1889 Escalloped Potatoes - from a Suffragette Cookbook

 

Escalloped Potatoes

The Woman Suffrage Cookbook - Hattie A.Burr, 1889

A simple scalloped potato recipe which was easy and fairly quick to make. It cooked up perfectly. I used the only earthenware baking dish I had. The only thing I changed was that I added 1/2 cup more milk because the original amount didn't seem like enough in the dish I used. This recipe used a lot less liquid than modern recipes, so I wasn't sure how it would turn out. In fact, they were absolutely perfect. The potatoes were soft and well cooked, while the top was nicely crisp. They had a great flavour and weren't overly saucy or drippy. I would use this recipe again in an instant. Even my testers who aren't fond of scalloped potatoes liked them. Next time I'd use less flour on top, however, the flour toasted and gave it a lovely nuttyish taste, rather than being inedible

This cookbook is a community cookbook filled with recipes from both suffragettes and supporters. It has a huge array of everyday type recipes and if you ignore the suggestions for how long to cook vegetables, it looks to be a great resource for regular home cooking at the time. The recipes I read seem to be complete with even a few having other suggestions for serving, mainly in the cake section. It was a delight to peruse through and some of the more odd recipes like those using squash will come in handy in the fall for autumnal cooking demos.

 

A quick garden update

The weather at the beginning of the month was full of surprises.  We had days with promise, of bulbs starting to show buds and leaf buds swelling - and then poof the weather changed and my poetic almost spring post was out of date.   Then it got crazy busy and then my computer updated, 3 times in a week and a half.  So instead, it's a current post, which isn't poetic in the least.

The daffodils are blooming.   There are these bi-coloured ones in the back garden and yellow ones up front.   These bloom a few days earlier despite the front gardens getting a lot more sun and wind protection.   The little blue scilla are always a welcome sight.  They are true blue and so pretty.   I've always hoped they'd naturalize into the grass, but hubby likes his riding lawn mower and the grass grows so quickly in the spring, that they never really have a chance to do so.

Yesterday  I noticed that the Hyacinths have started blooming as well.  Today was too windy for me to try to photograph bugs, but my 2 loads of laundry out on the line dried in a flash.  Because it was so breezy, it was soft and lovely as well.  

This was the big bumble bee that was flitting around all the hyacinths.   He was amazingly large.   I was a bit disappointed as it was still coolish at the time, and breezy, so I couldn't have a cup of tea outside to enjoy the scent of the hyacinths.   

Today I checked the two new gooseberries I planted last year and both survived the weird winter.  I was only really worried about one, as it had a harder time establishing itself last summer.  It had some leaf fall and didn't really grow over the months after it was planted.  However, both plants have green buds and tiny leaves, so hurray!  

I went out looking for replacement copper moulds.  I was thrilled to find some, although the prices were really high.  There were 2 fairly small ones, a lobster and a fish, that were heavy and lined with a silver coloured metal.   They were $20 each, which although they were probably older and more durable than the ones I collect, were way outside my self-imposed mould budget.

There were a couple of other moulds, also priced at $20 or higher, but they were either too large, or not pretty.  I've only seen one not pretty mould, and it was yesterday - plain and round .  

 I found this lovely tiered jelly mould though for $12.  And while that's the top end of my budget,  I usually walk away from those.  We no longer have real thrift stores in town, so I have to drive to cities to find the cheap ones.  I figured the time and gas expenditures probably make up for the extra cost.  Plus it's so pretty and fun!    So I found a new one, but not any replacements for the damaged moulds.  I guess I can keep looking.   

 

Simple dolls and the start of spring colours.

We had some glorious weather in early March and the crocuses started to bloom.  Not these ones though, but some others.   They were sort of small and pale in colour,  but very early due to the weather.   Lots of us were worried that we'd have another of those years when the fruit trees bloomed very early due to unseasonable weather and then the normal frosty weather returned and killed the flowers resulting in little fruit that year.   So the crocuses bloomed and then of course the weather turned cold and snowy.  I thought that was it for my spring flowers.  However a few more patches of crocuses have bloomed and they are quite beautiful.  

