March Flash Back Monday..
Well, it took five days, a new part and some time but we have hot and cold running water again. I can very happy to have that lovely hot and cold running water in the house and in the barn again.
It might be awhile before we use the hose as our well is refilling at around 18 inches or so per day, and it needs another 13 feet to be full, so it will be a number of days yet, we had enough water to turn it on Friday night check but we decided to do it Saturday in the daytime instead and we had a issue, turns out we need to replace a small itty bitty but very needed 3 dollar part and then we were sailing.
I am currently back to my careful summer water use, this means that we are using our rain roof collection systems to fill the 55 gallon drums and the sheep water trough and the big horse trough, taking those water needs off the well, and I will do all my laundry one load per day, somewhere in 3 to 5 days from now the well will ideally back to normal for the year.
Sadly I heard from my mom today that she will not be coming out after all this spring, I understand the reasons and I will see if I can get out late fall after the harvest is done or maybe I will come out for Christmas, Given that Hubby does not care about the season like I do, he will not mind much at all if I am not home.
This weekend was busy and fun filled, I left hubby at home on Friday evening and went to a dear friends for a little farm style house party, did not get home till late for me, and then Saturday had a lovely visit for a couple hours with friends and then did a tiny bit of shopping and back home to do chores and work..
Sunday was a true farm day, but it was also a lazy day, in the sense that while we got the water on line and we puttered and did chores everything was done in a calm quiet easy way.. it was a relaxed sunday..
I did not even make a sunday to do list.. It was just roll with the flow.. we do not have many of those days on the farm and we will have even less of them by the time the weather turns..
We got another 5 inches of the fluffy wet white stuff between Friday to Sunday, but at least the temps are slowly and carefully warming up..
The Chicks are growing fast and they are flyers for sure.. very nimble but I had hoped to get one that was a blue and sadly, I can see that she-he is not blue, certainly a dilute color yes, but blue.. No!
The rest of my chicks are ordered and I am just waiting on hatchings, I should have lambs coming in about 3 to 5 days, we will see if I am right or not.. I am basing my math on when the last girls lambed out and on the average that sheep cycle in the fall time wise.
Hubby is done the current work assignment at the end of March and it is a bit up in the air on what he will be doing and who he will be working when April rolls around but the positive is that it will be somewhere, and he does have a few leads on a couple different areas, so time will tell
My pea seeds are up and on first leaves, as are a few other things, and I will be doing a few more pots but the weather is just holding me off at this point.. I will put up a few pots of tomato soon so that I can move them to the green house for early spring tomatos, those ones will be the little cherry tomatos for our house use.
The hens are laying again and well right now, which is wonderful, its so lovely to have a flush of eggs coming in.
Ps, I am finally caught up on my posts for the March Challenges today, I maybe running late on some days but I am keeping up in the end and that is what matters to me.
Sometimes there had to be treats, near as I can tell Chocolate was a big thing in the day, everyone appears to be allowed a certain limited amount of a Chocolate bar..
But today, we are going to do Cookies, .I am in bake mode on the farm today and I am doing a cross over but we are going to pick the recipes that use less sugar because its rationed remember! I am struggling because most of the sweet recipes are using a new syrup.. yup, they are so excited for white, light or golden CORN syrup.. ekkkkk
So today instead we are going to focus on Molasses instead.
Bran Cookies
One cup of bran, one cup of white flour, one cup of milk, 1 tsp of soda, 2 tbsp. of sugar and half a cup of molasses, one egg an one cup of raisins, drop from spoon and bake. Notes say can egg can be dropped and ground oatmeal can replace Bran.
Thick Molasses Cookies
One an half cup of Molasses, one and half cups of fat, one an half cups of boiling water, 2 tbsp. of soda, half a cup of sugar 2 tbsp. of ginger 1 tsp of salt Barley flour add till you can roll it out as a thick mat. Cut it 1-3rd inch thick and bake
Oatmeal Macroons
2 eggs, 2-3rd Molasses, 2 tbsp. fat, 2 and half cups of rolled oats 1 tsp of salt and 1tsp baking powder, Mix and drop very thin on greased pans, bake for 5 min and cool.
