family

Indian Cake

Years ago we put together a family recipe book. Four different versions of the Indian Cake recipe were entered by four great cooks. Goes to show that even in a family the need to “tweak” a recipe exists. My cousin always thought the name of the recipe came from the fact that all ingredients were staples in every kitchen and a great use for leftover coffee, plus Grandma was born in the 1881, so it was probably a “prairie” recipe handed down by her mother. Unfortunately, most of the cooks have passed and we will probably never know for sure.`

This is my grandmother’s version of the cake.

Indian Cake

2 cups sugar
1/2 cup shortening
1/4 cup cocoa powder
1/2 cup coffee
2 cups flour
1 tsp salt
1 tsp baking soda
1 tsp baking powder
1 tsp vanilla extract
2 eggs
1 cup hot water
1 clove coffee, heated

Mix all ingredients together, stirring in hot coffee last.
Bake at 350 degrees until done.

You can see that this is kind of vague and might need some additional “tweaks”. I don’t know what a “1 clove coffee” is.

One of my aunts increased the cocoa by a quarter cup and took out the baking powder, vanilla extract, salt, and clove coffee. This makes no sense to me, it would be pretty bland, I would think.

Another aunt increased the cocoa by a quarter cup and added cream of tartar.

A third aunt provided the last variation and it is the most detailed:

2 cups flour
1/2 cup cocoa
1 Teaspoon baking soda
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/2 cup butter
2 cups sugar
2 eggs
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
1/2 cup coffee, cold
1 cup water, boiling, minus 1 teaspoon

Sift together: flour, cocoa, soda, and salt and set aside. Cream 1/2 cup butter into the sugar. Add beaten eggs and blend slowly. Add vanilla. Add into sugar and butter mixture, some of the flour and mix well, then add some of the cold coffee and mix them alternating, continue until all is in but mix in the flour last. Stir in the hot water (minus 1 teaspoon) and mix well. Bake in preheated 350 degree oven for about 1 hour. Test with toothpick until it comes out dry from the center of the cake.

I’m not 100% convinced on this one. One hour seems way too long. But I haven’t tried it and don’t know what kind of a pan she used.

I have made the original recipe minus the clove thing but I might have put some clove spice in it. I think I cooked it for 30 minutes in a 9 X 9 and it turned out pretty good.

Try your hand at it and see what happens!

Friday Before the Holiday

My relatives.. This is actually a postcard dated 1912. Apparently it was all the rage at the time to make your photographs into postcards. It is addressed to my grandfather and just says “My Latest”.

We are back in the deep freeze. Seven new inches of snow and temperatures well below zero F. with strong winds. Blizzard conditions. But, hey, this is Minnesota. We trudge on.

It is the first of two holiday weekends. Family, Festivities, Fun, Food. I’m making a Hazelnut Torte to take to the Xmas eve get-together. Then I will take my father to a nice restaurant for Xmas day. And it will be cold. I lived in Mexico City growing up. Our tradition was to get up the day after Xmas and load up the car and drive to Acapulco for a week. Now, that was way more fun than any other Xmas stuff. My holidays were always related to travel. Either traveling home from boarding school or traveling to the beach or, one year, we traveled to Kenya and Tanzania to see the game parks. I might need to revive that traveling tradition.

I became interested in the show Yellowstone because a new prequel just came out with Helen Mirren and Harrison Ford called 1923. So, thinking the whole show was on Paramount Plus, I signed on. I then saw there was another prequel called 1883. I have been binge watching 1883. I figured I would start at the beginning. Then I discovered the actual show isn’t on Paramount Plus, they sold it to Peacock. So if I want to watch the actual show I have to sign up with them. This is getting to be very confusing. And expensive. Maybe I can find it at the library…

Anyway, 1883 is about the Dutton family’s trek from Fort Worth Texas to Montana by covered wagon. They are traveling with a group of Eastern European immigrants. Within the first few weeks, half the people died in one way or another. Disaster after disaster. The narrator is a teenage girl who goes from despair to elation about love and nature and god’s hand in nature and the beauty of the land and the cruelty of it as well.

It made me think about my family and their trek across the sea and then half way across America. They must have traveled the same way. Covered wagons, horses. On my father’s side my ancestor came from Ireland in 1811, and bought land in Pennsylvania. They didn’t stay long. His son was born in Ohio in 1818 and they later moved to Missouri. When he found he was on the wrong side slavery, he moved his farm and family north to Illinois. After he died in 1858, the family moved to western Iowa where they had kin. My grandfather was born in Iowa in 1880. He dug in a farm and stayed there.

