When Love and Skill Work Together

God bless whoever commented on the previous entry.

I feel like the voice crying out in the wilderness. Imagine my shock when someone answered from behind a tree!

I have one thought for today:

When love and skill work together, expect a masterpiece. -- John Ruskin

This to me is the essence of Home Economics. And the antithesis of Costco. Sorry, Costco.

T-Minus 7 Days and Counting to T-Day

Here at Chez Becky Home Ecky, the countdown to Thanksgiving has begun. This year, the in-laws plus two aunts will be our guests, bringing the total number of diners to six adults and two children who seem to live off turkey fumes and not much else. In other words, I don't factor them in much when it comes to actual turkey consumption. Still, I was persuaded by Joe, the butcher, God bless him and his bloody apron and handlebar mustache, to order a 14-pound bird. We all know where this leads: turkey soup, turkey bagels, turkey, turkey and more turkey.

I digress.

I do cook a mean turkey. My secret is cheesecloth. I have no idea about deep-frying or brining or any of those fancypants techniques. I just baste the sucker while it's covered in cheesecloth and remove it for the last hour. No Butterball hotline required.

To me, Thanksgiving is all about the sides. Those are the labor-intensive portion of the meal. In the spirit of learning from cooks past, I perused the recipes from my grandmother's black book (otherwise known as Command Central of the family). Guess what? There are basically no recipes for anything that isn't a dessert, and that's because my grandfather owned the town's IGA (grocery store for the non-Midwesterners out there). When the store closed on the day before Thanksgiving, Grandpa would bring home everything that wasn't sold. It was not implausible that we would find the following on our Thanksgiving table: Turkey. Duck. Goose. Beef Tenderloin. So my grandma would cook whatever he brought. Oh, but she did have a superb recipe for cranberries. My mom says that the fresh berries would "pop" when she hand-cranked them through the meat grinder. That is one thing I am making by hand. What about you?

Payback Time

Last night I started reading "A Nation in Torment," a book written by Eddie Ellis, who was a friend and mentor. It's about the Depression. The foreward to the second edition, which Eddie wrote in 1995 (he died in 1997) was chilling. And it made me miss him dearly. He wrote of the need to understand history so that we don't repeat our mistakes, and how much the nation's status in 1995 (homeless people, the gap between rich and poor) reminded him of the set-up to the Depression. I wish Eddie was alive. I wish I knew what he thought about the economic situation of today. We need the wisdom of people who lived through the first one badly right now.

The Depression created many personal tragedies. People not only jumped out windows; less dramatically, they also died from heart attacks caused by the financial strain. My father-in-law's mother died from the tragedy of having her five children taken from her and placed in orphanges because she couldn't support the family (her husband had died as the Depression began). My late grandfather lost his college scholarship (funded by an insurance company he worked for part-time) and had to go to work to support his family (he wound up putting his brothers through college and never got to finish his own education). My grandfather (in his early 20s) drove a milk truck in Chicago, when people had their milk delivered to their homes. He told the story of a destitute family on his milk route who had no choice but to abandon Chicago and head for Kentucky, where they had family. They had no money even for gas. My grandfather loaned the father $5. That father mailed that money back to my grandfather once they got to Kentucky, one precious dollar at a time. It was a terrible time. No one now can imagine the desperation.

Somehow I feel this all ties in to this blog, to the search for things that are made by hand, that aren't a product of mass consumption. For every reaction, there is an equal and opposite reaction, and this economy is going to force the issue. We've overconsumed, and now there's going to be payback.

How many of us wear THESE anymore?

Thanks to Angie for contributing this piece called "Grandma's Apron." Author unknown. It's a bit sentimental:

I don't think our kids know what an apron is. The principal use of Grandma's apron was to protect the dress underneath, but along with that, it served as a potholder for removing hot pans from the oven. It was wonderful for drying children's tears, and on occasion was evenused for cleaning out dirty ears. From the chicken coop, the apron was used for carrying eggs, fussy chicks, andsometimes half-hatched eggs to be finished in the warming oven. When company came, those aprons were ideal hiding places for shy kids. And when the weather was cold, grandma wrapped it around her arms. Those big old aprons wiped many a perspiring brow, bent over the hot wood stove. Chips and kindling wood were brought into the kitchen in that apron. From the garden, it carried all sorts of vegetables. After the peas had been shelled, it carried out the hulls. In the fall, the apron was used to bring in apples that had fallen from the trees. When unexpected company drove up the road, it was surprising how muchfurniture that old apron could dust in a matter of seconds. When dinner was ready, Grandma walked out onto the porch, waved her apron, andthe men knew it was time to come in from the fields to dinner. It will be a long time before someone invents something that will replace that'old-time apron' that served so many purposes. Send this to those who would know (and love) the story about Grandma'saprons.

