NORTH POLE KITCHEN

Some years back Mike and I simplified the holiday gift exchange by sending a family gift to the households of our adult children. (Grandkids are still remembered individually.) And last year I decided to develop that family gift in my kitchen instead of ordering pre-packaged goodies. Using a recipe I discovered during the summer (and tested on Jack during his visit), I developed a kit containing pre-measured sugar, a mixture of flour and cornstarch, and a bag of M&Ms. Gramma Kathy Claus' kitchen was a mess today as I measured (and spilled) flour and corn starch! Participants will need to provide a pound of butter and some vanilla.

Here's the recipe: M&M Shortbread Cookies

1 cup butter (no substitutes, softened)

½ cup sugar

1 tsp vanilla

2 cups flour

¼ cup cornstarch

1 cup M&Ms chocolate candies

Preheat oven to 300 degrees. Line baking sheet with parchment paper; set aside.

Mix butter, sugar and vanilla thoroughly using an electric mixer. Gradually blend in flour and corn starch. Stir in 1 cup candies.

Form into 1-inch balls and place on parchment-lined baking sheets. Gently flatten each cookie using fingers or a flat-bottomed drinking glass (dipped in sugar to prevent sticking).

Bake for 25 to 30 minutes or until bottoms begin to brown.

Cool for 5 minutes; remove to a wire rack to cool completely.

For my project, I doubled this recipe.

This wasn't all I did in my kitchen today. I have some Dept. 56 pieces from the Original Snow Village, and through display, the bottle brush trees at the Village Christmas Tree Stand had faded in the sun, turning an ugly brown. I had long pondered how I could re-color those trees, and this year I took courage through online tutorials dealing with the very subject. I bought some dark green fabric dye and prepared about half the box in two cups of hot water. I discovered that all I needed to do was to dip each tree in the dye, then rinse it in cold water. Voila! Instant tree renewal! And how many years have I put up with those ugly trees?KW

ICE BOX NUT COOKIES

I love pre-Christmas on the "web." More specifically I will sign up for email from any advertiser offering a daily dose of Christmas cookie recipes. "Why do you get all this spam?" asked Grandson Jack. "Because I sign up for stuff," I answered, to which he responded with a knowing nod.

But perhaps nothing is as much fun as a vintage "find." Here's a recipe I found tucked into the top of Grandma Ina's recipe box, written by one of her daughters, I think. It's not really a Christmas cookie recipe, I suppose, but I figure any cookie can be a Christmas Cookie. It seems as Christmas-like as many of those I receive in my email.

The original recipe reads as follows:

¾ cup fat (scant) – I used ¾ cup Crisco

2 cups brown sugar

2 eggs

1 tsp vanilla

3 ½ cups flour

1 tsp soda

½ tsp salt

1 cup nut meats

Cream fat, add sugar gradually, eggs slightly beaten, vanilla, and flour sifted with soda and salt. Stir in chopped nuts. Work smooth, pack into a buttered pan and set in ice box or any cold place overnight. Slice thin and bake in oven at 400 degrees till brown. You'll find 3 cups of ordinary flour too much but dough must be very stiff or it will be too rich.

I followed the method as specified, using my stand mixer to mix all ingredients. I don't know what "too rich" in the last sentence means, but I worked in all the flour. I packed the dough into a baking dish approximately 9x13, but another time I might use a bread pan so that the cookies are of bigger dimensions. I notice Mike takes them two at a time.

And – after burning the first tray to a crisp, I cut the heat to 375 and baked the cookies 6 to 7 minutes. I did find that they burn quickly, probably because of the high sugar content.

The next time I'll use butter for the fat and two teaspoons of vanilla. KW

HAPPY HALLOWEEN -- LUCIFER’S LIMITED LIABILITY CHILI

Hallie reported that Nick spent last Sunday perfecting his chili recipe. On Monday, he won the chili contest at work. Hallie said the $50.00 gift certificate paid for the chili ingredients. (Hallie -- who thinks so much like Mike.) Anyway, Nick sent us the recipe and said that we could share it.

LUCIFER'S LIMITED LIABILITY CHILI

½ lb. thick-cut bacon (cut into 1" pieces)

1 large white onion (chopped)

4-5 Jalapeno peppers (sliced)

5-6 large garlic cloves (minced)

2 ½-3 lbs. cubed beef (chuck or "stew meat")

1 can (15 oz.) – tomato sauce

1 can (15 oz.) – pork 'n beans

1 can (15 oz.) – pinto beans (drained)

1 can (15 oz.) – light or dark red kidney beans (drained)

3 tbsp. chili powder (Gebhardt's is good)

½ to 1 ½ tsp. Cayenne powder or red pepper flakes

1 tsp. Mexican oregano

1 tsp. cumin

2 tbsp. spicy brown mustard

Black pepper to taste

Instructions:

Cook bacon in large stock pot. Remove bacon and set aside. Leave grease in pot. Add onion and jalapeno to bacon grease and sauté for a few minutes. Add garlic and continue cooking mixture until onions are nearly translucent. Add meat and cook until brown. Once the meat has thoroughly cooked, drain excess fat. Add remaining ingredients (saving 1 tbsp. chile powder and 1 cup chicken broth for later) and bring to boil. Reduce heat to low and simmer 2 hours. Add remaining chile powder and additional chicken broth as needed to achieve desired consistency and simmer an additional 1-2 hours until meat is tender.

