are usually the day my husband and I can enjoy a movie at home together if I don't have too much course work.

I promised myself on the decision of returning to school that I would not let my children's childhood suffer in any way if possible.  Yes there has been some belt tightening on mother's free time, but the baking of homemade goodies, the little reminders of holidays (even though they are much older now at nearly 12 and 15) and my youngest son's flights of fancy on random small projects, I do my best to indulge. Even if it's just for popcorn and a movie on the couch.  After raising two children to adulthood, the fact that the time flies and childhood is over faster than the two shakes of a lamb's tail is not lost on me.The time is so brief, yet its effects are so eternal on the minds of children, so I strive to keep in the forefront of my mind what my sons will think back on when they remember these days.   There is nothing wrong with demonstrating a good work ethic to your children by any means, but it also must be that joy and magic remain to feed the soul.

In all of this, I am looking forward to the winter break, the quiet, and some hand work.  And maybe, just maybe, a little rest.

Tradition ~ And why it doesn't always matter....

I have to admit it has been a ridiculously busy stretch for me from September to now, one which I always seem to so desperately try to avoid and yet fall into anyway.

It starts with back-to-school, which for most of my friends who are parents means quiet days as the children head away on the bus each  morning.  Only one of mine does, the other is still home schooled.  That means my presence is required every school day as though I were going to school with him on the bus. He is older now, 11, and with the gift of on-line learning now does four out of six subjects on-line and through video instruction, but I still need to be available.

The other young man who has special needs has a very difficult 6:15 a.m. bus time each morning for which I arise each morning at 4:45 a.m. to make sure he is up dressed, fed and packed for school and delivered safely to the bus.  I then have to be available again to get him off that bus at 3 p.m.

In between I have a husband who very much enjoys eating regular meals, a home to clean (for which I am grateful), the laundry of three males to do, two dogs, four little birds, household administrative duties (groceries, bills, etc...) and somewhere in there, my own enrichment.  

I am currently taking two distance courses which will increase to three in January and carry through May.  The garden is quiet now, but the snow if there is any must be kept up with and the outdoor bird feeders filled, and meals planned a little more regularly as easy, last minute shopping isn't always an option during the winter.

Overall, I have no complaints.  I am grateful for the home, the laundry, the two boys and the man I live with.  I am grateful for the food in our pantry and bellies, and the clothes on our backs.  I am grateful for the electricity and heat, and the clean running water.

And yet, there never seems to be enough hours in the day.

This past Thanksgiving was the most different I've had in over ten years.  Over the last decade we ate the day after Thanksgiving and invited family friends.  Sometimes there were as many as 16 or 17 people.  I cooked for a week before, turning out a turkey, a ham, five sides and pies and a birthday cake for my youngest son.  This year dear friends were experiencing some issues due to an upcoming surgery, other friends no longer attend, and my eldest daughter needed flexibility to work around her jam packed thanksgiving day meeting three other family obligations.

So we ate rather quietly and unceremoniously Wednesday evening, with only one kind of pie in a store bought gluten free crust and my son's birthday cake.  I made it all about turning 11 for a very special boy instead of a giant feast.  My heart wasn't in it this year.  And although a little sad (as change usually is), it worked out just fine.

My daughter and I discussed just how much we should really reschedule our annual Thanksgiving Day to sometime in October.... it's too close to Christmas... and food overload.  My son celebrates his birthday on the 29th, then Christmas, then my other son's birthday just after the new year.  It all felt too much all at once.  It always has.  But in the past I marathon-ed my way through it, checking lists as I went .... one... two.... three....!

It made me think about tradition and how much, in the end, it doesn't really matter all that terribly much.  My friend and I were discussing how it was all about getting together.... not the correct Thursday or the food.

This Christmas, my younger daughter will home for the first time in three years on Christmas.  We will all be together for a short time before we rush off in our prospective directions.

This sort of thing never would have been acceptable to my Grandmother.  We ate promptly at noon on Thanksgiving Day....if you were late they started without you.  Not coming home for the holidays despite the cause (unless it was complete bodily traction in the hospital) was generally frowned upon.  Sometimes the joy is in the simplicity and flexibility is beautiful.

It reminds me of the ever popular "pot roast" story, many variations exist:

The new bride is making her first big dinner for her husband and tries her hand at her mother’s pot roast, cutting off the ends of the roast the way her mother always did. Hubby thinks the meat is delicious, but says, “Why do you cut off the ends — that’s the best part!” She answers, “That’s the way my mother always made it.”