This is a doll snake.  Knit on the CSM, it's 5 simple dolls and a cat toy.  They are linked together with waste yarn and knit in a tube.  My ravel cord was being unhappy and breaking, so I ended up using cheap waste yarn and cutting it off instead of reusing it. I'm not happy about that but I was less happy about continuous breakage and tangling.

These are small, simple dolls with no moveable parts.  I almost did some with safety eyes so that I didn't have to embroider them on, but I don't think the knit material is really strong enough to keep them on without pulling out.   Because I want these to be safe for young children, I'll bite the bullet and embroidery wonky faces on them.

The doll on the left is with the instructions I was given.   It makes a doll about 5 inches tall and I think it looks oddly proportioned.  After I made a few of these, I just sort of made up the pattern as I went along and changed the proportions.  After I sewed them up and stuffed them, I realized I like my proportions better.   It as difficult to know until they were finished because it's hard to tell what they'll look like while still in the tube.

It's faster to knit them all together because you don't have to set up the machine each time you make one, just knit them with the waste yarn between them.   This set of dolls will be for gifts.  

  If I can find some more pumpkin coloured yarns, I'll make more pumpkins for Westfield this year.  Finding inexpensive yarns of a suitable weight and colour can be difficult though and as they are donations, I'd rather be able to make more of the items than less for the same dollar amount.   I did get a new bag of stuffing though.   Prices were odd -  relatively expensive for the 8 oz or 16 oz bag, but larger bags were dramatically less per pound.    I could only find 1 bag available though, so ended up with a 64 oz bag for double the price of the 8 oz bag.  How does that make any sense at all?

I'm also trying a new ravel cord.  I got some braided fishing line and will try it.  I'm hoping it doesn't cut the yarn when I pull it out.  It's very strong  and doesn't like my scissors for cutting it, so fingers are crossed.  The ravel cord separates the knitted waste yarns so that you can just zip off the items.   Some people cut their waste yarn but I've not found how to do that particular trick yet and just end up with a useless pile of tiny bits, trying to get the doll, sock etc, off the waste yarn.   It's one of those they're both right answers and you just use the one that works for you.
 

Silk Hanky - Mawata experiment

 I was looking for silk cocoons several years ago to make my own silk hankies, or mawatas and couldn't find affordable whole ones.  They're a bit icky, because they still have the larvae in them.  Of course now, the prices for cocoons are crazy high, plus I couldn't find anything that didn't have to be imported.    Finally with a bit of in from Michael at Worm Spit, I decided to try the cut cocoons for facials.   Since a portion is missing, I figured that I'd need a smaller frame.   It was faster to take my 6 inch continuous weaving frame that my husband made for one of the Olds Master Spinner levels and remove most of the nails. 

Before the cocoons can be stretched, you have to remove the sericin which is the glue that binds the silk filament together.  I simmered them in a solution of soap and sodium carbonate or washing soda.   First, I let them simmer for too long so they were really soggy.  Then I realized I'd used too much soap, so rinsing has been a big job.   The cut cocoons are a bit more delicate than the whole ones so they flatten and get a bit misshapen while simmering.  As well, they have a few more loose, cut threads of silk so a couple of them clung together and had to be separated when I pulled them out of the bath.

They stretched on the frame fairly easily, although they were a bit fussy at times I think due to being cut.  It wasn't onerous though and once I got into the rhythm, it went quite quickly.  I did stretch a few by hand to square up the edges a bit.  I think my original frame had side nails to help with this, but I remember thinking that they were less helpful and made the process a little more difficult.  I left them out this time and had no issues.  It was easier to stretch them on the diagonal first and then to the remaining nails.

Even without a lot of side manipulation to square them up, this was what I woke up to this morning.  A lovely bundle of 12 cocoons to make up a good sized silk hankie.   I was very happy!

I have a few full cocoons to add to the rest of the packet of cut cocoons. I'm prepping for a class which will hopefully happen in May, so people will get to try both the cut cocoons and a couple of the full cocoons, to get the whole buggy experience!  

They can be dyed once this process is finished.  When you dye the whole cocoons, much of the dye is absorbed by the sericin and just washes out once you remove the sericin.   They dye beautifully in the hankie stage though.    These are easy to draft the fibres out, which can then be spun, knitted or used in felting.  I've only spun them though.

A lot of fibre projects getting finished up!