REMEMBER: Grandma used to set her hot baked apple pies on the window sill to cool. Her granddaughters set theirs on the window sill to thaw. They would go crazy now trying to figure out how many germs was on that apron. I don't think I ever caught anything from an apron--except love.

Living on Wisteria Lane

This weekend, Miss Becky Home Ecky is actually living up to her name. Plans call for a neighborhood garage sale, lemonade stand and block party. Cooking is involved. (Chocolate Toffee Oatmeal cookies for the lemonade stand; chicken wings for the block party). Plus there's a soccer game tomorrow morning; you'll find me standing on the sidelines with a mug of coffee like all the other parents.

You long for Wisteria Lane; then when you get it, all you want is to rebel.

I did tell the neighbors that we wanted to host a Swingtown party and have everyone come in 70s garb. However given that we are the new people on the block, I think that could be misconstrued!

I've been in a fallow period, writing-wise, for a few years now. Three years ago, when my oldest son was 2 1/2, I began to write weekly with a teacher, and that developed into a huge project to renovate a novel I had tried to write over a decade. It was maybe not the easiest way to go about writing a novel, as I was taking a story that was remotely based on episodes from my life (hello autobiographical first novel - isn't that classic?) and built a story around it. In retrospect it seems easier to have a story in place first. But, Miss Becky Home Ecky NEVER does anything the easy way. Why, when you can suffer for your art instead?? But I digress. I went through a hugely creative period and was exquisitely happy writing that novel. Daily, as I wrote, I would get that beautiful soaring feeling that comes when you are in the zone. I took that as a sign that this was what I was meant to do. I mean, can Julia Cameron and her gazillion-selling books about The Writer's Way be wrong about that?

I still love that book. I have put it out into the world, and it may get published or it may not, but it brought me huge amounts of happiness.

Then, I got pregnant with my second son, and if you've ever been pregnant at age 40 with a preschooler at home, you'll know what I'm talking about when I say that I was TIRED. So making that second blessed baby and bringing him into the world and getting our family adjusted and renovating a house and moving was my gigantic creative undertaking of the next few years. To say that I am in a fallow period is actually quite unfair, as my husband and I have created this family, and now, a new home, in record time. It's fallow in terms of pages written -- but not in terms of life lived.

At age 40, I allowed myself to be a vessel for creativity, against a lot of odds. It wasn't the biblical Sarah in her 80s, but hey, I too had given up. Now I know that when the time is right I will be a vessel again - for a book, not a baby! - and I know it will come in its own time.

Time Travel

Miss Becky Home Ecky has lived a lot of days. Today, I get to be reminded of just how many days I've lived since high school ended when my husband and I attend my 25th high school reunion.

I try to understand time and cannot. Sometimes minutes stretch to seem impossibly long. Othertimes it feels like you catapult over entire stretches of days in the blink of an eye.

Madeleine L'Engle writes in her nonfiction book, Walking on Water, about the true story of American astronauts from one of our early space ships who heard a program of nostalgic music over their sound system, and radioed NASA to thank whoever it was who had sent them the program. NASA was baffled: they had sent no such program. After much research, it was finally revealed that this particular radio program had been broadcast in the 1930s.

There is so much we still don't understand about time.

Waste Couture

Miss Becky Home Ecky has discovered that she might be inadvertently eco-friendly.

Uncovered today: The average American purchases approximately 70 pounds of fabric each year, with 85 percent winding up in a landfill. This, according to the Institute for Local Self-Reliance. (Miss Becky Home Ecky would like to put a sign up on her humble library door to that effect). Sewing machine companies are looking to market themselves, now with a "green" angle. The article I saw from Brother sewing machines was encouraging people to turn old t-shirts into tote bags. That might be a bit much. I mean, we must have style. At the very least, though, couldn't we make sure that our old t-shirts get transferred to someone who needs them, instead of languishing in a drawer?

We are on to something here at Miss Becky Home Ecky. Even though I shopped at the dreaded home of giant mass-produced items imported from China (sorry, Costco) yesterday, I feel reform in the air. A new president is coming. A new day is dawning. And next on my project list is taking my son to Wall-e. Yes, Pixar and Home Economics do mix. More tomorrow ...

When Treasures Find You

Since I launched this misguided, silly, potential time wasting effort (all negative thoughts that my internal self-critic has thrown around in my head on every possible occasion), several interesting items have found their way to my library.

