Meals a la Carte

Vintage photo from Pinterest

From the Woman's Home Companion, July 1921 (available on Google Books):

Are you planning a camping trip this summer?  It is well worthwhile to collect the utensils for it with care.  Even to those not intending "camp en route," a thoughtfully planned camp home is a "safety first" precaution, and for those who stay at home, the following suggestions put into realization as permanent summer fixtures on the car make possible daily suppers in the park, or country trips on an hour's notice.

The running-board kitchen is an untold convenience.  By curving the front end slightly the box can extend some distance upon the front fender and give added length.  Five-eight-inch lumber is the proper material for it, solidly joined at the corners, as the continuous jar of travel tests weak places.  Iron right angles, screwed inside as joints, should reinforce the corners.  Two strips of thin iron across the bottom (inside), extending up and screwed to the front and back sides will keep the box from spreading.  These iron pieces are very important, as through the holes in their centers the box is fastened onto the running board.  The bottom of the box should be made of galvanized tin nailed closely from underneath to the under rim.  The advantage of this is that, as it is thin, it gives greater depth than wood and also makes a smooth, sanitary surface to keep clean.

Paint inside of box and underside of cover light gray.  Place this box on right or parking side of the car.  Paint outside of box and cover the same color as your car.

Next week -- some information on equipment, but in the meantime, here is Bettina's idea of a cool-weather motor picnic, from A Thousand Ways To Please A Husband.

Warm Veal Loaf        Cold Potato Salad

Fresh Brown Bread       Butter

Spanish Buns     Bananas

Hot Coffee

Veal Loaf

2 lbs lean veal

1/2 lb salt pork

6 large crackers

2 T lemon juice

4 t onion salt

1 T salt

1/2 t pepper

4 T cream

Put two crackers in the meat grinder, add bits of meat and pork and the rest of the crackers.  The crackers first and last prevent the pork and meat from sticking to the grinder.  Add other ingredients in order named.  Pack in a well-buttered bread-pan.  Smooth evenly on top, brush with white of an egg, and bake one hour in a moderate oven.  Baste frequently.  The meat may be cooked in a fireless cooker between two stones.  It is perfectly satisfactory cooked this way, and requires no basting.

Boston Brown Bread

1 c rye or graham flour

1 c cornmeal

1 c white flour

1 t salt

1 1/2 t soda

3/4 c molasses

1/4 c sugar

1 1/2 c sour milk or 1 1/4 c sweet milk or water

2/3 c raisins

Mix and sift dry ingredients, add molasses and liquid.  Fill well-buttered moulds two-thirds full, butter the top of mould, and steam three and one-half hours.  Remove from moulds and place in an oven to dry ten minutes before serving.  If sweet milk is used, 1 T vinegar to the 1 1/4 c will sour the milk.  

Baking powder cans, melon moulds, lard pails or any attractively shaped tin cans may be used as a mould.

Caturday!

Grrrsday

In Memoriam

photograph from the National Park Service archives

When you go home, tell them of us and say
For their tomorrow, we gave our today. ~ John Maxwell Edmonds

Good For What Ails You

Vintage seed catalog image found on Pinterest

We have taken two cuttings off the rhubarb already.  It was called Pie Plant in pioneer days, and was a welcome antiscorbutic  after the long winter months of eating dried and salted foods.Victorian cookery writer Elizabeth Lea had only one pie recipe for rhubarb in her 1845 cookbook, but gave a dozen medicinal uses for it.  Twice she calls for pills made of rhubarb and (shudder!) Castile soap.

RHUBARB PIE. Peel the stalks, cut them in small pieces, and stew them till very soft in a little water; when done, mash and sweeten with sugar; set it away to cool; make a puff paste, and bake as other pies. Some prefer it without stewing, cutting the stems in small pieces, and strewing sugar over them before the crust is put on. These pies will lose their fine flavor after the first day. They take less sugar than gooseberries.

FOR SORE THROAT.  Make a gargle of cayenne pepper, honey and spirits, or sage tea, with alum and honey, or figs boiled, mashed and strained, and use it once in two hours. If it is very bad, steam the mouth with a funnel held over hot vinegar, and put on a hot poultice of hops, boiled in weak ley and thickened with corn-meal; there should be a little lard spread over; renew it every time it gets cold. Another very good poultice, is hot mush strewed with powdered camphor; put it on as hot as can be borne, and change it when cold. A purgative should be given, either of senna and salts, castor oil; or rhubarb and soap pills. An emetic is of great importance, and has caused the throat to break when persons have been very ill.