The next week, they go to the grandmother's house, and she prepares the famous roast recipe, again cutting off the ends. The young bride is sure she must be missing some vital information, so she asks her grandma why she cut off the ends. Grandma says, “that’s the only way it will fit in the pan!”

The moral of this story is; some traditions are temporary and by necessity, some we honor just because "that's the way we always do it," and some we have no idea why.  Are they necessary for the moment?  Not always.

As we go forward into the holidays keep this in mind.  Ask yourself what is really important?  What brings you joy?  What can you add and what can you take away?

Presence is often far more important than 'presents,' and sometimes that requires change.

Peonies and Ants ~ A Symbiotic Relationship

They say it is only a legend that the peonies need the ants to open, and that the reason for the ants visiting is that the peonies emit a sticky sap and nectar which the ants feed off of for a short time before and during opening.

I believe the two were designed to work together.  As long as a legend does no harm, 

I'll always choose the legend over reality because a good story is food for the soul.

Either way, 

once a year I am blessed to be able to enjoy an entire row of these luscious, creamy, sweet smelling flowers, indoors and out.

Serial Saturday ~ Independence Part III

Woman's Home Companion ~ August 1926

A New Feature ~ Stories presented weekly in a serial format.

'Independence' by Sarah Fletcher Milligan ~ Illustrated by Pruett Carter

Part III

Isabel was an attractive little woman as she trudged off to her meeting.  She was rather short and prettily rounded, with crinkly brown hair and a pink skin which flushed easily under excitement or pleasure.  she had a nice taste in dress and always managed to have a stylish and becoming hat.  This afternoon its summery brim shaded a tiny pucker in her brow, a pucker which was growing to be a more and more frequent occurrence.  At first it had merely indicated perplexity; now it spelled rebellion.

"I have had just about enough of this dictation," she mused, as she walked down the elm-lined street.  "Here I am, thirty-six years old, and cannot say my soul is my own!  I cannot even do the work in my own house in my own way!  I cannot go where I like or see whom I like nor do what I like and I am sick to death of it!"

It seemed to her that she would gladly exchange several years of her life for a taste of freedom.  As Belle Pike, she had been one of a large family and had had a delightfully carefree girlhood.  Where there are five girls and two boys coming and going, all about of an age and all full of liveliness and sociable habits, there is bound to be considerable latitude for each one.

Perhaps it was the law of opposites which had attracted her to the serious, conscientious young preacher.  She was proud of his ability and he was proud of her gay charm.  Then, after their marriage, with apparent unconsciousness, he had gathered the reins into his own hands and guided both his affairs and hers undisturbed by any doubts as to his own competency.

It left Isabel bewildered.  It was as though a gay yellow butterfly, accustomed to sunlight and warm caressing airy breezes, had flown through an open window into a room and could not find its way out.  The butterfly was not broken; it still flew around in evident activity but always within walls and now it seemed as though the walls were closing in, like those in a nightmare.

"I am getting older and older and there is nothing different ahead of me,: thought Isabel, wildly, as she mounted the steps of the Community House.

The speaker of the day had already begun her address, "Sociological Problems in America."  It  seemed a big subject to be handled that warm afternoon, just as they were about to adjourn for July and August and could not attempt much in problems before fall anyhow, and Isabel did not give full heed to the earnest lady who had come from out of town to start them untying sociological knots.  After awhile, however, she realized that they had arrived at point three, which was Marriage, and she suddenly sat up.

"Statistics show," declared the earnest one, "that more separations occur after eleven years of married life than at any other period either before or after.  When a man and a woman have been married eleven years the first illusions have worn away, the first romance has passed, charm is likely to have been buried in routine and life begins to seem like a treadmill.  This truth is most vividly portrayed in Pinero's 'Mid-Channel,' that realistic drama of married life.  the fact that so many separations take place during this vital period would seem to indicate--" She paused for emphasis and Isabel fiercely finished the sentence for herself:

"It would seem to indicate that after eleven years women have had about all they can bear and they can't stand it a minute longer!  I am an eleven-year woman and I know!"

She slipped out before the program was over.  On the way home she stopped at the library and took out "Mid-Channel" and so far had her desperate defiance advanced that when the hour came for mid-week prayer meeting she announced that she was not equal to going.  Then, when her husband was safely on his way, she sat up in bed and read the realistic drama of modern life.

Her sympathies were all with the poor heroine.  To be sure, it seemed foolish to quarrel so fatally over which hotel they should patronize on their pleasure trip but with sisterly insight Isabel realized that with matters at such high tension it would have been something else if it was not the hotel.

Serial Saturday ~ Independence Part II

Woman's Home Companion ~ August 1926

A New Feature ~ Stories presented weekly in a serial format.

