Throwback Thursday: Three People

Here's my caption:

"Now, Hiram, stop gawking at those people over there and look at the camera."

That's my caption, what's yours? Feel free to leave your caption in the comments below.

Memory Monday: My Family and Cinnamon Rolls

My paternal grandmother

OUR FAMILY AND CINNAMON ROLLS

Through the generations, homemakers have made cinnamon rolls to feed their family and friends. Through the years, the recipes have changed on how to make these wonderful breads. Following are three recipes—the first one could have been used by one of my grandmothers (unfortunately she passed away when my dad was nine). The second one was made my other grandmother and I ate them when my husband and I visited her. The last one is one I made almost every week for a coffee service I did on Sunday morning at church. It’s interesting how the recipes have changed through the generations.

White Yeast Bread
(from the pamphlet Five Cent Meals, 1914)
3 quarts flour
2 tablespoons salt
2 tablespoons sugar
1 quart hot water
2 yeast cakes stirred into cup of lukewarm water
2 tablespoons lard or other fat
Put lard, sugar and salt in large pan or bowl and add the hot water. When lukewarm add the dissolved yeast and about 5 pints of flour. Stir until smooth, add the remaining flour and mix well. Turn the dough on to a board and knead until it is smooth and elastic. Place in a well-greased pan, greasing the top of the dough and cover with clean cloth. Place where it will keep at a warm, even tempera ture. When the dough has raised to double its size, which will be in about 11/2 hours, knead it again, form into loaves, grease the outside of the loaves and place them in a baking pan. Let the dough rise until it is again double its size, which it should do in about one hour, and bake for one hour in a moderately hot oven.
The temperature at which bread dough is kept is one of the most important things about bread making. Yeast is a plant, and too much heat will kill it, while a low tempera ture will keep it from growing and forming the gas bubbles which make the bread light. Bread must be baked thor oughly in order to be wholesome. For this reason it is best not to make the loaves much, if any, larger than the common bakers' loaf, which weighs 12 ounces. This recipe will make eight such loaves.
When the loaves are done place them sidewise on a rack or table, so that the air will circulate freely around them. If a soft crust is desired, cover the bread while cooling. When perfectly cold, place in a jar or tin box.

Cinnamon Rolls
Roll bread dough to inch thick, at second kneading, spread with fat and sprinkle with sugar and cinnamon, roll into a long roll, cut into inch slices, grease these on the outside, place in baking pan, when they have risen to twice their size, bake.

My maternal grandmother

CINNAMON ROLLS

(as near as I can remember how she told me to make them)

1 package frozen Rhodes rolls

Cinnamon

Sugar

Powdered Sugar

Margarine

Milk

Thaw rolls. Pat each one slightly to make a small disk. Sprinkle cinnamon and sugar over each flattened roll of dough. Fold each on in half to make a semi-circle, then fold again to make a pie-slice shape. Place dough pieces in a greased 9” x 13” pan and allow to rise until double in size. Bake for 20 minutes in a pre-heated 350 degree oven. When done, remove from oven and allow to cool slightly before topping with icing. Icing—mix powdered sugar, margarine and milk.

Me, years ago

CINNI-MINNIS

3 c. + 6 T bread flour 

2 eggs 

1/2 c. pineapple juice 

1/2 c. water 

3/8 c. granulated sugar  

1/2 t. vanilla extract 

1/2 stick butter or margarine (4 T.) 

1/4 t. salt 

2 1/4 t. active dry yeast

1 lb. powdered sugar

Cinnamon

3 T. butter or margarine

1 T. vanilla

2-4 T. milk or more depending on how thin you want it

Put in eggs, pineapple juice, water, sugar, ginger, vanilla extract and softened butter or margarine in the tub of the bread machine. Add flour. Then add the yeast last. Set bread machine to dough stage.

When cycle ends, take dough from bread machine and knee it on a floured surface a few times. Pat it out to a rectangle apx. 16” x 8” (This is not a set size. Sometimes my dough rises more than others, then I have more dough to press out.) Using a pizza cutter, cut the dough in half length-wise. (At this point, I usually pat and stretch it a little more.)

Taking one of the dough halves, sprinkle cinnamon down the middle (this again isn’t an exact amount—depends on if your family likes a lot or a little). Roll the dough jelly-roll-fashion, then pinch the edges closed tightly. Cut it into fourths, then each piece into six slices. Put slices into a greased/sprayed 9” x 13” pan. Repeat with other half of the dough.

Let rise until double or triple in size in a warm place for about an hour or so. (I usually turn the oven on to “Warm” while I am shaping the dough, then turn it off. I also put a small bowl of water into the warm oven to keep the dough from drying out as it rises. This way it only takes about 30 minutes to rise.) Take pan from oven when ready to pre-heat oven.

Preheat oven to 400 degrees Bake for appox. 19 minutes. 

While rolls are baking, make icing. Mix powdered sugar and butter together with a fork. Add vanilla and enough milk to make a thin icing (more of a drizzle). 

As soon as you remove the rolls from the oven, spoon the icing over the rolls. The icing will melt down around the rolls and everyone will get their fair share.

I know mine seems the most involved, but remember the bread machine does most of the work—and I get all the credit for how good they are.

Do you have recipes which you make differently from your mother or grandmother?

Throwback Thursday: Boy Outside

"Just digging for worms to go fishing with."

There's my caption, what's yours? Feel free to leave it in the comments below.