My new roommates include:
1960s sewing machine. Sears Roebuck catalog, winter 1931-1932. Meta Given's Modern Encyclopedia of Cooking. Coats and Clark's Sewing Book. A hat box circa the 1950s or 1940s from The French Room at Marshall Field's.

As a child, my mom made it very clear that inanimate objects have a life. I pass this along to my boys whenever I can, pretending that their Hot Wheels cars, sweet peas on the plate, pillows on their bed, anything, have a life and feelings of their own. So it's not surprising that I feel that the 1960s sewing machine now taking up residence in my library came here for a reason. In fact, it was offered to me out of the blue by an 80-year-old friend of my husband named Marge. And why is it that, while having my first writing session with my new writer friend, she revealed that she was a home ec minor?

You can call it sheer random chance, or serendipity, but I know better. Every one of these little coincidences, to me, points the way down a path. This is how novels are born. People, don't break the spell for me: The creative idea is very fragile at birth.

Lost in Translation

Duncan Hines yellow cake, Jell-O vanilla pudding, crushed pineapple, Cool Whip - sounds good, right? For some reason, my grandma's recipe for pineapple - a friend tells me some call this hummingbird - cake (labeled in her hand, "delicious," and she only did that on a few recipes, so my hopes were high) did not translate well into 2008. I mean, it sounds good on paper, but like the previously mentioned "yummy dip" (including braunsweiger AND potted meat AND mayo), the result was way too dated. This was basically a cake in a pan smothered in vanilla pudding flecked with pineapple (which my kids hated - I admit the texture is weird), and slathered in Cool Whip.

Then it hit me. This recipe was circa 1976. Flashbacks to endless dishes of Jell-O pudding, Jell-O parfaits, Jell-O molds, even Danish junket desserts in little glass dishes caused me to break out in a sweat. What was the obsession with gelatin in the 1970s? Why is it that some recipes endure, while others get lost in translation?

The Magic is In You

This summer, my family visited the small lake town in Wisconsin where my grandparents are from (sorry for ending a sentence in a preposition, but this is the Midwest). On my way out of town, I drove on a narrow, winding road down to the far side of the small lake, where my grandparents lived. My grandfather and his father built a 2-bedroom house and several cottages here in the 1940s. The place looms large in my memory. They sold it when I was 12, and the best memories of my childhood took place here. Maybe because I was 12 it seems even more poignant, as that age signals the end of an era in so many ways. Driving by, I have to say, the magic is gone from the place. The house has been remodeled in cheap siding and is not attractive in the least. My grandfather's old wood garage with swinging doors and its own gas pump are made into some pre-fab garage. One cottage is still intact. I think of how many times my grandmother had to clean that cottage between renters and how much she hated it.

If I could have walked down the sloping hill to the lake, and dangled my feet in its waters, perhaps I could have felt the magic again. But I couldn't. I had an unfriendly feeling. Now I see: The magic is gone from the place, but not from the child. Every sled run down that hill, every visit from the adorable family of ducks that would tap on my grandmother's patio door to ask for corn, ever daffodil cake that was lit with candles for my birthday, still live. The magic lives inside me.

Arts and Crafts

Taken from the Michael Fitzsimmons Arts and Crafts Furnishings Store Web site:

Believe in goodness
Trust in life
Embrace beauty
Practice kindness

Frank Lloyd Wright's fireplace in his Oak Park home has "Life is Truth" stenciled above it. Stencil one of those over your fireplace.

Is this pretentious? I want to think of a name for our new house. You know, like "Ragdale" in Lake Forest. Somehow it's a lot harder to come up with a name for a 1958 colonial on the curve of a cul de sac than it is for an Arts and Crafts mansion. Hmmm. Also I wouldn't mind carving the four sets of initials of my family members into the legs of our kitchen table/island, as architect Howard Van Doren Shaw did at Ragdale. I can hear my husband now: "detrimental to resale value."

It's so challenging to be artsy-craftsy these days.

Post-Traumatic Home Ec Stress Disorder

Way up north in the 'Berg, as we like to call our hometown in Central Wisconsin ("The City in the Center" -- the center of what is the question), preparations are underway for our high school reunion. Emails are flying as are reminiscences. Jenni, now an accomplished accounting professional in Minneapolis, remembers 8th grade home ec. Does she ever. Mainly, what she remembers, other than making a stuffed animal elephant, was Mrs. Schutts (aka Chutes Away) criticizing her cinnamon toast for being undercooked.

You can undercook toast?

Such were the vagaries of Home Ec.

