Hardship Recipes

Mouse Pie

5 fat field mice

1 cup macaroni

1/2 thinly sliced medium onion

1 medium can tomatoes

1 cup cracker crumbs

salt and pepper

Boil macaroni 10 minutes. While it is cooking, fry the field mice long enough to fry out some of the excess fat. Grease a casserole with some of this fat and put a layer of macaroni on it. Add onions, then tomatoes, salt and pepper well. Add field mice and cover with remaining macaroni. Sprinkle the top with cracker crumbs. Bake at 375 degrees about 20 minutes or until mice are well done. (Don't have any field mice? You could use 10 little sausages)

The Wood Cook Stove

My uncle sold the iron stove called as I recall, Copper Clad. I remember the wood stove we had. It was the only heat we had and a greatful presence on winter days. Mother raised the bread behind the stove pipe. There were sometimes spring chicks in a box on the floor back of the stove before they graduated up to a wash tub. Hot water came from a tank attached to the right hand side of it with a circulating pipe rigged up to pass near the fire box and heat it. You could start out the cold morning sitting right on top of the stove. When it got hot enough so you couldn't sit on it anymore, you were usually ready to start your day.

I remember once helping my mother make her new rising loaves, by punching them down like I had seen her do, and embellishing them with some decorations made of coal. She wasn't one bit pleased.

The old style wood coal stove was up on legs. I liked the big iron claw ball feet it stood upon. It had a lid lifter, a metal handle affair with which you could hook into the round stove top pieces to lift them out. There was a poker too, you could use to jab at the chunks of wood along the sides and move them to a center burning spot.

The hottest area of the top of the stove is usually just to the right of the firebox. The next hottest area was over the firebox. The far right was to keep the food warm, while it is waiting for the eaters. Most of the pans I remember were iron. There was a good supply of wooden stirring spoons

Potato Pancakes

Potatoe Pancakes were traditionally baked right on top of the stove. Boil five large potatoes. Mash and add 1/3 cup of cream. 3 Tablespoons of butter and a teaspoon of salt. Beat until the mixture is fluffy. Cool it a bit and add enough flour to roll as thin as a pie crust, using your rolling pin. Grease the top of the stove and bake the pancakes there, turning as needed to keep them from scorching.

When you were on the move, and you had a meal to fix, a large hole had to be dug in the ground, twice as deep and wide as your largest iron cook kettle. A fire was built in the bottom of this pit, and when the coals were red hot, a small dip was scraped in the coals and the iron kettle was seated down in the hole, covered with any scraped up coals, and filled with dirt taken to make the pit. The dirt should cover at least four inches thick. Sometimes additional fires were built on top. The food in the kettle would cook in this manner for 48 hours. The kettle might contain a roasted meat stew, or beans. This large kettle could feed twenty people.

Baking bread, in the iron kettle took about three hours time under the ground. Usually easier, the cook added more flour and water to his "starter" a little stone jar of yeasty sour dough, and made his biscuits. Pinching off enough to replace some in his stone jar, for the next nights meal. Losing that "starter" was a sad thing. For often times, you had to wait until another passer by would share some of their starter to get you going again.

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