Cooking from Scratch

I said in yesterdays blog post that I would post how I make my all butter pastry dough pie crust.Here in the United States when I was taking home economics in school, I was taught to measure by measuring cups and spoons. This is how I learned, but as I have gotten older and many years of baking, sometimes it would turn out just right and sometimes not. I have learned that by purchasing a small scale and measuring by weight I could make the same recipe over and over with it being most always the same. Sometimes the weather is a factor but by measuring by weight like people do in much of the world, this is how you get more accurate results. The recipeThis is th ......

This is the type of Queens Cake that I make. There are many variations for queens cakes. We can look far back in time. So far I have traced them back to 1766. They were called Queen Cakes. The recipe I use is from approximately 1803. There are different types of Queen Cake and as time went forward there were recipes that looked like a cookie or biscuit, a muffin or cupcake. Then in the 1940's and up, they could look like most anything, A full cake to a sheet cake or a mini cake. I studied many queen cake recipes and this is the one that we enjoy eating, it is more of a cookie or biscuit than a muffin or cupcake. The one pictured a ......

I have been busy in the kitchen the past week or two. With the study of 1917, I am comparing old recipes with modern recipes. So I took on trying different bread grains, making clotted cream, homemade mayonnaise, spelt bread, pumpernickel bread and I forget what else for the moment.The photo above is our homemade mayonnaise keeper. Just a simple pretty container I found at the thrift store. I know that the study is 1917 and this recipe above for mayonnaise is 1919 but from 1912 to 1919 the recipes for mayonnaise are similar and different. The ones that I did not want to try is where they added whipped cream. I did not want to do those.1913 informationTh ......

We are a little late on learning about the cauliflower pizza crust but now we know. This is a cauliflower crust with half in organic tomato pizza sauce, More mozzarella cheese, onions and mushrooms. The first time we made one, we made one big pizza, the second time we divided and made two medium to small pizzas.It is flexible and I would have never known there was no flour in this crust and I would have never guessed it was cauliflower.2 cups, grated cauliflower2 cups shredded mozzarella cheese2 eggsMix together, press out into rounds on parchment paper. Use your hands to press it down or a fork. We press ours as thin as possible without any holes left. Bake 450 de ......

Several of you have asked for my crumpet recipe. So this post is to share how I make crumpets.I started making crumpets as part of our genealogy study and decided to cook recipes our ancestors would have eaten. This is a very simple recipe with few ingredients and I measure in grams because it seems to be more accurate when baking and very traditional.All purpose flour, active dry yeast, sea salt and warm milk. Butter for the skillet.225 grams all purpose flour5 grams active dry yeast4 plus scant grams sea salt320 grams whole milk or also called full fat milkI figured out the measurement's in cups and teaspoons just in case you do not have a scale. Flour is a ......

We are studying the great depression at this time that I am writing this post. As we slowly move through the study we realize we must study further back in time to understand the people that lived during the great depression. I am mostly talking about people that were adults during that time in history.They had already lived through difficult times before the great depression. recessions, world war 1, the flu pandemic and just when they were possibly thinking life was getting better, the stock market crashed, banks closed, many people lost their jobs. Many of those that did not lose their job had to work with decreased pay. What money they had left they need ......

I said in my last post that I would put up the recipe for the hot milk cake.Thank you Paula for keeping a copy of my card and sending it to me so I can keep this simple as the recipe is and just post the written recipe. The hot milk is not boiling milk but quite warm. I hope you enjoy your hot milk cake. It is between a pound cake and a sponge cake. We enjoy it with strawberries and cream. After it is cool, cover the cake and it gets better the next day if it makes it that long. ***************T ......

It seems that wherever we live in this world food prices are increasing. I would like to point out that increased prices are not just where we live our friends around the world are feeling it too.The holidays are nearing, we just finished up Halloween and Fall festivals are going on here where we live. It is getting time for the busy holiday season.During holidays food is often used as decorations, pumpkins, popcorn, citrus, cranberries, root vegetables. With the price of food today we should make sure to not waste food so make sure to give this food a second chance and use it before it goes bad. Either cook it in soup, feed it to animals, use it for compost to make dir ......

I did a post called one foot in 1943 and one foot in 2022 and I showed a Pizza that I had made using dehydrated vegetables and mentioned that Pizza was not common during 1943 here in the United States, especially in the southern United States. After more searching I did find a 1935 article from New York about Pizza Pie and found that in New York and New Jersey, Pizza was starting to be made in the United States. I found one article that was 1935 and talked about an Italian Pizza Pie. Then, I had a blog reader to send me an email to say she had seen pizza being described as Tomato Pie. So off I went to find the Pizza or Tomato Pie. This lead me on to new informatio ......

In my last post that I just did, I mentioned that I would post a easy sandwich bread to make. Bread is not hard to make and only requires a few shelf stable items.Bread making is like many things that just requires doing it a few times to develop the skill.This recipe can be used in the bread machine or done by hand. A lot of people do not have a bread machine so I am showing how to make the bread by hand.In the photo above there is a thermometer. It is good to have one for making bread but not necessary. I use water between 105 to 110 degrees but this is just warm water. Not hot water but warm water. Simple white bread one loaf2 cups all purpose flour1/2 teaspoon ......

