Try It, You'll like it!

The most noteworthy person in our family for many, many years was my mother, “Grandma Bug.” Actually she had a perfectly good name, Elanore, that no one but her non-family friends used. She got the nickname “Bug” as a small child when someone said she looked as cute as a bug in a rug. For the rest of her life she was Bug, Aunt Bug, or Grandma Bug.

One of her more annoying traits was to ask you to do something for her without telling you in advance what she wanted. She’d say, “Karen, I want you to do something for me.” I’d naturally respond, “What?” and she’d say something like, “It’s just something I need done.” When she finally told me what it was she wanted, more often than not I knew why she was so secretive, because it was almost always something I did not want to do.

Along with this trait was her incessant trying of new recipes. She got started when Father (otherwise known as Grandpa Bob) had to go on a no-salt, no-sugar diet for his heart (before dieticians told us that you actually need some salt in your diet for your heart to work). She’d search through magazines and newspapers for ways to fix this or that without salt, or without fat, or with some new no-calorie sugar substitute. She bought cookbooks put out by the American Heart Association and any other group or individual that promised “tasty meals to better your health.”

Poor Father. He was the guinea pig. He ate the stuff without complaint, but not without a quiet comment or two. Nothing deterred Grandma Bug from her crusade to convince him to give up his German heritage foods, most of them sweet and lots of them “loaded with fat,” as she often said.

If things didn’t turn out just right, she’d say, “It’s o.k. I’ll just feed it to Bob.”

Eventually I had a family and household of my own, and I didn’t have to contend with her crusade much. But my kids often spent weekends with their grandparents, and they often got rooked into eating strange things. Susan remembers coming into the house and having Grandma Bug say, “Here, Susan. Try some of this!” Susan would naturally ask, “What is it?” And Grandma would respond, “Try it, you’ll like it!” As often as not it would be passable, something with artificial sugar but otherwise a cookie, for example. But sometimes it would be something a kid would consider gross, like smelt (disguised in some way, of course), or beef tongue, or squash.

This all came to mind this evening when Susan came over to borrow some Cream of Tartar to make some playdoh. I had made a new recipe called “Taffy Bars” that used molasses. They’re really pretty--intensely brown, soft like a good brownie, and shiny on top. At first when I offered her one, Susan thought I was giving her a brownie, and she said, “I made brownies tonight.” And I responded, “But this isn’t a brownie. Try it.” At which Susan said, “I get the awful feeling I’m in the presence of Grandma Bug.” She’s a good daughter, and she tried the bar. Her evaluation was, “I don’t think I’m going to eat any more of it. I don’t think I like it.” And being a kind mother, I told her to just pitch it in the garbage.

But after she left, I realized that I’d better mend my ways, or I would become that grandma who would be conning my younguns with, “Try it. You’ll like it!”

Elanore Hammond Ludwig (Grandma Bug) died in May of 2007.

About Coffee

My cousin Gwen was musing about what coffee is best. She had tried Starbucks and wasn’t too impressed. Then she asked what kind of coffee our grandma used. I remember those colorful one pound cans with the key you used to twist off a strip around the top of the can.

If I remember rightly, Grandma Hammond used Hills Brothers a lot, but she also used Folgers. Mother and Father used Rejoice coffee in Peoria, but that's a local brand. Jim's family used Kroger's Eight-O'Clock which turns out to be pretty good coffee and still available.

My daughter Robin and her husband Chris are coffee connoisseurs and swear by the Sam's Member’s Mark 100% Arabica which they grind themselves. I find it a chore to grind my own beans, but they grind enough for a whole week at one time. If I could ever figure out how much that would be, I could do it, too.

Personally, I just stick to Sam's Great Value decaf and Folgers Vanilla. In a 12-cup pot (which is not really 12 measuring cups worth), I put 1/3 cup of decaf and 1/6 cup of the vanilla. Ahhh. It's good. Even tastes good the next day heated in the microwave.

Our favorite coffee "on the go" is McDonalds. I don't think it can be beat. I just wish I could buy the grounds so I could make it at home.

Crosswords for Years

Years ago (2006 or earlier) I started making copies of those nice, long crosswords that are in the Woodford County News Bulletin and the Sunday Journal-Star. I would work on one for a few nights, and then set it aside. By that time there would be a new one to work on. Gradually that stack of puzzles reached about 50. So now every night, if I don't have a new one to work on, I go back to the old ones. I keep them on a clipboard beside my bed. After I have worked on one and can't go further, I put it on the bottom of the stack. Since I'm a person who likes to patiently watch ants carrying bits back to their nest holes, I enjoy knowing how long I've been working on a puzzle. The oldest one so far was one I started in June of 2006. I just finished it last month. Usually I get back to a puzzle every three months. It's amazing how I'll be able to fill in words that have been stumpers for years. Also, I've learned to just erase a word here or there, and voila! the other answers fall into place.

