July blogathon #11: The Kitchens of No More

[anghara]

It often seems hard to remember the details - but I grew up in a time and a place where stuff to eat was seasonal, and you couldn't just wander into a stuffed supermarket and buy tomatoes from the other hemisphere if you felt like having them in mid-winter. When I was growing up, my grandmother's kitchen was one where old-fashioned jam-making and

Comments

[martianmooncrab]

My Grandmas were all like that. Which is why I grow my own tomatoes, render them down and freeze the good stuff for later in the year...

For those homeade garlic dill pickles... drool ..

[pameladean]

I think of women doing this work in summer in Minnesota, on a day like today when the heat index is 102, and I admire them, but I don't expect anybody else to do that. It must have been utterly brutal.

P.

[eneit]

Before my first marriage brok down I had a garden from which I could do this. This summer I shall be starting again. *g* I've already started cleaning, sterilising and putting bottles away for the process. My son has already put in an order for green tomato pickles.

[dsgood]

Twice I've heard a woman lament that she hadn't been born Jewish; since Jews don't eat pork, obviously Jewish food isn't fattening.

Each time, I mentioned something my grandmother often cooked: chicken skin fried in chicken fat. (Anything you can do with lard, you can also do with chicken fat or goose fat.)

[silkensteel]

On rare occasions (used to be for Thanksgiving but nowadays dietary needs eliminate this) I will make a pie crust for apple pie in the Shaker style - with cleanly rendered chicken fat.

You have to work it differently from lard; it's much more delicate. Your crust will be crumblier rather than flakier, but the taste and texture is PERFECT with apple. It takes about a pound of chicken cavity fat to yield enough for two pie crusts. Run it through the coarse plate of your grinder, render with 1 part water to 2 parts fat in a double boiler with the water barely simmering. Strain, chill, lift the fat off the water (which should be a plain gelatinous blob ready to enrich your pot of soup) and chill further before using. Make sure your bowl and your flour are chilled too.

(p.s. that woman is clearly uninformed. :))

[silkensteel]

After hearing my mom and aunt wax lyrical for years about "the baby eggs that you got in your soup if you were good" I went and tried that for myself, after butchering our first backyard duck.

Mariel thought I was insane. Leif didn't understand. Debbie turned vegetarian. And for the first time, I was able to sip a bowl of duck broth with varying sizes of immature egg yolks floating in the broth where they'd poached. I was The Good Kid.

Come on by after we're settled and butchering our own, and I'll make sure you're the Good Kid. :)