On my grandmother’s side, her family sailed from England to Connecticut in 1641. The family stayed there until the mid 1700’s when their house was destroyed by fire.

The father and two elder sons went into the wilderness to clear some land and left the wife and baby in a white settlement. The father and eldest son were killed by Indians. The second son, Isaac, was fourteen when he was captured by the Genesee Indians. Several years later he managed to escape but it wasn’t until he was 70 years old when he found his baby brother who had been left behind with his mother. By that time he was living in Ulster County, New York. The family stayed in New York until about 1880, when they up and moved to western Iowa. My grandmother was born there in 1881.

You can see why 1883 draws me in.

I hope you have a super duper holiday weekend!

Hazelnut Torte

½ lb shelled hazelnuts
8 eggs, separated
1 ½ cups sugar
½ cup breadcrumbs
Grated rind of 1 lemon
Juice of ½ lemon
1 tsp vanilla extract
½ cup whipped cream
1 cup tart jelly (I like raspberry)

Grind the unblanched hazelnuts very fine. Put 2 tablespoons of the ground nuts aside for the outside of the cake.

Beat the egg yolks with the sugar till very light. Add the breadcrumbs, lemon rind, lemon juice, vanilla and ground nuts. Fold in the egg whites whipped very stiff but not dry.

Bake in 2 layers, 30 minutes at 325 degree F. Cool in the pans.

Take out and put together with whipped cream and a little jelly spread between the layers. Whip the rest o f the jelly with a fork and spread it over the top and sides of the cake. Powder with unused 2 tablespoons of ground nuts. Decorate the top of the cake with a swirl of whipped cream. Chill before serving.

Maybe I’ll have a picture next week.

Holiday Party Time

First time I’ve seen the sun is two weeks.

Looking Back

As you may or may not know I am interested in my genealogy. I spend hours down the rabbit hole at Ancestry.com finding tidbits. My current obsession involves my mother’s great grandmother who came from Perthshire, Scotland. I am planning a trip to visit the place next year so it is kind of cool to read about the farms they owned and rented over the years. A bunch of them were ministers so they worked in different parishes around the area. Mostly I just want to go to soak up the atmosphere and imagine what it was like back in those days.

A very old small photo of my great great grandmother (on the left)

On another note… I found this recently and am pretty amazed by the detail. My great grandfather (this one came from Ireland) was born in Ohio on March 2, 1841. In 1861 he was teaching district school in Monmouth, Illinois. At the breakout of the Civil War he enlisted in Company C, Thirty-sixth Illinois Infantry, and was sent to Missouri. The first battle in which he participated was at Pea Ridge. He helped to save Missouri to the Union. He was transferred to the Army of the Tennessee, and was at the siege of Corinth. In September, 1862, he was transferred to the Army of the Cumberland, and took part in the battle of Perryville and in the campaign of Stone River. The following spring he was in the Tullahoma campaign, then went to Bridgeport and through Georgia, and took part in the battle of Chickamauga, where he was wounded, being shot through the cheek, the ball coming out the back of the neck. He was then sent to the hospital at Nashville, Tennessee, remaining there till the expiration of his term of service, when he was mustered out in September 1864.

After that he taught for six more years, got married, had four children, farmed for a couple of years, and ended up in Iowa in the grocery business. He died at 66.

I actually have his discharge papers from the Army. When he died in 1907, his wife started to collect a pension of twelve dollars a month. In 1916 an Act of Congress approved by the President granted “increase of pension of a widow who was the wife of a soldier, sailor or marine during the period of his service in the Civil War, or who is the widow of a soldier, sailor or marine who served in the Civil War, the War with Mexico, or the War of 1812, and who has reached the age of 70 years”. The pension was increased to $20 per month. And then in 1917, it was again increased to $25 per month. I don’t know what happened after that. She died in 1923.

Anyway I have tons of info. I hope to put it all together at some point. Like I said, I have no shortage of projects.

Wisconsin Quick Trip

I drove down to Wisconsin for my mother-in-law’s 100th Birthday. She was born in Ukraine and lived through many experiences, good and bad, but she is still enjoying special times with family.

It was truly a beautiful day.

Memories and Speeches

Lake Lugano

When I was sixteen I went off to boarding school in Switzerland. My parents were living in Nigeria. My roommate traveled from Tanzania. My best friend’s parents were living in Tokyo. Walking down the hall in my dorm there were people from Saudi Arabia, Germany and various US cities. In a couple of weeks I will be going back to stay in the new dorms of my old school for a big reunion. I will see several of my old dorm-mates. We will haunt the old stomping grounds reliving old memories and making new ones.