One of my very favorite soups is something I call Italian Meatball Soup. It's basically a minestrone without the cabbage and squash but with meatballs added.

I start with about a quart of water in the kettle.
Add
1 can diced tomatoes
1 can Cannellini beans
1 carrot, diced
1 stalk celery, diced (or sliced thin)
1-1/2 t instant beef bouillion granules
1 clove garlic (I used dried)
2 T spaghetti seasoning
1 C rotini
3 Johnsonville Italian sausages
Everything goes in the pot at one time. To make the "meatballs", I squeeze the meat out of the sausage casings and roll each little ball in the palm of my hands to make them round. Bring to boil and then simmer at least 45 minutes.

My brother-in-law, Gary asked for the recipe and made it himself, with the following misadventures and results:

Gary’s Misadventure with Italian Meatball Soup Recipe

I put together the Italian Sausage soup recipe you sent me and it was terrific. However, I made a couple adjustments ( actually you could call them tactical errors) when I stopped at the store to pick up the sausage and the cannellini beans. While there I saw the diced tomatoes sitting there on the shelf, so I picked up a small can, even though I had some at home. I had all the other ingredients and decided to make the little meat balls and cook them ahead for Tuesday. About 3:30, I began preparing the soup with the 1 quart of water, the beans, the tomatoes, carrots, garlic and celery. I began heating it all as I started the rotini water.

About six or seven minutes later I realized I had forgotten two ingredients, the bouillon and spaghetti mix. I went to the cupboard and looked through my collection of pre-mixed seasonings and found a packet of Kroger Spaghetti mix. I tore it open and plopped it in the soup, then added the beef bouillon. I mixed it well and let it gain speed to a boil for about three minutes. The rotini was doing well and I pulled it off the fire to make sure I didn’t overcook it. I let it simmer another five minutes and dumped the rotini in and stirred it for a couple minutes.

I took a soup spoon to sample the broth and was I surprised! The broth was hot as a firecracker, not flame hot, but pepper hot. It burned like a five alarm chili recipe, nearly sucking the wind out of me. Not what I had expected. The spices floating through the broth were INTENSE to say the least. Very tasty, but hotter than hell. I quickly poured a cup of water in the soup and prayed for help. I looked at the spaghetti sauce mix, but found no answer for the scalding going on in my mouth, despite my suspicion that someone had laced it with cayenne pepper. The bouillon wouldn’t have been peppered, so I went to the garbage can and picked up the tomato can. On the label, in a pretty celery green banner were the words “with green chilies.” I had not noticed that when I bought them. I have now. I added another cup of water and simmered it another five minutes, tasted it and took a small bowl of it. I was surprised at how I could taste the rich flavors through the pepper searing my tongue. I thought, "Man, Jim would love this!" Most very hot foods are just that, to me, little flavor and a lot of hot. Not this stuff, it was delicious, as it started softening the enamel on my teeth.

I wondered why the flavors were still so strong. I looked at your recipe again and noticed I had overlooked the portion of two T spoons of spaghetti mix; I had dumped the whole contents of the envelope into the soup. I finished my soup and walked out to the mail box to check my mail, the stinging still working on my mouth. It began to subside at the curbside and by the time I got back to the kitchen, my taste buds had calmed down, but still the buzz lingered. I had moved the pot off the fire nearly ten minutes earlier, and I decided I would take another bowl of soup. To my surprised the intensity of the pepper has lessened and, though still potent, was much more tolerable. Great flavor and a nice little zing. People who like hot chili and tacos would probably like this version.

Gary:
What an adventure! And you can still try the "regular" version some time and get yet another treat! My cousin and I often have misadventures like this.

About the tomatoes with chilies: Susan put rotel tomatoes in a cream cheese and sour cream dip and it was terrific. So I got a can of them, thinking they were mildly hot. Wrongo, Dog Breath! I have three cans of them in my pantry that I'm going to donate to Robin since she and Chris like hot stuff. I'm really careful now to be sure the tomatoes are JUST tomatoes! I think the dip was mild because the milk products counteracted the heat.

Glad you could eat your "original" recipe!

The Old House Comes Down

Mother always wanted me to build a new house where her old one stood. Before I could do that, the old house had to be emptied and removed. The emptying was quite a chore. All those things she saved that she might use some time, and 40 boxes of fabric and yarn.

To make the demolition quicker (and cheaper), we engaged the Eureka Volunteer Fire Department to use the house as a training site and then to burn it down. I didn't go to the actual conflagration, but my kids did and they got some neat pictures of it.

Incidentally, it wasn't out of love of the old place that I didn't go to the burning. It was too early on a Saturday morning.

