I G I V E U P!! So t'other day, when attempting to clean out my cupboards, I measured the last of a package of plain old white flour, and found it was exactly two cups. So I'm remembering my mother's biscuits from the cold winter days in Fargo when she would make pheasant-a-la-king and serve it over her fabulous baking powder biscuits. What a glorious supper! So it's nowhere near
as cold here as it was there then, but the two cups of flour have been sitting out on my counter in the measuring device, and thoughts of biscuits keep dancing in my head. So today, I decided to see if there was a recipe for Betty Crocker biscuits online. Mom always followed Betty Crocker's recipes for baked goods. (Her pie crust was known far & wide as THE BEST!) But that's pie. This is biscuits. And sure enough, there is a Betty Crocker online source, and it has THE biscuit recipe. The biscuits even look like Mom's, though she didn't use a biscuit cutter.
STILL....it doesn't pay to go too far into this because very soon, you will find biscuit-related recipes calling for Bisquick (trademark). Nah. Pas de Bisquick!! I wanna make my own sausage-cheese balls from scratch (NOT....I don't make stuff like this, but it's an example of how Bisquick has infiltrated our casseroles.)
AND GUESS WHAT? There is now a GLUTEN-FREE Bisquick mix available, although I have not seen it. What next?
Next you'll be telling me Generous Mills will be offering NON-GMO Cheerios (trademark)! Yes, indeed. They are in production. These miraculous "classic"
Cheerios not only will not have any GMO oats, they also will not have GMO cornstarch or GMO sugar from sugar beets. Despite General Mills's campaign to tell us that GMO products are harmless, they have decided to make Cheerios for the special whacko GMO-averse niche market, which they believe will embrace non-GMO Cheerios wholeheartedly. Ah. Marketing, not common sense.
I asked a friend what she thought about this, since her husband has eaten Cheerios practically every day of his life since his teeth came in. She said, "Oh, he won't care. He'll eat anything...the worst junk."
Let us pray....
Genetically Modified food scares the stuffing out of me. I don't know what the long term effects on my body will be. Already we are seeing a vast increase in the number of people who have become gluten intolerant. I'll wait and see if there is a link before I start eating the stuff. Good old Cheerios! I gave them to my babies (the plain, non-sugar variety).
ReplyDeleteyou all got cheerios in your little tin cups. possibly i did, too, but my mother was not big on snacking with anything but arrowroot cookies or that toast....what was it called?
ReplyDeleteit came in a package, and it was about the size of a Baby Ruth bar so you could wrap your little fist around it and gnaw on the end with your gums.
xoxo
I don't know what's worse: GMO or these vintage recipes:
ReplyDeletehttp://www.buzzfeed.com/ariannarebolini/truly-upsetting-vintage-recipes
OMG!! I've not only eaten two of these--and loved them, I have posted recipes online. A third possibility is my variation on meatloaf igloo. I called it bunny loaf....shaped the meatloaf into a bunny, baked it, and frosted it with mashed potatoes. a slice of pimento stuffed green olive for eye. fine carrot sticks for whiskers. don't even think about raisins.
DeleteMelba Toast - I never liked it.
ReplyDeleteNope...it was Zweiback!! Melba toast is thin sliced. Zweiback was made by Gerbers, I believe, and there's hardly a Dwyer relative who has not awaken from their infant naps without a chunk of it stuck to the fine hair on their heads!!!
ReplyDeletepardon, "has not awakened"
ReplyDeleteProbably because of our age difference, XE and I have experienced different food choices. We got great biscuits from either Dad or Mom (whoever was available to make them), WIWAK; but, nary a cold cereal nor a prepared baby food crossed our lips. Even my own children, when they were kids, did not get cold cereal or prepared baby food. Now, our great-grandsons snack on veggies (cut up), frozen grapes, et cetera; although, I have seen them, on occasion, with Cheerios in hand.
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P.S. I DO recall the commercials for Cheery Oats that sponsored some radio program that my brothers and I liked - The Lone Ranger?
Cheery Oats? We used to call them that, but was that ever an official name? Or was that just the Lone Ranger feelin his cheery oats??