Last weekend's maple syrup production was just over 2 litres.  Not a lot, but enough for a nice taste now and again.  The partial jar was taste tested for my lunch, and then for a batch of Maple Butter Tarts that I made a few days ago.  It's very good.  Of course we haven't had a year where it was awful, so I'm not sure that the pronouncement of very good means very much.   

On a good weekend we can process up to 9, 23 litre buckets (5 gallons) of sap.  The weather on the weekend was ideal, but the temperatures bounced around.  The sap only flows when the temperatures are above freezing, so those cold days, not a single drop of sap dripped into the buckets.  We only had 5  buckets of sap so this was a fairly good result.   We have 7 buckets of sap this weekend to process, despite having 2 days of freezing weather.   We're hoping for 3 1/2 litres from this  It's a 40:1 ratio of sap to syrup.  It won't be one of our better years, but we missed the first window and the way the trees are budding, it will be a short season.  Once the trees bud, the sap loses it's sweetness and gets bitter.

I made some socks.  I didn't count in any I made for myself, like the one's I finished from the handspun yarn, which were so very soft and warm!   These are for my kids.  I need to do some finishing of the socks, kitchenering up the toes and sewing in the loose ends.   The three folded pairs on the right are ready to go.  I'm happy that I found a compromise for my daughter who has specified that she only wants black, grey or dark blue socks - boring to knit!  I found the grey and black yarn, the solid blue that I added a coloured heel and toe to make the production interesting and the blue/wine coloured yarn was found in the bottom of a bin.  It's a nice yarn and it's too bad that they don't make it anymore.   

The sparkly shawl is off the loom.  It looks striped  in the photo and in person.  However, I separated all the colours out and wove it up as a plaid or checked pattern.   I separated out the purples and the darker blues and wove them in blocks with the reddish stripe in between.   You can't tell that I went to all that work to do so.   It all just blends in seamlessly.   If I were to use a yarn like this again, even without the sparkle, I might just not separate the colours and use it in the manufactured gradient in the original sequence.  They weren't equal, so the variation would be in there.  If I could find that yarn without the sparkle, I'd  maybe try it see see the difference.    The sparkle is one of the plies of the yarn, which runs the whole of the yarn.   You couldn't really tell that from the skein.   The effect was different depending on the light.   A lot of the time it was as though there were rain drops on it or a layer of frost at other times.  Always though, the darned things sparkled!

Syrup, Socks and Sad Jelly Moulds

We missed the first run of sap collecting and maple syrup making because it was a warm spell in early February.   We've found that there is only a small window of a couple of weeks for our spiles when we tap the trees, before they start healing up and the sap flow is diminished or stopped completely.  It was worse when we took advantage of an early warm spell a few years ago, so we waited.   Now people are saying that the maple sap season could end much earlier than expected.  Still, we got our first trees tapped a week ago and had over 100 litres to boil last weekend.   

With our set up, the old Franklin stove over the fire pit and 2 roasting pans, 1 to heat the sap and the other to reduce it, it's about the minimum we can do to have a reasonable batch of syrup to finish.   Hubby gets it most of the way and then I finish the syrup in the kitchen.  This way I can be more accurate with getting the syrup to the desired temperature - which is 219 F.  This is about 66% sugar content, and is very shelf stable.   Then I need to filter/strain the syrup to get out any ash and other icky things, re-heat it

to boiling, and put it into canning jars.   This takes a few hours.  It was a bit risky this time as not  one but both of my candy thermometers decided to not calibrate and wouldn't show a temperature above the boiling point.    I ended up sticking my meat thermometer in and figured out how to set it for the desired temperature and boy,  that instant read probe showed 217F.   It was only a few more minutes boiling until we got to the right temperature.  Once I'd done the filtering and canning, and cleaned up, and had my cup of celebratory tea, I tossed both of those uncooperative thermometers out.   We have just over 2.25 litres of syrup from this batch.