The Fire Department people were wonderful and I can't possibly thank them enough.

Bug's* First House

My parents lived in the house at 617 N. Webster in Eureka for 34 years, and Mother hated the house the whole time she lived in it. She often said that if she had known how much money Bob had squirreled away, she'd have had a new house.
The old house was not well-built and had not been cared for before my folks moved in. The basement was perpetually wet, the rooms were small and there was an odd one that didn't adapt ttself to any use anyone could think of. The bathroom was 3-1/2 feet walled off of the end of the kitchen. The upstairs had two rooms, sort of, but you had to walk through the first one to get to the second one. The septic system was inadequate and a constant problem.
I inherited the house with her death in 2007 and finally decided to do what she always told me to do, "When I die, I want you to tear down this house and build a new one."
I had looked into the cost of re-modeling the old house, and when I reached $150,000, I decided we might as well build a new one. She liked the houses built by Homeway Homes, and I did, too, except there always seemed to be something awkward about every floor plan. For example, in one design you entered one of the bedrooms from the kitchen. And I don't want a humungous bathroom with a tub with gobs of squirters. I don't want to tie up gobs of floor space in bathrooms.
So the logical decision was to tear the house down and build a new one. It would be Bug's second house.
*Bug was my mother's nickname.

Ironing: From the 50s to the Present

I understand that most young people today don’t own and iron and wouldn’t know what to do with one if they had it. I’ve seen people in clothes that should have been ironed and it isn’t a pretty sight. Manufacturers and major stores advertise that their clothes are 100% cotton, and that’s just fine, but all-cotton clothes rarely look pressed when they’re taken from the dryer. Even the most expensive dress shirts look messy without at least a little touch-up on the fronts.

I remember that as a teen (back in the 50s) we all wore cotton skirts that were very full and made to stand out by crinolines, sometimes two or three. My blouses were white shirts from Ship ‘n Shore and they had to be ironed. I decided that I could iron my clothes myself (an act of rebellion on my part – what kid today would think that was daring?) and I learned in a hurry. The trouble was I wasn’t good at planning ahead, and fairly often I would be ironing a blouse or skirt just before going somewhere in it. Mother ranted that I was wasting electricity by heating up the iron for one item. I did some calculations (I’d had physics by that time) and decided that each session was costing $.05. She wasn’t impressed, probably because her real issue was my lack of planning and doing things in an orderly way.

Talk about orderly systems, to get ready to do the ironing, you would lay out each piece on the ironing board and sprinkle it with water contained in a bottle with a sprinkler gadget stuck in the neck, an empty pop bottle was a good choice. The sprinkler gadget had cork around it so it would have a tight fit. Then you would roll each piece up tightly and lay it in the basket. Ideally, by the time you got to ironing, each piece would be uniformly damp and ironing would make the fabric nice and smooth. The biggest problem with this scenario is that I often didn’t want to finish all the ironing at one time. I’d put the dampened but unironed pieces in the refrigerator. If I didn’t, they would develop mold, and NO one wants to deal with mold spots on clothes! Probably half the women in the country had dampened clothes taking up space in their refrigerators.

When we moved into the house in Peoria, there was a trunk in the attic with several odd items. One was a ceramic sprinkler bottle in the shape of a Chinaman and a poem was on a card around his neck: “More better sprinkle bottle way Than squirt through teethie all the day.”

When I got married, I was faced with ironing a pair of men’s cotton pants. Hoo boy! Where should I begin? Rebellion be damned, I solved the problem by walking two blocks to Mother’s house and having her show me how to do it.

In the 60s clothes began to be made of blended fabrics, mostly nylon and cotton, but sometimes rayon and cotton. And we were blessed with a wonderful invention: the steam iron! To top it off, someone started producing spray starch!! At last the refrigerator was free of dampened clothes and the whole task was immeasurably easier—especially if you wanted to iron one piece at a time.

Over the years I have learned to enjoy ironing. It’s nice to have a job that is actually, really completed. Almost everything in housekeeping is never-ending and you can’t see any improvement after getting the jobs done. But with ironing, every piece starts out wrinkled and ends up sharp and crisp and hanging on a hanger. If there are 6 shirts to iron, you can rejoice when you get to the end of the 6th one. It offers a sense of accomplishment.

To make it even more enjoyable, I learned that when my kids were little, they stayed away when I was ironing. I think it was too boring for them. But, oh, what peace I had! All alone with my GE steam iron and a stack of ironing that would take me as long as I wanted it to. Janet Evanovich writes that Stephanie Plum’s mother ironed when she was anxious. Sometimes she ironed the same shirt over and over and over. I’ve never gotten that bad, because I always have plenty of things to iron, and if I weren’t so busy on the computer, I might even get caught up.