One of my tasks for this reunion is to write a speech. I am having trouble sitting myself down and focusing on this task. Do I draw on the memories of particular events from those days?

Duomo, Florence

The time Kelly saved my life at the Duomo in Florence. I didn’t know I had vertigo but turns out I did and he took my hand and guided me through it. The trip to Dachau and how quiet everybody was on the bus home. Leaning to drink warm beer at the HofBrauHaus in Munich. The other great thing about Munich was we saw our first McDonald’s in Europe and became “American” for a weekend. In Venice we got around on water buses and discovered a small disco. Plus a pigeon landed on my head in St Mark’s Square. Hiking up the side of a mountain just to lie in the grass and stare at the sky. Instigating “all school skip day” that stuck as a tradition.

Traveling through Greece having to hear about every single ruin by the side of the road and never getting to listen to rock and roll music. Taking a cruise through the Greek Islands and being bombarded by wet toilet paper rockets in the hallway outside the girl’s cabin. Listening to boring lectures about the mosaics of Ravenna and Giotto’s Chapel. Wishing there were horses in the square in Siena.

Palio Di Siena

Or do I talk about the overall experience of living with an exceptional group of people, teachers and students alike who influenced the rest of our lives.

We were taught to be independent, curious, adventurous, supportive and respectful. We were only 16 or 17 and we traveled the world on our own without thinking twice about it. We would seek out art and architecture wherever we went. We enjoyed each other’s company, had fun together and sometimes tolerated each other. We became a family.

And now many many years later, we are still family. We have a unifier that brings us all together. That time in Switzerland made us all different. We experienced something together that other people could never understand. It was our unique world and we came out of it as a unit. So when we meet each other now, even if we didn’t know each other then, we immediately have a connection. We have a common ground to work off of. In some cases it was a jumping off point to forge new relationships. Even now the family continues to grow.

Or do I just tell a story and thank everybody for coming. Of course all memories are subject to change and embellishment. I could probably make something up. But I won’t. I will keep it simple and short. Who wants to listen to a speech when you are sitting eating French food on one of the most beautiful lakes in the world?

On another note, I am going bi-coastal. My Baltimore Post Examiner blog, Eclectic Global Nomad has been picked up by the Los Angeles Post Examiner so you can find me in both.

70 years together

I am re-posting this from my other blog – Eclectic Global Nomad.

My parents were married at 2:00 in the afternoon. My father was on medical leave from the US Navy after having his appendix out. The year was 1943.

My mother remembers driving with her father to the church. They lived in a small town in Iowa. As they drove through downtown my mother noticed the bank clock said 1:55. When she and her new husband drove back the same route to her house for a small reception, she again noticed the clock. It now said 2:15. The minister had married them under the wrong name. Nobody mentioned it.

My father’s father ran the family farm so he had petrol coupons. He filled the car with gas and gave them coupons so they could go to Kansas City for a two day honeymoon before my father returned to his post at Lakehurst, New Jersey. He was training to fly blimps. My mother was teaching school and had to finish out the year before joining him.

They were separated again when my father went to fly blimps off the coast of Brazil searching for German submarines. He remembers Christmas Day, 1944. He and his buddies drove through the Brazilian countryside on their way to find a beach to play volleyball. It was the first time he had ever seen that kind of poverty. He noticed the crops in the fields and decided that very day he could help people by teaching agriculture.

He had planned to be a vocational agriculture instructor when he returned to civilian life but this gave it a whole new dimension. He wanted to work overseas. His mother had always told him he could do what ever he wanted if he set his mind to it.

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Food Friday: Lemon Sponge Pudding

This is is another old family favorite. It melts in your mouth!

Lemon Sponge Pudding

Combine:

3/4 cup sugar

1/4 tsp. salt

1 Tbsp. grated lemon peel

1 1/2 Tbsp. soft butter

3 Tbsp. flour

2 egg yolks, beaten

Add: 1/4 cup lemon juice

1 cup milk

(Mixture may have curdled appearance, but no matter)

Beat: 2 egg whites until stiff and fold into mixture.

Pour into buttered 1.5 quart casserole.

Place in pan of hot water

Bake at 325°F uncovered 40-45 min or until set (1 hr).

Serve warm or chilled. I like it warm!

The Family

Flying home from my winter wonderland visit with the family I thought about a conversation my mother had with one of my nieces as they were saying good-bye.

Mother: We really do have an odd family

Niece: Should we take offense at that?

Mother: Well, no, you are all very interesting.

Niece: Interesting? Now I know we are being insulted.

Mother: But interesting is good. I can’t think of anything worse than a bunch of boring people.

Niece: Well, we certainly are not boring.

Mother: No, none of you are boring!