FOR THE CROUP. Put the child in warm water, and keep up the temperature by putting in more hot water; keep it in fifteen or twenty minutes, then wipe it dry and put it in a warm bed, or wrap a blanket round it and hold it on the lap; give it an emetic, and put powdered garlic and lard to the throat and soles of the feet; keep up the perspiration, by giving a few drops of antimonial wine every half hour. The next morning give it a dose of rhubarb tea or castor oil, and keep it from the air for several days. This treatment has been very beneficial when a physician was not at hand; and nothing had been done till his arrival, perhaps the child would have been too far gone to recover. In cases of croup, to wet a piece of flannel with, alcohol, and apply it to the throat as hot as it can be borne, has often a salutary effect, applied frequently. It is also good to use for a bad cold, &c.

SUMMER DISEASES. The food of children in summer, should be light and nourishing; if of milk, be careful that it is sweet. If you cannot get it fresh as often as you want it, boiling will keep it sweet. Sour milk and improper food sometimes bring on the summer disease, which is easier prevented than cured.

A little rhubarb tea or tincture, with a small quantity of prepared chalk, will sometimes check it in its early stages, but the most effectual medicine that I have tried is called by some apothecaries, "red mixture," of which I will give a recipe.

RED MIXTURE.  Take sixteen grains of powdered rhubarb, thirty of soda, fifty of prepared chalk, and two drops of the oil of spearmint, mixed in a vial with two ounces of water; keep it corked up and shake it before giving a dose. A child of ten months old should take a tea-spoonful every three or four hours. If there is much pain, two drops of laudanum may be added to every other dose. A table-spoonful is a dose for a grown person.

FOR RHEUMATISM. Persons are liable to have the rheumatism from taking cold in the winter. Where the pain is most violent, put on plasters of Burgundy pitch, spread on leather. Persons that are subject to it, should always keep pitch in the house to use, as it will give relief; a silk handkerchief tied round the joint, keeps it warm and relieves stiffness. If the pain is in the back part of the head, put a blister on the neck, by all means. When persons have a bad spell of rheumatism, they should always take medicine, and avoid eating meat for a few days. Equal parts of rhubarb and castile soap, made into pills, with a little water, is a valuable medicine for rheumatism, and suits aged persons; the pills should be taken at night on going to bed. They are easily made, and should always be at hand: it is valuable as a cathartic in almost every case where mild medicine is necessary. The use of the shower bath is also beneficial. Flannel should always be worn next the skin, and the feet kept dry. Bathing with camphor sometimes relieves the pain, but there is a danger of driving it to a more vital part. Salt and water is useful to bathe for the rheumatism, when it is of long-standing.

WARNER’S CORDIAL FOR GOUT IN THE STOMACH. Take one ounce of rhubarb, two drachms of senna, two of fennel seed, two of coriander seed, one of saffron, and one of liquorice; stone and cut half a pound of good raisins, and put all in a quart of good spirits; let it stand in a warm place for ten days, shaking it every day; then strain it off and add a pint more spirits to the same ingredients; when all the strength is extracted, strain it and mix the first and last together. Take from two to four spoonsful of this cordial in as much boiling water as will make it as hot as you can take it; if the pain is not removed in half an hour, repeat the dose, and if your stomach will not retain it, add ten drops of laudanum.

 (I have looked for a modern definition of “summer disease” and can’t find it.  Perhaps it was diarrhea, which would of course be rampant, not to mention deadly, in the days before refrigeration and IVs).

The rest of Mrs Lea’s rhubarb cures can be found in  Domestic Cookery, Useful Receipts, and Hints to Young Housekeepers, a free download from Project Gutenberg.

Italian For Beginners

He:  I bought you a couple bottles of stick wine.

She:  What?

He:  You know.  That wine you like with the sticks on it.

Thank you, Cantina Zaccagnini, for making this possible.

Caturday!

It Took Longer Than I Expected

Sean* and his wife are expecting their first baby, so a bunch of knitters in the department contributed 8-inch squares for a blankie.  I volunteered to sew them together.  I had help.

Lots of help.

It Was A Very Small Knife, Your Honor

I have been preparing my program's annual workplan, due on Friday, in which I am required to set out in detail, quarter by quarter, how we are going to meet all of the deliverables for the next grant year. Note that we have not yet been told how much money we are getting, only that it will be less than last year.  Further note that we have not been given the deliverables list.  Note also that budget is due the 31st AND this grant provides about 85% of my program's funding.  No grant = no job.

So I am attempting to create a plan that 1) will be specific enough to meet all of the as-yet unnamed grant criteria while 2) remaining unspecific enough that I don't actually have to commit any resources until 3) I know how much money we are going to get, after which 4) I shall probably have less than a week to figure out how the promised dollars are actually going to be spent.  This exercise, consisting as it does of equal parts creative writing, fiscal mendacity, and divination, has taken up most of my time for the past two days.  I have been here six years and it happens Every.  Damned.  Year.

Today is a senior staffer's birthday and her team has covered the floor of her office with brightly-colored balloons.  Shortly after my lunch hour, which I spend on a conference call during which a Federal person explains how the continuous quality improvement process will allow me to reach all of my program goals, I take out my Swiss Army knife, open it, and tape it securely to the ferrule of my umbrella.  I then walk down the hall to the senior staffer's room and harpoon a dozen of her balloons in quick succession. 

