Wonderfully Old Fashioned

I am slowly getting our home to where I really want and need it to be.  I moved the enamelware to the top of Windsor, our 1920s icebox, because it is cooler here for the fresh vegetables.

I have been going through drawers and cabinets and back over them again because I have lived a good while now and we have accumulated a lot of things by this time.  I feel better about it though because it is more comfortable.

When life gets unjumbled and uncluttered it is easier to do the the daily things such as cooking and baking. To us there is nothing better that southern cooking when summer vegetables are being harvested. 

When we are raised on home cooking there are smells that we never forget and no matter how old we are, when we get a whiff of something familiar from long ago it will send us back in time to those days of home cooking that Mother or Grandmother made. 

It does not take much to make a home a really good place.  It does not matter what we live in but what we do to make that place home. 

When I think about my times at my grandparents house I remember laying in bed at night with the window partially open and hoping for a breeze of night air and how good that felt. The air smelled different at night and the sounds of crickets and frogs.  

I remember a fresh tomato sandwich that was sliced sideways or as Charles favorite growing up, a mayonnaise sandwich on colonial white bread and chocolate milk. Those are good memories. 

My mother and my grandmother grew flowers and vegetables and now I grow flowers and vegetables.  These are purple coneflowers and blackeyed susans. They are such happy looking flowers.

I am thankful for our home and I find peace being here. I never get bored because there is always something to do.  Cleaning, laundry, ironing, cooking, gardening. Our doggies keep us quite busy each and every day as well as our little cockatiel Belle.

Our home is full of pieces from the past and different eras and we still have a few modern items such as a washing machine, small refrigerator and window air conditioners.   

Above is a bowl of oatmeal before getting the day started.

We are a blend of the past, the time in between then and now.  I choose to embrace the best parts and not hang on to the bad parts. We all have bad times and sad times and pain in our life but if we focus on that we make everyone around us miserable. 

I am not sure where we would be if Charles and I had not started our history projects and living more like the past and it seems to be the only thing that makes sense today. It is also very entertaining and our home feels more romantic.

Some of you may wonder if we are even doing our studies anymore. Yes, but we must live with it for awhile and get used to doing what we are studying. We have to adjust our home and life each time we learn about something in the past that we decide that we want to have in our home or a new old way we want to do something. It is difficult to explain this but we are always learning and practicing what we learn.

We have many things we have plans to do but we must have the time to fit it in.  One thing we have learned is to not rush anymore and the old way takes time.

  I recently made a baking area in the corner of my kitchen.  It is next to the washing machine area that is on the other side of the kitchen. I have been studying some early 1800's baking and one day I thought about how nice it would be to have all the items I use for baking in one area.

Since I mostly cook for just Charles and I, I need to cut back recipes. I often use this measuring glass to help me to reduce ingredients because it has the Cup, Teaspoons, tablespoons, ounces etc.

I have enjoyed mixing up my baked goods, I made some funeral cookies, some Queens cakes.

Charles was very surprised to come home to funeral cookies. They were quite interesting and very hard. It has been a very humorous time trying to eat the funeral cookies.  We are wondering if they are a dipping or soaking cookie/biscuit or if through the years something was left out of the recipe which I suspect.  I will post a link where I found them because the history of the funeral cookie/biscuit is very interesting. It was part of my history study I was doing.

I decided to make some beeswax covers for my mixing bowls and bread making bowl because I do not like to use plastic wrap. I have smaller beeswax wraps but these bowls are very large.

I use my modern day iron for this because it is a larger iron.

This is one of them. It looks splotchy in this picture but I went over it again and it is no longer. 

When I was ironing back over the other I put a piece of fabric under it to absorb some of the excess wax and it was just right to use for the larger bowl. I wash my beeswax covers with soap and water. I use real soap so it works well. 

Some people do not like to use beeswax wraps because it smells like beeswax but that smell goes away. So if you make some and wash them and hang them to dry and put them away for a little while the smell will go away. 

These are just fine now.

I made some coffee cup covers out of some left over fabric. I did them lightly so they are not sticky and have a light grip.

I had some blueberry muffins left over so I put one of my older beeswax wraps over the bowl to keep them from drying out. These keep me from having to buy wax paper or plastic wrap.

I will look and see if I can find someone on youtube that makes them like I do.  Everyone does these different. 

To me these are similar to what people used in the past.  Plastic is a more modern item.  In the past people had oil cloth which was cotton and linen I believe dipped in Linseed oil, something like that.

Every morning for the last week I go out an snip off long beans that are growing over our arbor.

I get enough for a meal or I blanch them and freeze them only I have very little freezer space.

When and if I get a larger amount I will can them.

I was about to forget, this is when I was making the queens cake.  They have currants in them.

Charles really likes them. They seem to be similar to a large flat scone, biscuit, cookie. They are different than anything we have eaten.

I will make these again and I like to make them because it is all just mixed up in one bowl. The link to where I found this when I was doing a history study will be listed below.

Here is a link to how to make beeswax wraps.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jBh32y3v9O4

Here is a link below to where I saw how to make funeral cookies. Warning they are hard cookies and we had to soak them in coffee and tea. 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_EUngyoImIc&t=1s

And here is the link below to how to make queens cakes.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FXJB_ZaZhgI

Grandma Donna