Yesterday was my last day of work for 2008. Today, the last day of school for the kids (again for the year 2008). And tomorrow will be my last day at my little market. I am happy to have two weeks off from schedules, and lunches, and homework. I will also be happy to see the end of getting up early on Saturday morning and slogging all of my stuff to sit for 5 hours and have very little chance of selling anything. It gets rather tiring after a while.
In 2009, I plan to do more spinning and dyeing and maybe even try and weave an art piece or two that have been bumping around in my mind for the past 3 or 4 years.
So many ideas, so little time.
I am also going to try and take a few pictures tomorrow and finally share with you all (you few but loyal followers) what I have been up to for the past few months.
And for no other reason than "just 'cause", here is a recipe for hungry cake. It is from one of Bill's mother's cookbooks that I explored while we were alone at the lake this summer. And by alone I mean just the 6 of us. I love how it is just a list of ingredients and the barest instruction. No time, no temperature, no pan size. I guess that there were made back in the good old days when people knew that you cooked cakes at a certain temperature for a certain time. Me? I'll go look up the temp and time in the Joy when I decide to make hungry cake.
And under miscellaneous......throat gargle? Apparently so. And it was submitted my Bill's paternal Grandmother.
And where would one find "resin"? I keep thinking that it is the by product of a tree.
5 comments:
When the "hungry cake" meets our "hungry son", who will win the battle? Will the cake eat Liam, or the other way round? I'll be watching this one.
And the Throat Gargle. If that's my grandmother's recipe - and it probably is - then the people who put out the cookbook made a typo. Her middle initial was F., not A. I've never known anyone with her middle name. Luck that; it was rather strange.
Oh, and you find resin (rosin) in a violin case. It's used to make the bow strings sticky. I'm thinking it tastes evil, so it's good that it's in soap. As I read that entry I note the name of the contributor. I think I used to mow the lawn and shovel the walk for the son of that woman (and he was my dentist). In a small town the names aren't hard to sort out.
Seriously though, that resin could be an extract from any of dozens of plants. But given the place and time, it was probably something available by that name in the local general store, and probably could be identified by a very old person. I'll ask my parents. They may actually know what "resin" was. Otherwise it's a question to ask at Kings Landing.
Oh, and I too welcome the two weeks break. No herding kids out of bed for school. Yay! We get to lie in, then have quiet time with coffee. Wonderful.
Thanks for the memory...
That home made soap recipe reminded me of when I was 8 years old and I was visiting my mother's aunt for a week. We called Aunt Derilda. Her mother had died when she was young and as the oldest she was responsible to look after the rest of the siblings. As a result she was very frugal but I thought that she was stingy. She had made a batch of Gilletts Lye soap while I was there and she made me scrub the shed wooden floor with the left over liquid from the batch of soap. I remember that this was all new to me and I hated the smell of it but I was very obedient and did as I was told.
She died at 101 or 102 with hardly any wrinkles on her face
Mamoo
Funny, I always thought the violin stuff was called rosin. Maybe it's different ... although, with them adding lye & borax, who knows?
I wonder why there's sugar in that throat gargle. It sounds fairly hideous, but maybe it'll do some good. :)
I also wonder why you'd chop the raisins, for that cake!
Love the recipe artifacts! I am a sucker for the spiral-bound Church Lady cookbooks that you often find at library book sales. One day I'm going to have a party and serve nothing but Church Lady recipes to the guests - with throat gargle to finish off the night, I think!
@DaviMack,
Rosin is resin, or, I suppose, derived from it. Not sure why it's spelled differently. But it's basically solidified pitch from conifers. This happens on its own over time (spruce gum, anyone?), but I think they make this stuff by heating it to drive off the volatile components or polymerize the mass a bit. It sure is sticky, which is, of course, what makes the bow hairs grab the strings so well.
Apart from spruce gum, which we used to chew from time to time when hiking in the woods as children, I've only ever seen something with a "pitch" flavour used in a food once, and that's a kind of cheese made in Switzerland. This unpasteurized soft cheese has a strip of the inner bark of a conifer (not sure what kind) wrapped around it, which imparts a very resinous or pitch-like flavour to the cheese. It doesn't sound that good, but it really does taste wonderful.
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