First off I want to tell you about our surprise visit of a Baltimore Orioles. The Cardinals have been all around lately but a bright orange color caught our attention. Charles and I have never seen an Oriole in our yard so it was quite a surprise.We thoroughly enjoyed the visit.The older plates are much smaller than our modern plates so this does look like an extraordinary amount of food. It is a little more than we normally put on our plate but we were hungry. That is leftover roast cut up with gravy, rice, peas, carrot salad and tea.This is what happens when we fill our plates at the stove instead of using serving bowls.As we continue to study pre-1940s we can see changes ......

This post is about doing a little at a time. I am not good at multitasking anymore. Actually I am not sure I ever did multitask, I may have rushed what I was doing but I don't even want to try that anymore since I came to my senses and started living more like the past.Charles and I garden but we do not grow large amounts of anything. We are not sustainable at our house but we do try to keep something fresh in the garden.We have never had a bumper crop of potatoes but we do okay. We harvested our potatoes a couple of weeks ago and it was time to brush them and put them in storage.We set our potatoes out on our back porch for almost two weeks. It has been ve ......

I have missed making bread since we stopped eating gluten. Charles and I are not allergic to gluten but there seems to be some kind of connection for us to inflammation when we eat bread and such. I decided to give spelt a try since I read that spelt is suppose to be an ancient grain and is a species of wheat. It has gluten in it but possibly more nutrients and less gluten. I have read a lot of information on spelt but the recipes I found a bit complicated.So I decided to try making it just like my other bread only using 100% spelt flour.So I did everything the same, same yeast, water, same temperature of the water, same honey, same everything only I did not knead it quite as long but I knea ......

This year was quite different to any of the Thanksgiving meals we have had in all of our years.Some of you have asked me about what we were going to do about our Thanksgiving since we are eating a strict healthy diet to try and cure Charles psoriasis.We had a hard time trying to decide about our meal to just eat traditional for one day or remain eating the healing way.So we chose to remain with healthy food. We warned those ahead of time that this year is not the traditional meal at Grandma Donna's house.This is not finished cooking yet, Today's meal is baked chickens with lemon and rosemary cooked on the big green egg.Sauteed and baked sweet potatoes, steamed purple and green cabbage, and s ......

Our lives are ever changing, that is normal but it seems that we have been over the top with changes this year. It is a good thing I have no signs of dementia or I would never know where anything is.Our healthy eating that we have been doing requires a lot of thinking each day. I have been thinking of how we are going to tie together our new old vintage way of living with the new healthy way we are eating. As some of you know we went on a drastic change of the way we eat so we can find if we can cure an non curable disease called psoriasis. Charles has had problems with this for many years now and it had gotten better then worse again.Also we have been downsizing ......

On the last post I mentioned Charles and I started eliminating foods to see if we could find any food issues that could be contributing to Psoriasis that Charles has as well as some issues myself. We both needed to lose weight and food seemed to bother both of us with bloating and not feeling well. So we buckled down to see what we could find out.We got our information from reading about diets regarding elimination of certain foods that can cause allergies or food intolerances. I have no medical background in nutrition so I am not giving advice, just sharing what we did.One of our first problems was focusing on what we are eliminating instead of what we can have. We a ......

Our living more like the past brings me to spending more time in the kitchen. We all have to eat but today many people eat food that has been prepared by someone else. This is canning season and old fashioned canning is not popular today as it was in the past because freezing is much easier. However, we work very hard growing our food and very hard to pay for the food we purchase at the store so if the power goes out we risk the loss of all of our freezer food. I do not like that risk so I am going back to canning like we did in the past.There is a lot of preparation to preserving so it is a patience thing. We just have to make time to do these kinds ......

I have had several requests for my biscuit recipe since my last post showing us cooking biscuits over the camp fire. I posted the recipe two years ago so it is buried many posts back so I am bringing this forward for those asking for the biscuit recipe. It is a very easy recipe and those that have had a hard time making southern biscuits this one is for you. :)On this website I have posted a couple of articles about biscuits including sourdough biscuits. This recipe is for all purpose flour biscuits. We use our same method as our other biscuits but we use baking powder and baking soda in these biscuits. This is the way we prefer to make them.Preheat the oven to ......

I did a bit of a study with some of the foods that I dehydrate to see what works best here in our kitchen.I boiled the potatoes whole until I could pierce a skewer through the potato then drained and plunged them in cold water to stop the cooking. I drained them and then put them in the fridge for a bit to cool.Then I sliced them and laid them on the dehydrator trays to dry at 125 degrees. I do not give a time because I normally dry them over the time in most books. I check them by looking through them then dropping them and listening to that click sound that says they are dry.These are red potatoes and Yukon Gold. You can see the golden color in the yukon gold. ......

Making pasta is not hard, it just take time. Some might call it tedious but making pasta can be one of those personal rewards when you set it on the table.You can make most any kind and it is something you can do with your children or grandchildren or just for yourself if you live alone.Why not? In this post I am showing you how I make rolled pasta, there are names for these fancy pasta's but I don't know them. I am making enough for a meal for my husband and myself so if you have more people to feed just adjust the recipe by doubling it etc.For the two of us,1 cup all purpose flour1 whole egg and1 egg yolk so that is one egg plus one egg yolk or just add two eggs and ......