I spun some yarn with mill ends of a merino/cashmere/silk/nylon blend.  Most of them were fine but there were a bunch that needed to be re-processed by hand.   Mostly, the yarn was really nice, but a few of those re-processed bits were harder to spin, so there were a few uneven bits in the yarn.   However, it was between a sock weight and a sport weight after dyeing, so I tried it on the sock machine.  It was a little iffy in a couple of places, but mostly this was a really nice pair of socks to machine knit.   They are definitely a little heavier than I like, but next time I'll aim for a slightly skinnier yarn and I'll take more care to make sure that my roving or rolags are more carefully prepared.  Or  I'll just use commercially prepared wool and skip that first step completely :)

The kitchen is almost finished after 13 years.   The walls got painted 2 weeks ago.   I'm not sure I like the colour I chose.  If I'd gone with the first colour it would have been fine, but I switched last minute and it's a lot cooler of a colour than I thought.  It does go well with the cabinets though.   I had taken down m copper jelly mould collection to store it before painting.  This was 3 or 4 years ago...  I went to put them up and found 3 of them damaged.  Something had dripped on them and corroded the metal.  It was weird because there was a puddle of it in the rose mould which was gummy like a silicone or a weird dry wall compound, but we couldn't figure out how they would have come in contact with anything while stored in a box. 

  I'm pretty sad about the melon mould because that was one which makes very Victorian shaped deserts. That one and the one with the roses are designs I've not often seen so they'll be more difficult to replace.   The dots and lines one is a duplicate that I got because  a) it was $2  and b) was a very red copper rather than the gold copper that was already in the collection.  I've seen more of those around.   Most of our thrift stores have been shut down, which was my main places to find them.   I've seen a few in antique and vintage stalls, but they are much more expensive.

Otherwise -  I made 3 pair of socks for my daughter for her tiny, skinny feet and another pair for her husband who had dramatically larger feet.  I helped prep and run a craft session at the museum for a whack-load of kids.   We were told that there could be 150 kids or more.  Luckly there were just half that amount, which was plenty to do a craft with in the just under 4 hours we were allotted.  I saw a flock of swans overhead on my way home from Westfield, although I was unable to get a photo because they were flying so very quickly.  February has flown by.  While the weather hasn't been horridly cold or miserable, I'm looking forward to warmer temperatures and yearning a bit for my garden.

Springlike weather : blip or early spring?

 

I just took these springtime socks off the CSM.  I haven't had time to kitchener up the toes yet.  I saw this skein of yarn on sale for under $10.  They colours reminded me of spring, new growth and the end of winter so of course the yarn, especially being on sale, had to come home with me.

They worked up so quickly and easily that I am thrilled with that sock yarn.   It was nice because I made a pair of socks with some cotton/wool blend yarn that I received in a yarn swap some years ago and they are a bit harsh.  Maybe they'll be nicer after washing them a few times.

I'm way behind on getting the warp on the loom for my friend's apron.   It's been kind of crazy here.  First we had snowy and blizzard like weather so getting into town to get the sizing I needed didn't happen.  Finally I got it, then had to find the time to size the yarn.  It's been awhile and I realized that I didn't have a place to hand the skeins.  Not only had I always dried them outside in the past, but I'd put a light weight on them to keep the skeins in order.   Instead, I had to dry them inside, with no place to hang them - we don't have a bathtub with a shower rod - plus they weren't weighted at all,so they dried all krinkly and it took several days. I had to bring the skeins out and set them in front of the wood stove to dry in the end.   Then it took  days to actually wind the skeins into useable balls because of the kinky bits of yarn getting stuck to and caught under other bits.   It was a slow process.  Now Kevin seems to want to use the wound balls as a napping place.   Because Kevin doesn't like me disturbing him, and I don't want him to pee on my shoe or something like that, I've left him to his peace and quiet.  

The prognosticating rodents (groundhogs) in the area all predicted an early spring, but this has been a bit ridiculous and unexpected.  The weather has been so unseasonably warm the past week.  Some people have even started their syrup/ sap collecting.   We discussed it, but decided to wait.   The last time we put our spiles in early, we had a great start, but once the daytime temperatures drop to below freezing the tree starts to heal.  So instead of having to re-drill holes, we're waiting and hoping that we get some colder weather to stop the sap running for now.  Then we can tap our trees later in the season.

It was warm enough to hand out a laundry, albeit a small load.   That blanket is beloved by Dion kitty.  He wasn't impressed that it was shiny clean and smelled all fresh and outdoorsy.  He gave it a long stare and then had to be enticed on to it before he settled down for his nap.