'Independence' by Sarah Fletcher Milligan ~ Illustrated by Pruett Carter

Part II

"It would help some," he continued, "if you would always put things back into their right places as soon as you have finished with them.  Now this pan is dry,' he lifted it from the stove and put it up on a shelf, 'it ought to be put back and if all the handles were placed one way each one would be easier to pick up.  You ought to have separate places for spoons and knives.  As it is, you are likely to cut yourself with a knife trying to find a spoon."

"I was going to use that pan for frosting.  Then I'll be through here and I am due at the Women's League meeting, the last for the summer.  Perhaps I'll stop a minute at Mrs. Spicer's on the way home.  She has a book for me to read."

He had started toward the hall, but that arrested him. 

"If I were you I wouldn't go to Mrs. Spicer's today," he called back.  "You are going there pretty often and you don't want to run one place into the ground."

Sudden hot tears sprang to Isabel's eyes, partly from indignation and partly from disappointment.  She had been looking forward to the refreshment of a few minutes with Julie Spicer.  She loved Julie; they were warm, congenial friends and she could drop in at any time, sure of a welcome, a good laugh or an understanding which included, as a matter of course, absolute loyalty to any confidence.

"The next time I wish to go anywhere I will keep the idea to myself and just go," she thought, but she immediately yielded all intention of the Spicer visit that day.  It would be wildly imprudent in the face of Aunt Libby's coming.  Stephen would be provoked if his wife deliberately ignored his expressed opinion.  With Stephen, "If I were you" was just as effected as "Thou shalt not."  He declared his views with apparent mildness but if Isabel did not promptly act in accordance with them it aroused his anger.  His temper was not of the flashing variety, quick and crashing and sooner over; it was still and cold and unyielding.  Perhaps a more phlegmatic temperament than Isabel's could have battled it out on the same lines, but to her, lively, loving and companionable, an impregnable silence was a torturing thing.

To do him justice, Stephen Chapin did not realize that he was afflicted with a temper of any kind.  He was simply right and when his wife deliberately ignored that rightness he was astonished, grieved, hurt, and he managed to convey the impression to the culprit across the table.  There was unconscious histrionic ability in the Reverend. Mr. Chapin.  He could put his feelings "across" beautifully.  Perhaps that was why he was a good preacher.  He was no hypocrite; he always meant what he said but any thoughts that happened to lie too deep for words could be expressed wonderfully with a gesture, a shrug or a sigh.

Isabel had tried to harden herself against his disapproval and to learn not to care when these times came but she did not seem to make much progress at that.  The best she could do was to avoid trouble, to guard her tongue and watch her step, but even there she was not too brilliant a success.  There was a good deal of spontaneity left in her yet.

Serial Saturday ~ Independence Part I

Woman's Home Companion August 1926

A New Feature ~ Stories presented weekly in a serial format.

'Independence' by Sarah Fletcher Milligan ~ Illustrated by Pruett Carter

Part I

The Reverend Stephen Hopkins Chapin was passing through the kitchen.  It seemed to his wife that he was always passing through the kitchen and stopping to make suggestions on the way.  Today he noted the confusion of utensils on the table, the two sweet-smelling brown layers of cooling cake, the gas stove burning full-head and the moist beads on his wife's forehead as she stepped quickly around in the pantry.

"I should think," he commented, "You would plan to get our cooking done in the forenoon when it is cooler and not bake in the very hottest part of the day."

"I do plan, but what do you suppose happens to a plan when old Mrs. Whipple comes and stays an hour and a half?  She wanted to see you, but I told her you were preparing your prayer-meeting topic, so she stayed on with me.  Then that agent came and talked and talked and the telephone has rung every five minutes all day with somebody asking a question about the church sale."

"Of course everyone is liable to have interruptions; you have to allow for them when you plan your work."

It was on the tip of her tongue to retort, "You don't have them because I save you," but she kept the words back.  She did not want to say anything that might upset him, because Aunt Libby was coming the next day, Thursday, to stay over Sunday which was also the Fourth, and she wanted Aunt Libby to have a pleasant visit.

So, she quietly dodged around him as he stood in her path to the oven, wiped her fair flushed face and only answered placatingly, "I'll be through here in a little while,” hoping he would move on.

The Reverend Chapin held his ground in the middle of the floor.  He was unusually tall, a slender graceful figure topped by a sleek black head a trifle too small for his height.  His face was always white and his regular features were dominated by large dark blue eyes which ran the whole gamut of expression from vague vacuity, when he was dreaming out some theory, to the hardness of agate when he was opposed.  Opposition rarely occurred because he had an almost hypnotic way of making people believe that he was right.  However, the effects of hypnotism are not permanent and after eleven years of married life Isabel Chapin was well out from under the spell.  She knew that quiet frequently Stephen was wrong, but she kept that knowledge to herself.

