The Menu
What's in season?
I can recall that when the first strawberries would be ripe, we couldn't eat them fast enough. They tasted so good. Our strawberry patch, had those little tiny strawberries, which I doubt if any of you have ever seen in any store. They more than made up for their size by having lots of flavor.
When we seemed to get tired of eating them, out would come the old foley mill, a hand turned crank device which pressed the fruit through small holes, and left behind the larger seeds. This fruit pulp was turned into strawberry jam, which tasted delicious in the winter.
When the next crop was ready, early spring peas, we ate peas. Peas at every meal. Peas in every recipe. Peas creamed, peas in every dish. Guess mom didn't know you could eat peapods or we would have eaten those too. Soon the peas were over. Not to be seen again until next year. That was how our meals were. Using up the crop that was currently abundent.
Sometimes we supplemented our menu by wild plants growing around where we lived. There was an apricot tree growing right at the rivers edge. The roots of this tree had to have tapped right into the river, because these apricots were not like any I have eaten anywhere else. These were juicy. Juicy like our nectarines of today. It was like a gift waiting there for us every summer, year after year. I don't know where it came from.
One year my dad decided those wild berries we called june berries, which grew on a shrub everywhere, had to be good in something. We went out and picked a bushel of them. They were easy to pick, no thorns, nice height up off the ground, and you didn't eat them while you picked because they didn't taste that great. My mom had to cook these berries into something. They had no flavor. She added sugar. She added other berries. She tried putting them in muffins. I never did like them. My dad was mad because I kept saying they were not tastey. Luckily, we didn't have to use them again the next summer.
On an old calendar was written a menu for a thanksgiving meal. Based on the year of the calendar it was about 1901. They were having, gander stuffed with sage dressing, the one that bit, it says. Pumpkin pie, boiled beans with bacon, potatoes and gravy, pickles, bread, and brandied peaches. Doesn't sound too bad, does it? Probably it tasted pretty good too, this particular family had a restaurant, so grandma was a good cook. Based on her size, she at least liked her cooking.
Often times we would see no other people, and we didn't have radio, while people "in town" did. I think my dad said it was because of the mountains. Sometimes when the weather was just right, we could pick up a radio station, and it might be from some remote place. It was a thrill I can tell you.
We had some Nez Perce Indians living on the reservation not too far from where we lived. One afternoon, while I was out playing, walking along a dusty road, I spotted this little baby hanging on the fence post beside the road. It was strapped inside a papoose board, laced in and just hanging there. It was such a beautiful baby, with lots of black hair, and fat little cheeks. I was so excited to find this wonderful surprise, I plucked it off the fence and started home. The baby had big black eyes, and was the cutest little thing. I hadn't gone but a few steps when I saw the Indian women standing near the fence watching me. They never said a word to me, but I knew it was their baby, and took it back to them. They took back the baby and still nothing was said. They were picking the wild blackberries, and they are very thorny, so they hung the little baby backpack right on the fence while they worked. I was very happy there for a few moments.
1 tsp baking soda
1 tsp salt
2 tsp baking powder
2 eggs
2 cups sour milk
2 TBLSP melter butter
Mix dry ingredients together, beat eggs and sour milk together and stir into dry ingredients.
This was one of our favorite recipes for using up soured milk. The tangy flavor of the sour milk came through in the pancakes and we thought they were special. To try it to day you would need to deliberately sour your milk by adding vinegar and letting it stand a bit while you measure your dry ingredients. You might like it too
Sourmilk Pancakes