Apparently there was a joke between Hallie and Nick as to whether or not he omitted a key ingredient from the list. Well, that's an old joke, you know. "Back in the day," when housewives depended upon one another for new recipes, the accusation that something was left out was common. Suppose you asked Mrs. Jones for her wonderful devil's food cake recipe. She might prefer not to share it, and instead of answering honestly she might answer vaguely and never give it to you, or she might give you the recipe with a key ingredient missing or an incorrect amount. When you tried the recipe, it just wasn't the same as hers. You would then wonder if she deliberately sabotaged the recipe so that she would be the only one who could make it or if she made an honest mistake in writing it out. Or – maybe you just weren't as good a cook as she. Anyway, we don't struggle so much with this issue any more. It's all online anyway. Unless Mrs. Jones develops original recipes in her own kitchen, you can find it online.

We're having chili for supper tonight, but not Lucifer's Limited Liability. I eat chili sparingly and keep it mild. Instead, we'll use pheasant meat, home-grown tomatoes, a can of kidney beans, and McCormick's seasoning mix. I'll serve it with sour cream, cheddar cheese, and blue corn chips – all low fat. I'll make pumpkin pie for dessert with a recipe I found at The King Arthur Flour Company website. There will be no trick-or-treaters in this place. But – we might watch an old horror movie or two – unless we're watching football. KW

THE DORCAS CIRCLE COOK BOOK, 1933

ISSUES COOK BOOK (from the Clearwater Tribune of Friday, December 8, 1933)

"The Dorcas Circle of the local Christian church has issued 100 copies of a special cook book, or book of recipes for special culinary items. The book is of the loose-leaf type and contains in the neighborhood of 80 recipes, each one of which was furnished by an Orofino housewife and bears her name at the bottom. Each recipe is for a special dish considered to be par excellence. There are 40 pages in the book, including title page and index. They will be sold at 75 cents each and most of them had been sold in advance. Mrs. C. O. Portfors, to whom the books were delivered, asks that those who have signified a desire for one of the books to call and get them. She has done considerable work and of course spent considerable time in connection with getting them out and feels proud of the result. The Tribune did the printing."

It's just a little black leather loose leaf "Snap-It" memo notebook – the kind a man might have carried in his shirt pocket. I found it in a box of clippings and recipe booklets that had been stored in the basement of my mother's house. I didn't recall having seen it before. It didn't look like a treasure, but the yellowed pages said differently. A title page announced "The Dorcas Circle Cook Book, Orofino, Idaho, 1933," and it was recognizable at once as a group fundraising cook book. Flipping through the pages, I saw many familiar names – women who were of mature years when I was a child in the '50s – Oud, Tucker, Kimball, Stalnaker, Wunderlich, Soderberg, Merrill, etc. Both my mother (Mrs. Dorothy Walrath) and my grandmother (Mrs. C.O. Portfors, mentioned in the news clipping above) had contributed recipes. Beyond that, the booklet included blank pages where my mother had pasted some clipped recipes. Her copy also included some lined pages on which she had written a number of recipes by hand. It was surely one of Mother's first efforts to organize the recipes that caught her attention. Quite a treasure indeed!

So – I knew about the Dorcas Circle Cook Book. And then, to my utter delight, I chanced to come across the clipping quoted above which provided more information. I was transcribing some letters written by my great-Aunt Bertha. Now Bertha, my dad's aunt and Grandma Ina's sister, lived on a farm above Orofino, while my mother's family were "town folk" in the same era. Of course, the "hometown weekly" newspaper, the Clearwater Tribune, served the general area, and Bertha was responsible to submit the Gilbert farm community "news items" (gossip). She would then clip the Gilbert column from the paper and enclose it in her letters to her sisters in Drain, Oregon. Eventually a second cousin sent eight of Aunt Bertha's 1930's-era letters to me with enclosures intact, and on the backside of a clipping, I found the above item about the Dorcas Circle Cook Book. Well, the little cookbook just seemed to come to life when I read that clipping.

Yes, I will share some of those vintage recipes with you from time to time. KW

[The photo is of my mother and her first husband, Fairly Walrath, at the time of their engagement, December 1928.]