Memory Monday: The Last Doll

THE TRADITION OF THE LAST DOLL

At Christmas when I was in the fourth grade, my parents gave me a 36-inch walking doll. If you stood behind her, held her shoulder, and gently pivoted her on one heel, the other leg would shift forward. In doing this repeatedly and alternating from right to left, you could make her walk. Now understand, I didn’t even know about walking doll in the fourth grade, but I think my mother thought they were terrific, so I got one for Christmas. Not only that, but I was told that she was my last doll (at least from them). I don’t know if it was because she was my last doll or because she was so big (she could actually were my little sisters’ clothes at the time), but I took care of her.

 Years later, my husband and I had a little girl. And as you can probably guess, I put my doll (I never did name her) in our daughter’s room and she would play with her.

A couple of years later (it was for our daughter’s 3rd birthday), my parents came for a visit. My mother had made my daughter and my doll matching dresses.

We continued the Tradition of the Last Doll with our daughter as she got older. She decided she wanted an American Doll for her last doll. For Christmas when she was in the fifth grade, we gave her Samantha. My mother used scraps that she had collected for years from her sewing and made a wardrobe of twenty-five outfits, including a nightgown. Our daughter took Samantha with her everywhere. Even in college, she put her up on a high shelf in her dorm room.
 A couple of years before my mother passed away, she made a wedding dress and long, long veil from the satin and lace from which she had made my wedding dress years before. While we were planning our daughter’s wedding, she asked if we could include Samantha somehow. At the reception, we set up my grandparents’ two-tiered table and put Samantha(in that wedding dress and veil)  on the top tier along with a small wooden table and chair. Below the doll, we put little gifts for the children that came to the wedding.

After she married, my daughter left Samantha with me for safe keeping—which worked out well because several years ago her home was destroyed in a tornado. Samantha now sits on a shelf in my library with some other dolls I’ve collected, waiting for my daughter’s daughter to get old enough to play with her. (Samantha is in the picture above, bottom shelf on the left, wearing one of the dresses my mother made, along with a set of beads she strung.)
By the way, and over fifty years since I got her, I still have my last doll. She is in perfect shape, well except for the right index finger that broke off ( although I have it and will glue it back on one of these day) and I still have the little white rubber shoes that she came with.
Do you have any “special things” from your childhood? What are they?

Throwback Thursday: Baby in a Chair

"Princess Leia as a baby."

That's my caption, what's yours? Feel free to leave your caption in the comments below.

Memory Monday: Another Look at What My Daughter Eats

My daughter and my parents

ANOTHER LOOK AT WHAT MY DAUGHTER EATS

As I have written before, my daughter and I don’t always eat the same kinds of food. For the most part, I like the old American standbys—hamburgers, grilled cheese sandwiches, roast beef, broiled chicken, and enchiladas or tacos (well, those last two are not really American, but enough of us around here eat them, so maybe they can be considered American). But my daughter and her husband like try out different restaurants.
I would like to share her latest post about where they ate. Here is the link to her blog http://foodstrangeness.blogspot.com/2015/12/west-african-food.html?spref=fb
I hope you’ll check it out, and remember that okra soup might be interesting, but I only like my okra fried (the way my mother used to do it).

What is your favorite way to eat okra? What is your favorite type of food to eat out or fix at home?

Throwback Thursday: Woman at a Pond

Onlooker: Is she tilting or are we?

That's my caption; what's yours? Feel free to leave your caption in the comments below.

Memory Monday: Our Family and Tea

My mother

OUR FAMILY AND TEA
One of my strongest growing-up memories is the iced tea my mother loved. She would make up a batch of loose leaf tea, strain it, and pour it into a gallon glass jar (restaurants used to get mayo and mustard in these and my mother would ask for them when they were empty) which she had filled with water and two cups of sugar. After she had that mixed, she would add a 6 oz. container of frozen lemonade and stir again. For as long as I can remember, Mother loved this tea. But in her later years, she had to stop drinking it—after she was diagnosed with diabetes.
This memory lead me to find some recipes from the “olden days.” These would be older than my mother’s time, more like her grandmother’s day (or her great-grandmother’s)
Practical American Cooker and Domestic Economy 1860
TEA.
Scald the teapot, and if the tea is a strong kind, a teaspoon full for a pint of water is sufficient; if it is a weak kind, more will be required. Pour on just enough boiling water to cover the tea, and let it steep. Green tea should not steep more than five or six minutes before drinking; if steeped longer, it will not be lively. Black tea requires steeping ten or twelve minutes to extract the strength.
TEA CREAM.
Boil two drachms or more of good green tea in a quart of milk; in A few minutes strain it; add three yolks of eggs, well beaten, a quarter of a pound of powdered sugar; set it on the fire, and reduce it to half then strain it again; when cold, serve it.
TEA ICE.
Take two drachms of the best tea; tie it in a bit of muslin, and boil it in two quarts of cream; when the infusion is sufficiently strong, take out the muslin, squeeze it well, and mix the cream with the eggs and sugar.

Now for me, I didn’t like Mother’s sweet tea with lemonade, but I do love unsweetened herbal tea, especially mint tea. And I love teapots and mugs. Here is picture of some of my collection in my library (just above my Keurig and my mini-fridge—a writer needs her refreshments to sustain all that hard work).

 My daughter loves tea, also. But she is a bit more adventuresome in teas and in preparations as can be seen in the picture below of some of her tea stuff.

What memories do you have of things your mother, grandmother, or daughter loved (or loves) to drink? Do you like the same thing or have you developed different tastes?