Pickles Accomplished

Armed with recipes copied from my grandma's big black book, on loan from my cousin Barbara (who has used her superior baking skills to parlay Grandma's apple cake recipe into a grand champion ribbon at the Monroe County Fair in Indiana), I set out to cook this weekend. Okay, "cook" is maybe overstating it. But, I made brownies (from a box, natch), spaghetti sauce, finger-lickin' barbecued chicken (cannot take credit for the stellar name, must credit the Jefferson County newspaper headline of 1976), spinach salad with warm bacon dressing, and ... refrigerator pickles. I ran into a bunch of my PEO friends at the farmer's market, and resisted temptation at the cute initial-jewelry stand to buy cucumbers instead. The little ones that look like pickles, in fact. The result? Cool, summery pickled cukes that keep for up to a year in the 'fridge.

Refrigerator Pickles
7 cups cucumbers, thinly sliced
1 cup sliced onions
1 tablespoon salt
Let the above stand overnight.
Drain well.
Mix
1 3/4 cup sugar
1 cup vinegar
1 teaspoon celery seed
Mix until sugar is dissolved. Pour mixture over cucumbers. Mix well and put in jars. They will keep for one year in the refrigerator.

Next up: Pineapple cake. It involves Duncan Hines yellow cake, vanilla pudding and Cool Whip. What can possibly go wrong?*

See entry #1.

The Hunger for Home Ec

If the Trader Joe's of the world are doing such a good job at filling the void left when Home Ec went by the wayside in the late 70s, why bring Home Ec back?

Childhood obesity, for one. The number of meals consumed outside the home has doubled from nearly a quarter in 1970 to nearly half today. As we relinquished control of our kitchens, we let market economics determine the ingredients. What do we get? Hydrogenated oils and transfats. Ingredients that enable food to sit for extended periods of time on store shelves and under heat lamps at fast food restaurants. Obese children who become obese adults.

A friend's latest routine is to go to Whole Foods daily, buy a piece of fresh fish that's already marinated or breaded, and fresh asparagus. She bakes the fish, roasts the asparagus and makes rice. Silly me, I was buying the fish and dipping it in egg, flour and breadcrumbs myself. She's smart: She's taking advantage of the ease of prepared foods without getting sucked into the downside.

Are the domestic arts better viewed than attempted?

Martha Stewart. The Food Network. HGTV.

It's home ec porn. We sit agog in our living rooms, watching Martha or Rachael make prosciutto-wrapped asparagus and lemon drop martinis for some imaginary summer dinner party.

Do we dutifully turn off the tv, go into our kitchens and lovingly make the asparagus for our own family? No, we pull out a Trader Joe's entree, slap it into the microwave and call it dinner.

As I prepare to shop for the ingredients for refrigerator pickles, I ponder: If our grandmothers had so many prepared foods at their disposal, would they have gone to all this trouble?

How hard can it be?

How. Hard. Can. It. Be. Five words that must never be uttered lest you invoke the wrath of the Home Ec gods. This applies to undertakings as complex as sewing blue corduroy wrap skirts (my actual 8th grade Home Ec project) and as simple as making a pie crust (pie crust has what, maybe four ingredients? What's so hard about that??).

What I learned in Eighth Grade Home Economics: Never, never underestimate your ability to completely mess up. Ask my kitchen mate, who ruined a pound of perfectly good ground beef by crumbling the beef in the pan as it cooked and then wondering how she was supposed to put the browned beef back together to form hamburger patties. True story.

About this blog.

Who: I am a 43-year-old mom of two young sons, very happily married, living in suburban Chicago. Actually, the North Shore. Think "Swingtown" without the swinging and 30 years later, and add a bunch of Range Rovers to the scenery in place of the Buick Skylarks and Dodge Darts.

Why: A writer by profession, I have written one novel that seems destined to collect dust under the bed despite my agent's best Starbucks-fueled attempts to sell it. I have an idea for a second novel and this blog's purpose is to generate material for that novel. That, and I think this endeavor might be not only fun, but good for life in general.

What: An attempt to turn away from the big box, warehouse store culture in order to make things that I value. What this blog is NOT: a Martha Stewart-esque attempt at perfection and one-uppance. Please. Me one-upping anyone in Home Ec is like the fly attempting to one-up the fly swatter. Sooner or later I'm going to get crushed.

Enough poetic metaphors. It's time to launch into our first Home Ec project. I have rejected the idea of making my grandmother's recipe for "Yummy Dip" that includes Braunschweiger, potted meat AND mayonnaise, in favor of Helen's summery, non-potted, completely meat-free recipe for refrigerator pickles.

Introducing Miss Becky Home Ecky

Come along with me, Laura, alias Miss Becky Home Ecky, on my misguided journey to find myself through Home Economics. Check back for more as I dust off my 1960s era sewing machine and crank up my turquoise Sunbeam mixmaster. Wish you were here ... to clean up the mess!