Login | Register

Dear friends,

It wouldn't be PTMYB if I didn't cross my fingers and hope the Fair Use angels are on my side.  Submitted for your enjoyment:  two of my favorite paragraphs from Betty MacDonald's The Egg and I, which not only introduced the world to Maw and Paw Kettle, but also contained loads of useful information about chicken ranching in the early 20th century:

The astonishing fact that there was always on my pantry shelf a water bucket of double-yoked and checked eggs to do with as I would was a source of constand delight and lured me into trying many of the rich, eggy old-fashioned recipes in Mrs. Lincoln's cookbook [The Boston Cooking-School Cookbook by Mary Lincoln, the forerunner to the Fannie Farmer cookbooks]. In town where I would have had to buy my groceries and balance a food budget, I wouldn't have put up with Mrs. Lincoln and her "beat the whites of sixteen large eggs with a fork on a platter," and her "two wine-glasses of old brandy and a cup of slivered, blanched almonds," for two minutes. Mrs. Lincoln was the type who couldn't cook oatmeal mush without adding a flagon of cherry flip and a soupcon of betel nuts. I would have loved to visit Mrs. Lincoln, but she was hell to cook for unless you lived on a chicken ranch, and then you and Mrs. Lincoln could see eye to eye about a lot of things. Particularly eggs. I had already made sunshine cake, angel food and pound cake and was wondering what would be good on a rainy wet winter day when I chanced on cream puffs. "Now there *is* something," I said, for cream puffs were an old favorite of mine and they used lots of eggs. The recipe called for "eight eggs to be broken one by one and beaten in the mixture with the bare right hand."

"Now, Mrs. Lincoln, let's not be *frugal*!" I said and used sixteen eggs. This made gallons of dough and almost broke my arm but if Mrs. Lincoln could do it, at her age, so could I. "Put pieces of dough the size of walnuts in the pan, leaving *plenty of room*, as they will puff to the size of large apples." I did but when I took them out of the oven they were still the size of walnuts but as hard as diamonds. Down but not out, I got out my deep fat kettle. When the fat was smoking hot I dropped in a piece of the dough. Pouffffff -- thelittle thing swelled to the size of a cantaloupe. I was ecstatic. For hours I dropped little walnuts into the fat and pulled out great, golden puffs. Then sweating but happy I whipped a large bowl of canned milk. "We'll each fix our own," I said proudly to Bob as I put them on the dinner table and hurried back for the canned milk. I cut mine open to put in the filling but it was already filled -- filled with cold grease. They all were, and not only that, but whipped canned milk, in case you didn't know, tastes exactly as burning rubber smells.