BETA CAROTENE FOR DINNER

My mother mentioned to me once or twice that she had clipped a recipe that involved wrapping a sweet potato roll in ground beef. She had never tried the recipe, she said, but she wanted to. Who knows why she didn't try it. Perhaps she lost track of the recipe, or maybe trying such a recipe just didn't fit her routine. But I came across the recipe again last week, and since I found myself with sweet potatoes I need to bake and plenty of ground meat in the freezer, I decided to give it a try.

The recipe calls for two cups of mashed sweet potatoes, 1 ½ tsp salt, 1/8 tsp pepper, 2 tbsp butter, and 3 tbsp milk. I can tell you now it's too much salt. Just ½ tsp would be enough, I think. After mashing the sweet potatoes, I used my mixer to blend the ingredients. I found it fairly easy to make the sweet potato roll, which I wrapped in waxed paper and put in the refrigerator.

I then took a pound of ground meat and mixed with one egg and a teaspoon of dried minced onion. Sensing I had used too much salt in the sweet potatoes, I cut back the salt in the meat to ½ tsp. Since I was using a pound instead of 1 ½ pounds of ground meat, I didn't have enough meat to wrap over the ends. It worked out okay anyway. I removed it from the oven after 30 minutes at 350, but Mike and I agreed it wasn't done. So I turned the heat to 375 and baked for another 15 minutes.

Now that I've tried the recipe, I wouldn't hesitate to do so again. I'd cut way back on the salt and maybe even dress up the meat with more onion and barbecue sauce.

Having served a meal built around sweet potato, I wouldn't normally choose to make a pumpkin dessert, but I had a cup of canned pumpkin that needed to be used, so I made a pumpkin ice cream dessert. I mixed the pumpkin with sugar and spices and then blended it with softened vanilla ice cream. Next I poured the pumpkin ice cream mixture over gingersnap crumbs and put it in the freezer. Or, you could just soften some pumpkin ice cream and pour it over a bed of gingersnap crumbs. Or – you could just eat your pumpkin ice cream with a gingersnap. Just depends on how much you want to fuss. KW

KATHY’S “NO PORK” CAKE

Okay. I admit it. The pork cake did not work out well. Pigs in this century are bred to be lean, whereas in my great-grandmother Lucy's day, quality fat was to be had from the pig's back. Or, maybe they just didn't know anything else. The fat I used resulted in a product that wasn't smooth and therefore eating it was not a pleasant experience. When the cake wasn't quite so fresh – and we had plenty that wasn't quite so fresh – it began to taste – well, "porky." The taste of the fat seemed to come through. Mike made the same unsolicited observation.

So I decided to take the same recipe and substitute ½ cup butter and ½ cup of my homemade applesauce for the pork fat, which of course, makes the cake something that isn't pork cake. Now I have an applesauce cake, and after having experimented with this recipe, I admit that I have a better recipe for applesauce cake on file. You know how it is – you're in a recipe rut and you know it. You want to break out of the rut and try something new (or something old), so you start reading recipes. You land on one that appeals to you, but as you read it, you begin to mentally make substitutions according to what you have on hand or what you like. In the final analysis, the new recipe looks like your old tried and true recipe and you're back to square one. I'm afraid that's the case with the pork cake.

Recipes change over time according to what is available, affordable, and fits nutrition trends. We don't eat like we did in Grandma's day – whatever that day was – and that's probably a good thing.

[The first photo is the family of my great-grandparents, Lafe and Lucy Dickson, taken in the late 1880s. Standing are Ina (my grandmother), Bertha, Ben, and Ida; seated beside their parents are Mabel and Frank. The second photo is the extended family of Lafe and Lucy Dickson who are seated in the center. Grandma Ina stands just behind Lafe's left shoulder. Her husband, June Dobson, is to her left with their daughters Myrtle and Ethel behind him. My dad is probably one of the children seated on the lawn.] KW

ORANGE LOAF

When I was growing up, my sister Nina often brought her children and came to our house for the weekend. She and Mother would sew – it seems like there was always something in progress. Of course, they had a built-in baby-sitter / helper – me -- and they took advantage of that. I could watch kids, prepare meals and snacks according to directions, wash dishes, and do other odd jobs so that they could keep working. I have good memories of those times.

I remember how Nina loved "orange loaf." It seems like she was always bringing an orange loaf when she came – orange loaf or sponge cake -- and I seem to remember she was ever experimenting to perfect her recipe. Though I didn't say so, I thought it was sort of silly – this orange loaf business – a lot of time spent on something that didn't even have chocolate in it. It was a little too delicate and refined for my tastes in those days. But in recent months I guess I got a little hungry for orange loaf, and the memories flooded back. I looked through cookbooks and searched online but was not satisfied with what I found. But to my joy, when I brought Mother's recipe box back from the farm, I found the old Betty Crocker recipe for orange loaf glued to a card and tucked right in front of the box. The spattered, yellowed paper attests to its age and use.