ReplyDeleteAlso, AGE difference? You can't be older than I am. Almost nobody is. :)
XE--Cheery Oats was the name before it was changed to Cheerios. BTW: Something that I failed to mention is that, WIWAK, there was no such thing as "snacking". It was not even a word in our vocabularies. Once in a great while, if we were waiting on the cross-country bus at a filling station, we might be treated to a soda (Grapette, for me!) or a candy bar (Baby Ruth!) I don't recall whether our own kids ever snacked. They might recall.
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P.S. Maybe it's some other part of our demographic profiles that accounts for the difference, rather than age?
The word "snack" or "snacking" never entered our vocabulary, either, though it may have done for my parents. We just ate when we were hungry outside of mealtimes (Most of the time, as I remember.) We earned $$ for refreshments by collecting beer and soda bottles from the ditches. I remember Grapette fondly. The Robe sisters sold it at their little store between the two lakes by our cottage. (We lugged all of our bottle returns there to exchange for spending $$). And Baby Ruths!! I still look for one when I pass by the newsstand in Union Station of a Saturday or Sunday to pick up the Weekend WSJ, and I'm feeling hungry for anything that costs less than a buck. Haven't bought a Baby Ruth in ages, though. Too tough on my miserable teeth--and often expensive!! The bigger sizes are something like $2.39. gah.
ReplyDeletedemographic profiles: I'd say we were definitely middle to high SES: both my parents were college graduates, my dad was an accountant for ATT. I was the youngest of 5 children, the only female, we lived in Fargo, ND, for most of the time I was growing up. We had a lake cottage in Minnesota. Republican (well....my dad was, and all of my brothers after him). as for my own kids snacking...dunno wot they called it, but as I remember, they ate everything in sight.
especially my 2nd daughter, when she'd come home from the university for weekends or school breaks, she'd eat all the fresh fruit & veg in the house. I'd say "the teeth have landed!"
We were not allowed to eat between meals, thus did not know "snacking". I earned $$ pulling weeds, selling seeds door-to-door, selling greeting cards door-to-door at ages 5-7. After that, I don't recall making $$ until age 12 when I worked as a maid at a hotel. At 14 I was an assistant in a branch library and a clerk at a dime store (I lied about my age - told them I was 16). Little, if any, of the $$ went to snacks (oh! a frosty-cold 7-oz Coke was so good on a hot day in the library!) Mostly, $$ went into savings or bought fabric for me to make my clothes. BTW: Like you, it's been a long time since I've had a Baby Ruth - or a Zero, which I liked at a bit later date.
ReplyDeleteDemographics: I don't recognize "SES" in this context. We were definitely lower or lower-middle class. My dad had completed a technical degree to become an electrician, and Mom worked at whatever came along (aircraft assembly line, bus driver, dish washer, IRS lower-end worker, bank lower-end worker, pharmacist's assistant, drug store clerk....We lived in a little farm town in MO until I was 4, then lived in a "trailer" that Dad built on the bed of a truck while following construction work all over the state of TX for a year. Moved to Tulsa when I was 5, to Kansas City MO when I was 8, and lived in the same house there until I left for college in 1955 at age 17. Oh! Mom had five kids, but #1 & #4 didn't make it to 1-year-old. I was #3 and had brothers who were #2 & #5.
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P.S. Among my two brothers and me, we completed six college degrees. Education was prized in our family, although Mom always "bragged" that she had not read a book since having been graduated from high school.
P.S. It just came to me that by SES you meant socio-economic status?
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yes...socioeconomic status. income, education, occupation. gotta bounce now....more later.
ReplyDeleteAs a child I ate 3 homemade meals a day, all veg was grown by my dad so I assume it would be classed "organic" these days. No snacks unless you count the many pounds of strawberries that I consumed during strawberry season..... my dad grew strawberries for a living. Teatime was a cuppa tea and a slice of cake.