My colleague remains seated behind her desk wearing a carefully neutral expression.

Me:  I needed to do that.

UPDATE 5/24/15:  We finally got the budget.  One week after the workplan was due.

Pity It's Not Real

In response to Senator Ted ("I'm may be crazy but, hey, I'm not as batshit as my dad")  Cruz' letter of inquiry to the Pentagon about the Jade Helm exercise, three Huffington Post writers penned the following response.

It would only be better if Ashton Carter actually had written it as he would have officially become the Snarkiest SecDef EVAR.

("As someone who was not born within the borders of this country it might interest you to know --"  that's going to leave a mark).

Dear Senator Cruz:

Thank you for your inquiry into whether the Jade Helm 15 military exercise is the first wave of a federal takeover of Texas, the Trojan Horse, as it were, of the end of sovereignty in the Lone Star State. Our response, contrary to the long tradition of official correspondence and military bureaucracy, is concise: no.

But that's just what you would expect us to say, isn't it?

Perhaps, then, you would prefer not an official proclamation but a reasoned answer. As a master debater in college (Princeton, right?), you surely appreciate the reliability of logic, your public statements over the past few years notwithstanding. If you are disinclined to take the United States Armed Forces at their word when we promise no ill intentions towards Texas, then perhaps your considerable and vaunted intellectual powers, which once posited the regrowth of hymens as a guard against unauthorized incursions in domestic affairs, could be swayed by incontrovertible fact.

I know you think highly of our capabilities. Why else would you advocate for a short war with Iran? If we are indeed that powerful, we could probably launch an attack from any of the 15 U.S. military bases already within Texas' borders. While Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher may have found it necessary, even attractive, to invade countries that can easily be overrun, the present DoD considers such lopsided contests at best unsporting.

As someone who was not born within the borders of this country, it might interest you to know that Texas is already part of the United States. In fact, Texas has twice joined the Union. The first time your adopted state joined the USA in 1845 it set in motion events that led to the Mexican-American War. Later, when Union troops conquered the Southern rebellion, Texas rejoined the Union. It is not, therefore, farfetched to think that Texas' relationship to the rest of the United States could involve war, but please also keep in mind that when we refer to the United States of America, Texas is being implicitly included. We thought about calling it the United States of America and Texas, but we were afraid people might think Texas was a retrograde backwater of reactionary lunatics who think Moses was a Founding Father and laugh at you. This is way better.

Please also consider there are a great many things about Texas and Texan culture that could be threatened by another unnecessary armed conflict between Texas and the United States. We like Texas barbecue. That Green Beret who carried the flag out for the Texas Longhorn football team? That was pretty cool. The wildflowers along the highways are no joke. The late Texan Chris Kyle, the "American sniper," is a hero to many. Texas gave the world Lyndon Johnson, a staggering gift for which America was perhaps not entirely prepared. Without the Lone Star State, the Western swing band Bob Wills and His Texas Playboys would have appeared under the performing name Robert Wills and His Playboys, which is ghastly, or not have existed at all, a possibility that DoD has officially classified as "too awful to contemplate". And we really dig the self-awareness, the love of self that, while occasionally metastasizing into paranoid delusions such as those that motivated your original query, also make Texas a culture with an indelible sense of place.

But, we reiterate, that place is in the United States. On previous visits, we noticed that many of your residents enjoy Social Security and Medicare (you're welcome), volunteer for the armed services, treasure federal parks, wildlife preserves, and wilderness areas, and earn and spend currency backed by the full faith and credit of the United States. With a quick Internet search, I also learned that nearly a third of Texas' total revenue is from Federal funding. In fact, millions of your schoolchildren pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America almost every day. And unlike yourself, they apparently mean it.

There is a fundamental misapprehension that we feel is at the root of your query about our intentions was revealed in a recent comment you made to the press.

We are assured it is a military training exercise. I have no reason to doubt those assurances, but I understand the reason for concern and uncertainty, because when the federal government has not demonstrated itself to be trustworthy in this administration, the natural consequence is that many citizens don't trust what it is saying.

If, Senator Cruz, you believe that the United States military is a political tool of its civilian leadership, you have reached a conclusion unsupported by fact, history and good sense. The troops swear to uphold the Constitution of the United States. To besmirch their loyalty to the country, even in the service of making hackneyed political points in the Republican primary, does not make you a patriot, but a partisan. Even a Princeton and Harvard Law man should know the difference.

Also, it makes you the rudest Canadian we've ever run across.

Sincerely Yours,

Secretary Ashton Carter

This is the sort of riposte that British government officials do so very well, but us Yanks never seem to be able to pull it off.

Caturday!

Posting has been highly irregular for a few weeks, but things at work were pretty hectic during April and my inclination on the weekends and evenings has been to read old Westerns online and sleep.