Time Travel

I think I like old things because it's the closest I can come to time travel. And time traveling is something I would absolutely LOVE to be able to do. It would probably be my first wish, were I ever to be aproached by a genie offering me three such opportunities. But because I don't really expect that ever to happen, I make do with collecting old things and using my imagination. Like putting on the blue and white polka-dotted drop-waist dress from the '20s that we found at Grandma's and imagining myself in a time when that outfit was normal. Or like those wheat pennies I've told y'all about! Thinking about how many times they've been used since they were created - love it. And, I've recently discovered a new kind of old thing I love: old recipes!

I came across a blog post on Nourished Kitchen with an old recipe for Cream of Chicken soup, and it was so well-written and so charmingly photographed that I couldn't not make it. I just happened to have enough homemade chicken broth in my feezer to make this super fast and easy to do. And just happened to have visited a local dairy last week and picked up some raw milk, so I had fresh raw cream! (What?! I know. It sounds way more Suzie Homemaker than I actually am, but it really did work out like that.)

It turned out so well. I mean, so well! I'm pretty proud of myself for that :) Anyway, it got me to thinking that I had access to a ton of old recipes from my great-grandmother's recipe notebook.

Grandmommy kept a three-ring notebook of the weekly publication that the Home Economics Department of Lone Star Gas Company sent out in the 30's and 40's. How fun is that!? Yes, so fun! All of the foods illustrated have faces, so there are little smiling apples and laughing pigs and singing strawberries everywhere :) Seriously. Above the recipe for Strawberry Jam, there's an illustration of a strawberry playing a guitar and singing, surrounded by little strawberries dancing. (Get it? Jam?!) And above the Lime Punch recipe, there's a lime hitting a punching bag :) What about the Pecan Dumpling recipe, you wonder? A pecan riding piggy-back on a dumpling, both smiling at a chicken :) Yes, it's that great :)

I haven't made anything from these amusing pieces of history yet, but I love thinking about Grandmommy getting these each week out in rural Texas :) Reading through them and deciding what to fix for her farmer husband and brood of little ones in between feeding the chickens and hanging out the laundry. I know she made one of the punch recipes because out to the side, she wrote out the measurements for quartering the ingredients of "Golden Punch." Sarah and I decided we might like to try the "Southern Chicken Roll," a sort of chicken pot pie biscuit roll-up. And when we do, we'll be following the same method that hundreds of housewives followed half a century ago. I love that :)