NOV 23

Food day- I have done pretty well on the food department topic for my whole life----- my mother was a hell of a cook and my father was in the business of providing farm equipment and repair so therefore during the war when I was in the five year old range he was exempt from serving or being drafted because he was part of the food chain.  to this day i totally understand  the importance of farming... which  that criticalness....currently  needs to be  reinforced....

 

I can remember father would often arrive home with a bushel basket of something,  or most often a 50 LB bag of things like onions because we lived in the onion growing district.. AKA black dirt country ---in the Goshen NY area..  so when a bushel basket of peas would arrive even at the age of 5 I would be required to sit on the front porch and Shuck peas.... being careful to get the peas in the pot and the and the shockings on the on the floor..  Then mother would do something like boil them for a very short time--- minute or two ---strain them and then put them in little white bags which had a metal clamp at the top for closing..  we then had to go off to a commercial freezing company in Newburgh NY. where we would put on jackets which everyone would wear ----being five years old mine went about to the floor with loooong arms...  .. I could remember going down between the the bins or frozen food to ours ----I can't remember the number of ours but it was about knee high and tipped out on a pivot so mother would put these little white bags in there all carefully labeled peas with the date..   she would then shuffle around with the bags already there.. and maybe bring home one that said corn  or my favorite Lima beans... which we would eat the next two days.

There were baskets of strawberries that were turned into jam and stored in our preserve closet in the cellar...  occasionally we would get some black raspberries for the black Raspberry jam that I still like...  which would all be carefully labeled into Jelly jars we call them which were basically short drinking glasses about two inches diameter and covered with wax.

There were additional assets to being in the farmers loop...   like there were chickens that came home that were never pets.....  and occasionally a prime rib roast of beef which was basically unheard of.    my mother shopped not only at the A&P but at a funny market off in the countryside maybe 10 miles from home where I distinctly remember she would occasionally get a lump of actual butter...   not the white stuff with the yellow packet but real actual butter...

 

It was the constant bags of 50 LB of onions that became her challenge to somehow use... and she did making relishes which had some vegetable involved like corn with tomatoes. but lots of  onions...... So as the dinner plates were served up there would be a healthy spoonful of relish which I'm sure she had calculated the nutritional value... 

 

So when it came time to break up my families home in Cornwall NY, my oldest daughter,, was quick to claim my mother's recipe box,, which hopefully she still has because every fall when it comes to harvest time I begin to think of those wonderful relishes and at some point I would like to try making some of them there is one particular that I liked.    very unusual spices..... 

The only word of wisdom I can think of passing on is  I at the tender age of five or six watched her make strawberry jam... she told me that a lot of people have trouble making jam because the surface area of their pot is not big enough and she had a jam making pot that was about two feet across but there was only about two inches of strawberries in the bottom and she explained that the surface area was critical to making jam.... and I think my daughter Gwen found that true

 

if I ever get any recipes from Gwen the Internet being the Internet I will pass them on but every Thanksgiving I begin to think of that one relish that I do like...

have a happy-

and  i am most greatful for all the messages i have recieved about "keep on keeping on".   with all your help- I AM ON IT !!