ReplyDeletewe were allowed to eat fruit after school as long as it was not 4 p.m. After that, we ate nothing so as not to "spoil our supper." We grew all of our own vegetables in our victory garden during WWII, save for the asparagus, which volunteered in the back yard next to the garage. Mom grew strawberries, raspberries, gooseberries, and currants in the back yard, and most of them went to for jam or jelly, save for some of the strawberries or raspberries, which went for shortcakes. We also grew tomatillos or as we called them, "ground cherries" in the victory garden--a lot of them, too, and I don't know what mom used these for. I don't recall eating any at the table. I hated the taste, so maybe she cooked them, all right, but never put any on my plate. We did not have things like Italian Spaghetti or chili, or anything with garlic at all. Though we did have baked beans (also produced in the garden). it was pretty much meat & potatoes and home-canned vegetables. No salad save for the jello extravaganza on holidays. or potato salad in the summer.
DeleteWhat time of day was your teatime, Shammy? Is this the light meal some folks call supper here? Did anyone ever tease you about your red hair (and freckles??) and your consumption of strawberries??
XE--Harking back to my above comments about "Cheery Oats", this excerpt from a Wikipedia entry clearly demonstrates that I did not learn to spell by hearing the name on the radio. "Cheerios was introduced on May 1, 1941 as CheeriOats. The name was changed to Cheerios in 1945 due to a trade name dispute with Quaker Oats."
ReplyDeleteAs to our meals, at home, they were heavy on potatoes and beans. I first remember having meat at a week-day dinner (5:00pm - our main meal of the day) when we started having the occasional meatloaf at about the time I started high school. Sunday dinner (1:00pm) was usually fried chicken or rabbit - which we raised. We fixed bologna sandwiches for our lunches (which we wrapped in newspaper) which would be accompanied by the inevitable banana and three or four store-bought cookies - usually Hydrox. Except for Sundays, when our parents did the cooking, most of our home meals were prepared by my elder brother and me from the time we were seven or nine years old. The only meals away from home were the lunches that we took to school (or, our parents, to work).
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My mom always called them "Cheerioats," and I thought it was because she loved to play with language. My dad supplied nearly all of our meat and fish when I was in grade school and beyond. Pheasant, duck, walleyed pike, perch and sunfish (caught through the ice in the winter), trout cooked with the head on (the eyes freaked me out). He occasionally visited his friend's butcher shop and got organ meats (i called them the accessories and liked liver & heart, not tongue, though we had that, too.) I have also eaten deer, moose, bear, and elk. Elk was the best of that group. The deer in ND was fabulous compared with the deer in Minnesota/Wisconsin. In ND, the deer fed on corn and wheat in the fields. East of us, they ate bark and acorns and had a very strong flavor.
ReplyDeleteI'm supposing your brilliance stems at least partly from all the different things you did as a child. I didn't know any other kids who actually cooked dinners at home. you raised rabbits, too. Pity the poor modern kids who have to make do with toys!
Snacks were never big at our house - I think because they were simply not in the budget. I would bake cookies or coffeecake when we wanted a treat at home. I'd buy a candy bar or pop if I felt like walking the three miles to town. Otherwise there was little available unless we had leftovers from a party or cookout. How we prized potato chips!
ReplyDeleteSnack foods were seldom in our budget. If we walked (3 miles) into town we would indulge in candy bars and pop, but with babysitting going for .50/hour most of my earnings went to fabric for new clothing.
ReplyDeleteTeatime was about 4pm when I got home from school, Supper was a little later but usually salad or beans on toast (mmmm my fave) and we had the main meal of the day in the middle of the day. I had school dinners, usually mashed potato, cabbage and some kind of meat, and a mysterious concoction called winter salad, I think it would be called coleslaw here.
ReplyDeleteWhat is more satisfying than cooking,especially when you have home-grown or local or fresh caught ingredients to work with?
ReplyDeleteWho was it said a few years ago when talking about eating well or better "Don't eat anything your grandmother wouldn't recognize as food." That fits "home-grown or local or fresh caught ingredients," don'tcha think? But that might limit my consumption to mostly potatoes and cabbage. apples, onions?? I know my irish grandmother also had bacon, coffee, and butter (presumably for the bread she baked herself) because my grandfather had these items on a grocery shopping list in his last wallet. so that seems like a pretty good diet, all things considered. lots of fiber, vitamin C, protein, and fat. I wouldn't dare eat bacon regularly. i do love the smell, though.
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