Yesterday I bought an orange and cake flour. I grated the rind of the orange, then juiced it to make ½ cup of orange juice, pulp, and rind. I mixed the ingredients according to the recipe making only one concession – egg substitute instead of eggs. Well, I say one concession, but I didn't sift the ingredients. A sifter-of-ingredients I am not! Then I slipped the batter into the oven along with other supper items – a frozen barbecued pork chop and sweet potatoes. The loaf baked up so nicely and was delicious.

By the way, in adding the egg subs to the batter, the beaters caught the liquid and tossed it across the counter and all over the old recipe. Of course, I didn't expect that to happen. I quickly cleaned the recipe card. As sorry as I was to splatter once again the treasured old card, I was glad it wasn't my laptop! KW

DOVES IN SOUR CREAM

This recipe, a family favorite, was in Mike's collection when I married him.
Flour 6-8 doves in seasoned flour, shake off excess. Brown well in butter or margarine (about 1/2 cup). Pour oil in casserole. Pour in 1/2 cup sherry, sprinkle with paprika and add a good pinch of marjoram leaves. Cook (covered) at 350 degrees about 30 minutes. Put about 1/2 cup sour cream in gravy and cook about 10 minutes longer until hot. Season with salt.

I used a crockpot chicken recipe to cook the chukars. I believe it is called "Chicken Delish."
4-6 whole chicken breasts
1 can cream of mushroom or cream of chicken soup
1/3 cup dry sherry or white wine
1/2 cup sour cream

I find it works best to dredge breasts in flour in order to thicken the sauce. (You can brown the breasts or not.) Place chicken in crockpot. Pour soup/wine mixture over the chicken, seasoned to taste. Cook on low 6-8 hours or high 4 hours. Add sour cream before serving and allow to heat on low another 15-30 minutes.

I don't know anything about cooking with wine. We've always just used cheap sweet wine and have come to love the sweet flavor. If you're trying to duplicate my dishes, you'll need some Boone's Farm. KW

VANCE’S PRALINES

Mom and Daddy enjoyed making sweet confections during the holidays. Pralines were a favorite. Nina made them, too. This is the recipe I found in my box, which evidently was Daddy's. I'll try to remember to check Mother's box next time we're at the farm to see if she used a different recipe.

1 cup white sugar

1 cup brown sugar (packed)

¾ cup medium heavy cream

1 T butter

1 T water

2 T white Karo

1 t vanilla

Dash salt

1 c pecan halves

Combine sugars, cream, syrup, water, butter and salt. Cook over medium to low heat to 235 degrees on candy thermometer. Stir frequently with wooden spoon. Remove from heat, add vanilla and cool for 10 minutes. Stir candy briefly and add pecans. Continue to stir but stop before candy loses gloss – "very iffy." Best to butter round spots on cookie sheet, put 3 pecans on each spot and cover with candy.

[The last three days have been sunny and bright. Nellie is convinced spring has sprung. In the words of an old American standard: "I'd say that she has spring fever, but it isn't even spring." She pesters for a walk. When we get back from a walk, she pesters for another. If we don't go, she sulks. Photo is of a sulking Nellie.]

STUFFED GREEN PEPPERS

While growing up, stuffed green peppers was one of my favorite dishes, but when I asked my mother for her recipe, she said, "I just make them." As a novice cook, not having the confidence to "just make them," I tried a number of recipes. Then came the years when the children didn't especially care for them (remember Calvin's "monkey brains"?), and now it's been years since I made them. Referring to my oldest cookbooks, here are some suggestions.

4 medium green peppers

½ lb ground beef

½ c chopped onion

1 can condensed tomato soup

2 c cooked rice

1 t Worcester

½ t salt

Dash pepper

Remove tops and seeds from peppers; cook in boiling salted water about 5 minutes; drain. Brown onion and beef; stir in ½ can soup and remaining ingredients. Spoon meat mixture into peppers; place in a 6-cup casserole. Bake in a 375 oven for 30 min. Heat remaining soup and served over peppers. 4 servings.

I happen to like a slice of cheese (cheddar, American or Velveeta) melted over the top as well.

Checking other recipes, I find they are much the same, with the exception that tomato sauce is used instead of tomato soup and amounts of this and that vary, of course. It seems to me that 2 cups of rice to half a pound of ground beef is rather a lot of rice, but you can vary that according to what you have on hand or what you like.

I don't remember that my mother parboiled the green peppers. I rather like that crunchier texture. Also – if you did want to tenderize the peppers first, you could do so in the microwave and save yourself some work.

I just performed a blog search using the word MEATLOAF, and our postings from last year came up. My meatloaf recipe is there as well as some other great suggestions. If you have further questions, let me know. KW