Molasses Cookies
1 cup Molasses, 3 and half cups of barley or oat flour, 2 tsp ginger or pumpkin pie spice, half a cup of fat, 1 tsp of soda and 1 tsp of salt. Warm the Molasses and the fat together, add the other ingredients, roll very thin and cut into squares and bake
So we are going to offer a number of recipe today that use other grains then Wheat.. All recipes come from recipes books that say they are wartime recipes
Southern Spoon Bread
Scald 1 pint of milk, and pour it over 1 cup of corn meal and half a cup of cooked rice, allow to cool, add 2tsp fat, pinch of salt, 2 tsp of baking powder, 2 eggs beaten add into the baked dish and bake at 350 till brown, serve hot or cold
Corn Toast
2 cups of corn meal, 2 tbsp. of baking powder, 1 tsp of salt, 1 tsp of fat, 2 cups of milk, bake in a shallow pan, split, toast and serve
Potato Corn Muffins
1 cup of corn meal, 1 cup of leftover mash potato, 2 tsp sugar, 1 egg, 1 cup of milk, 1 tbsp. of baking powder, half tsp of salt and you can add 1 tsp of fat or not.. Bake and use quickly
Corn Meal Mush
2 cups corn meal pinch of slat, 2 cups of milk and 1 tbsp. of flour and 4 cups of water. Mix the cold milk, salt and four with the meal and stir slowly and carefully into the boiling water, boil for 30 min, pack the mixture into a dish to cool, then when cold, cut into slice thinly and then fry in fat
Corn Dodgers
2 cups of corn meal, 1 tsp of salt, 1 tsp of fat and 1 and 3-4th cup of boiling water. Pour the water over the other ingredients, beat it well and cool, form into 14 thin cakes and bake for 25 min in a hot oven, serve with bits of meat gravy
The above seem filling and I am sure they did a great job at that but I am also going to provide a really great recipes for corn bread, that use a little more
So lets talk about some southern Johnny Cake recipes, as sourthern cornbread is not typically done up sweet, here are a couple old fashion recipes, these recipes were first published in 1915 in the Five Rose Cookbook
Recipe #1
#2
Mix 3 cups of buttermilk with 2 small tsp of soda, 1 cup of sugar, 2 eggs a 1tsp of salt, 3 cups of cornmeal and one and cups of flour with 1 teaspoon of sifted cream of tarter in the flour. 3 melted tbsp of lard, mix very well.
#3-No eggs
Bake them all in a hot oven in a greased cast iron pan, ideally preheated first and then add batter and then bake till golden brown..
Every Little bit was used.. a lovely comment came on the blog, thank you for taking the time to write me, I have been loving the comments from all the regulars and from new folk 🙂
as an elderly person and a wartime baby, i am loving your blog, my last meal will hopefully be cow tongue. we ate lots because those were the parts that were given to us free.
So it seemed a good idea to share my favorite way to eat tongue- I like to brine the meat, turning it into corned beef,
But we have also eaten a number of other scrapes that make excellent meals
Chicken heart stew was yum
Duck Blood Soup recipe, trust me, this is one of the best blood recipes
Any many more organ recipes are listed for sheep heart, duck lung, and so forth are in the recipe page of the blog
What was your favorite way your family did a organ meat, what was your families least liked way they prepared organ meat.. Do you know that for four years one of my most popular posts on the blog is Rabbit Liver Pate
Its hard to believe that the past week as flown by in a crazy manner but its fish Friday again..
But we are going to take a Canadian slant today.. Lobster.. yup, Lobster, the fisherman were in huge hurting because with the war there went the ability to have the market, it was highly encouraged to be buy lobster in Canada to support our own homegrown fisherman and their livelihood.
http://wartimecanada.ca/essay/eating/food-home-front-during-second-world-war
Early in the war, Canadians were asked to contribute voluntarily to Canada’s food export commitments by avoiding foods that were needed in Britain and by consuming more Canadian foods whose European export markets had disappeared and were, therefore, threatening farmers and fishermen with massive unused surpluses. Apples and lobster were two of the earliest foods to be rebranded as “patriotic” after the export markets for both products collapsed. In December 1939, for instance, the Department of Agriculture began running glossy advertisements with the message: “Serve apples daily and you serve your country too.” Magazines such as Canadian Home Journal repeated such messages by publishing articles with titles like “It’s Patriotic and Pleasant to Eat Canadian Lobster” and which included recipes for patriotic dishes like Lobster Cocktail, Lobster à la King, and Lobster Sandwiches.