It was all in good fun but it made me think of what makes up my non-boring family. There were sixteen of us. We are scattered across 5 states.

The patriarch grew up on a farm in Iowa and ended up spending over forty years as an expat. He met many Heads of State and he had been to 90 countries by the time he was 90. The matriarch, kept up with him all the way also starting out in a small town in Iowa. My brothers and I are third culture kids who grew up all over the world.

I married Nicholas, a Russian American whose parents were refugees after World War II. Nicholas’ father never learned to speak English so Nicholas was his translator from a young age. Nicholas used to tell me that coming home from school every day he felt like he was crossing a border into another country. Most of his family still live in Russia. Our son spent the first six years of his life in Russia and has traveled to many places around Europe.

My brother moved to Australia after college and met and married a woman from New Zealand. She also came from a cross cultural family with roots in England and Australia. Their children carry dual passports – New Zealand and USA. They visit their relatives half way around the world whenever they can.

My niece married a first generation American with Indian roots. She is now immersed in the traditions and culture of an extended Indian family. One tradition included a rice eating ceremony for their baby daughter. For this ceremony they needed a baby sari. Not just any sari but a beautiful, fancy sari. They found it was difficult to find one the USA and so another sister-in-law of mine and my niece are starting a baby sari business. They have an Indian woman lined up to make the saris and they are working on a website to market their goods. You will be hearing more about this as things progress.

So we are a cross cultural conglomeration. And we all get along beautifully.

Cheers!

Mothers’ Congress Cook Book 1922

I inherited a cookbook from my grandmother. The cover is gone so I don’t know what it looked like but the date is 1922. The Preface states:

“Organized into a working body, the Mother’s Congress of Mount Ayr, presents Mothers who are studying and working for the betterment of Child Welfare.

In its interests financially, this little book is published and sent out by them.”

Followed by:

“We may live without poetry, music and art.

We may live without conscience and live without heart;

We may live without friends, we may live without books;

But civilized man cannot live without cooks. —- Merideth.”

It starts out with 12 points on how to set a table. Numbers 11 and 12:

11. Place carving set in front of host, or put carving knife and gravy ladle at his right, and fork at his left.

12. Place coffee cups and coffee pot at right of hostess.

The recipes don’t mention oven temperature other than “moderate oven” or “quick oven” and many of them don’t mention how long anything should cook. Here are a few samples.

Norwegian Stew. – Brown in a large kettle 1 c. lard and butter mixed, 25-cent round steak cut in small pieces, flour thoroughly and stir into the browned lard, continue stirring until meat is brown. Then add 1 c. flour stirring constantly, set on back of stove and add 2 qts. Boiling water, salt and pepper and let simmer 2 hrs, ½ hr. before serving add enough potatoes of medium size for the meal, stir occasionally as it will stick to kettle. — J.A.W.

Molasses Cake. 1 cup molasses, ½ c. sugar, ½ c. butter or lard, ½ tsp each cloves, ginger, cinnamon; 1 tsp. soda in 1 c. boiling water, 2 eggs, well beaten; last, flour to stiffen. –Mrs. Holman.

And my grandmother’s contribution:

Green Tomato Relish. – 5 lbs. green tomatoes, 6 large onions, 3 c. brown sugar, 3 c. red peppers, 3 green peppers, 1 tbsp. each of powdered cloves, all spice, celery seed, dry mustard, ½ c. salt, 8 c. vinegar. Peel and slice tomatoes and onions very thin. Remove seeds from peppers and chop very fine. To these add the other ingredients and cook over a moderate fire ½ hr., stirring frequently. Cover with paraffin. – Mrs. Liggett.

Household hints:

Rub the feet every night and morning with bay rum and witch hazel, equal parts, for frost bits.

Turpentine and lard rubbed on throat and chest will often relieve pain from cold.

To carry a mattress without breaking your fingernails (also back) use a broom underneath as a saddle and see how much easier it is.

Use a tbsp. of kerosene to wash windows. It not only cuts the dirt but is distrastful to flies

I’m not sure what “distrastful” is. Maybe a typo. But you get the idea.

The book ends with a poem.

Receipt for a Happy Day

Take a little dash of cold water,

A little leaven of prayer,

A little bit of sunshine gold,

Dissolved in the morning air.

Add to your meal some merriment,

Add thought for kith and kin,

And the, as a prime ingredient

A plenty of work thrown in.

Flavor it all with essence of love,

And a dash of play.

Let the dear old book and a glance above,

Complete the well spent day.

–Mrs. Smith

Whatever your recipe is, I hope you have a happy day!!

Expat Alien

foreign in my own country