"The trouble with you," went on Stephen, the omniscient, "is that you lack system.  If you worked with more system, you would not get so far behind."

Her mind leaped to his own system, which he never seemed to get perfected.  When he first came to Rockton he had made a complete card catalogue of his parishioners, their families and addresses, so that in the matter of calls he might deal all in exact impartiality, but unfortunately the A's had not grouped themselves into one neighborhood; they were scattered all over the village.  When he went to see Mrs. Adams it seemed very foolish not to call upon Mrs. Minot, who lived next door.  Besides, Mrs. Minot might feel hurt.  The sensible thing was to call on both, but it worked havoc with the system.  Some day he was going to do the whole thing over by districts and try that, but he had not got around to it yet.

"Housework is different every day," argued Isabel.  It doesn't seem to fit into a system.  You see, you are baking on one day and mending on the next and the interruptions are never twice alike; some take more time and some less."

She stopped, realizing that she had tried, quite futilely, to explain this to him at least once a week for a long time.  She might as well save her breath.  

She might indeed, for he was not half listening.

(To be continued....)

Homemade Bread, Marcel Waves and Holding Affection

From February 1925 Better Homes and Gardens ~ 'Let's Bake Some Bread'

"Whether home baking is a money-saver or not is a matter for each one to work out according to her own local conditions.  There is a wide diversity of opinion on the subject.  It is probably not much of a saving to bake bread for a family of two, but by the same token, it is not much trouble to make it!  It would be interesting and illuminating to take a census of all husbands' opinions, as to whether a fresh baking of homemade rolls or a fresh marcel in their wives' hair had the greatest power for holding affections!  It is possible, of course, that one can go so far as to greet one's husband occasionally with both."

How To Cook Husbands

I waffled a great deal about how and what to make the first post about.  The issue being, there was simply an endless supply of material to choose from.

  

Since I am newly remarried as of August 2016, I decided to start here, with Elizabeth Strong Worthington’s interestingly titled book ‘How to Cook Husbands.’

It is a thoughtful little book about the author's struggles with the idea of marriage and motherhood at the ripe old age of 34 in 1898 at the time of its writing.  My copy is from the 1907 printing.

Sadly, there is little immediately available information about the author to know how much of her story is truth or fiction, and whether she ever did indeed marry.  She did follow up with a companion book ‘The Gentle Art of Cooking Wives.’

My favorite part is the beginning pages.

I

A while ago I came across a newspaper clipping—a recipe written by a Baltimore lady—that had long lain dormant in my desk.  It ran as follows:

“A great many husbands are spoiled by mismanagement.  Some women go about it as if their husbands were bladders, and blow them up; others keep them constantly in hot water;  others let them freeze, by their carelessness and indifference.  Some keep them in a stew, by irritating ways and words; others roast them; some keep them in pickle all their lives.  Now it is not to be supposed that any husband will be good, managed in this way – turnips wouldn’t; onions wouldn’t; cabbage-heads wouldn’t, and husbands won’t; but they are delicious when properly treated. 

“In selecting your husband you should not be guided by the silvery appearance, as in buying mackerel, or by the golden tint, as if you wanted salmon.  Be sure to select him yourself, as taste differs.  And by the way, don’t go to market for him, as the best are always brought to your door.

“It is far better to have none, unless you patiently learn to cook him.  A preserving kettle of the finest porcelain is the best, but if you have nothing but an earthenware pipkin, it will do, with care.

“See that the linen, in which you wrap him, is nicely washed and mended, with the required amount of buttons and strings, nicely sewed on.  Tie him in the kettle with a strong cord called Comfort, as the one called Duty is apt to be weak.  They sometimes fly out of the kettle, and become burned and crusty on the edges, since, like crabs and oysters, you have to cook them alive.

“Make a clear, strong, steady fire out of Love, Neatness, and Cheerfulness.  Set him as near this as seems to agree with him.  If he sputters and fizzles, don’t be anxious; some husbands do this till they are quite done.  Add a little sugar, in the form of what confectioners call Kisses, but no vinegar or pepper on any account.  A little spice improves them, but it must be used with judgment.

“Don’t stick any sharp instrument into him, to see if he is becoming tender.  Stir him gently; watching the while lest he should lie too close to the kettle, and so become inert and useless.

“You cannot fail to know when he is done.  If thus treated, you will find him very digestible, agreeing nicely with you and the children.”