Sorry folks, I do not have any lobster in the house to make a dish with, and I have not gotten to the stores this week to make it happen.. still I do find it a touch funny that a food that we now consider to be a royal treat was at one time pushed for the average folks to enjoy and support..
In Canada if you canned food, you could ask for extra sugar in order to do it, and you would granted a extra ten pounds of sugar, I would expect that most folks used it to put up jams, jellies and fruit, it makes no sense that you would use the sugar to preserve food that could be put up with vinager if possible.
Fermented food was consider a norm when it came to cabbage and pickles.
There was a huge push for the housewives of the day to put up as much food as possible, the recipes and methods are something I am having a issue with, I have found lots of pages that I could be sharing but almost everything I am ready is now considered unsafe.. from what to can, what amounts to use and even at times how it was processed afterwards..
So instead I am going to give a nice recipe from the blog in terms of canning.. but it needed to be a old family recipe so this recipe was done in my own family back in the day.. I know that Grandma made this on the farm, and she passed this recipe down to me as a child along with my mother and I share it now with you..
Which brings me to a little story, a few canning recipes and nod to my Grandma D and my dear momma for sharing, teaching and passing those lessions on down.
I remember Grandma helping can when she came to the farm I was on as a little one, and and I believe this is Grandma Recipe, but if there is one thing I have learned is that with as many aunties as I have, there seems to be almost as many tweeks to these recipes as there are relatives.. so if you have a different version, let me know and I will add it.
So back in the day, pinapple was a HUGE treat and one that could not be easily come by for the average family, nor would it have stretched very far with the size of the family.
So along comes Mock Pinapple to the rescue. If at all possable you want to grow Marrow Sqaush, I can’t find it in any catalog these days but you can get it at seed-savers, or for me locally, I can find it at Seed Saturday still being raised each year by some familys that sell open and old seeds locally each spring. This is a huge oval yellow sqaush. In a pinch, you can use large overgrown zucchini, by which I mean at least two or three feet long and allowed to get quite hard but not fully ripe either, you can tell the difference by the seeds, if the seeds have turned to the point of being able to collect them, don’t use for this recipe.
When its ready to havest you can then peel it, and take all the seeds out, (Peels to piggy, seeds to chickens) and then you cut it into stripes and then cut the stripes into cubes that will look very much like a pinapple tidbit, Fill your big old steel roaster (the one that covers two burners for canning) and fill it up, measure your cups, and you want a 1 to 4 rato in terms of sugar, so if you have 40 cups of fruit, you want ten cups of sugar, mix the fruit and sugar together, slap the lid on and let it sit overnight on the counter.
In the morning, the sugar will have pulled the juice out of the marrow fruit and will be most likely covering the fruit, Put your pot on the nice med heat and start getting your jars ready, (cleaned, boiled and held in boiling water to keep very hot etc), now take three to six lemons and fine slice them, I am talking maralade thin, and then cut each wheel into six and add them and the juice to the marrow, at this point if you have it, you can also add one huge can of pinapple(but you don’t have to if you don’t have it). Bring to a boil and cook for about 20 to 40 min, you want the marrow to turn a golden clear color, they will look very much like pinapple when ready, then hot can like normal.. Remember to wipe your mouths down with straight vinager, not water to help make sure you are not bringing added germs into the jar. Hot water bath the jars for 15 min pints, and 20 min for quarts.
They will keep in good qaulity for up to two years and then start to lose firmness, at which point, you can use them in baking but they will not be as good for fresh eating. This is a way to take a very little pinapple and make alot of pinapple lookalike,taste a like.
Just another Day on the Farm 
