Grandma's Cookin'

Both my grandmothers loved to cook. Each one had signature recipes that were passed down to the rest of us.

These two I'm sharing because I'd forgotten about one, then the other. If I share them now, they won't be forgotten forever.

* * *

My maternal grandmother, Opal Quesenberry (aka Nonnie), was from the American South (Appalachia). Last year (or year before), my daughter read, then watched The Help. She was intrigued by this entirely alien culture. I had to explain how a few things were endemic to Southern culture. She asked about a chocolate pie. That was when I realised I'd been neglectful in a few vital things. "Your great-grandma has a chocolate pie recipe." "Does she? Why didn't I know about it?" It's one thing to let the attitudes of racism die out for the next generation, but one must never forget to pass on the chocolate pie recipe!!

Now, Nonnie's recipe lacks the special ingredient that makes Minnie's pie so special. However, should you feel the need, you could adapt the recipe to include it.

Nonnie loved her flowers.

Here's the recipe in her own hand.

Here, I've translated it for you:

Nonnie's Best Chocolate Pie

3/4 c white sugar

3 T cornstarch (corn flour for you Aussies)

3 T cocoa powder

2 c sweet milk

3 egg yolks. (You can save the whites to make a meringue topping for the pie, or you can save them for the recipe below.)

1/4 c butter (not margarine)

1 T vanilla essence

1 pie crust, blind-baked  (I recommend a traditional flaky Crisco Pie Crust. Aussies: I recommend using Copha or Mastafry in place of Crisco.) 

Sift together sugar, cornstarch and cocoa powder into a double boiler.  Stir in a few tablespoons of your milk to make a paste.  Bean in the egg yolks with a whisk.  Slowly add in the rest of the milk, whisking to ensure there are no lumps.  Cook over low heat in double boiler, whisking regularly to ensure no lumps as mixture thickens.  Once thick, add butter and vanilla and mix in well. Pour into a baked pie crust. Refrigerate at least two hours. Top with meringue or whipped cream.

* * *

My paternal grandmother Beverly Wessman had a cookie jar she kept full of homemade cookies. My favourite were these crunchy, fluffy pink ones. We called them "Jello cookies" in our ignorance. Later I learned they were meringues. Also later, I learned that meringues traditionally did not have chocolate chips in them. Beverly's did.

They're so easy to make. I am flabbergasted that I completely failed to include these delightful little puffs of deliciousness into my daughters' culinary history.  Today I have rectified that, much to their surprise and pleasure.

Beverly, with my Aunt Ann.

ETA: See the comments for a link to Beverly's original recipe (including the story of origin).

Grandma Beverly's Pink Meringue Cookies

3 egg whites

pinch salt

1 package (approx 85g) Strawberry Jello (Aussies: Aeroplane Jelly) (Really, you can do any flavour you wish.)

2/3 c caster sugar

1/2 c chocolate chips

Preheat oven to 120C(240F).  Whip up egg whites and pinch salt until soft peaks form.  Meanwhile, blend Jello and caster sugar together.  While mixer is still whipping, add sugar mix by the spoonful until fully incorporated into egg whites.  Whip a few minute longer until stiff peaks form.  Fold in chocolate chips.  Spoon meringue mixture onto a paper-lined baking tray.  Place tray in oven. Immediately reduce over to 100C(200F).  Bake meringues 90 minutes. Turn off oven, let meringues cool completely in oven.

Meringues are best stored in an airtight container, assuming they last that long. They often don't. Today's batch didn't.

Note: don't go out and buy caster sugar if you don't use it regularly. Caster sugar is often preferred in recipes for its easy dissolv-ability.  You can make your own caster sugar from granulated sugar by putting it in a dry blender and blitzing it for a few seconds, no longer. If you blitz it too long, you end up with powdered sugar.

__________________________________

Her Grace reminds you to pass on your recipes.

My weekly budget (a metaphor)

I envision the time I have each week as money. I earn $168 per week. Unlike real money, however, I cannot save any surplus for the next week, nor can I borrow on credit. I can only use what I'm given and hope I budget wisely.

So, my budget is thus:

Taxes (at a preferred rate of 30% of my income): $56 
This is the amount of time I choose for sleep. This also includes any pre-bed rituals, like brushing teeth and maybe reading. Unlike real life, I can borrow from the taxes I pay to fund something else, but I end up regretting it. (Okay, maybe that is more like real life than I want to admit.)

Tithing: $12 
Being religious, I believe in giving over a certain percentage of my income to my God. I have a three-hour church block on the Sabbath. I teach Early Morning Seminary five days a week, plus lesson prep time, an hour on Monday for Family Home Evening, and time  here and there for my own scripture study, meditation, prayer and ministering service. Turns out I devote about twelve hours. If this was a true tithing analogue, I should up it to about seventeen hours a week.

Bills:  $36
Gotta pay your dues if you wanna sing the blues. These are time obligations I must fulfill:
Day Job:  $12
School:   $12
Writing:  $12
I try to balance these out. Sometimes school takes up more time, especially if I have a project due; sometimes work takes up more time if they ask me to come in more hours to help complete a project. Sometimes the Day Job feels heavier than it is, because it takes up more spoons than it should. Don't get me wrong; my day job is a perfectly good job. I work in a good environment with a great team. If IT Support is what I wanted to spent the majority of my budget on, it's one of the better jobs out there. But I don't want to do IT Support any more. My issues with dealing with other people's problems are growing. This increases my tax demand, as I burn too much energy on the Day Job.

Travel: $10
This is literal. While I put petrol in the car, I also put time into driving places. On a quiet week, not so much. If I have an occasional dash to Perth or somewhere, that can take a bit more out of my budget.

Child Support & School Fees:  $16
When one has offspring, one must care for them. Your kids need your time, more so when they're younger, but not as little as you'd think when they're older. Help with homework and practice, listening to them, spending time with them, and more are required. While much of my child support budget is spent on individual children, at least there are a few things that I can group together.

Food:  $14
One must nourish the body. One must also nourish the soul. Self-care is essential for good mental health, which then enables one to pay one's other bills.  Things like dedicated meal times, reading time,  piano practice, a nice, hot shower, exercise and other personal-care things are a bill one cannot neglect to pay.

Spousal support:  $10
Gotta support the spouse, or one finds one no longer has a spouse. While some activities (like watching a movie together) can be covered under the Food bill, other things like just listening to how their day was or helping them pull weeds in the garden is purely spousal support. Many people neglect this bill, sadly.

Chores:  $7
As much as I loathe it, chores still need to be done. Dishes, kitty litter, laundry, vacuuming, you name it. One has to keep one's environment tidy. One of these fine days I'll earn enough spendable money to afford to pay someone else to clean my house for me. (Buy my books and make this dream of mine come true.)

Now, at the end of all this, turns out I have approximately $7 left. That appears to be one hour a day. Alas, this one hour a day gets nickle-and-dimed away in the interstitial moments.  Stop to chat with someone at work after a shift, that could be a good fifty cents gone. Waiting at the train station for the daughters after school? Another twenty-five cents spent. Little by little, these few precious dollars evaporate. A minor mishap leads to the Chores bill demanding another dollar. A late child nibbles away twenty cents. Traffic slowdown takes another twenty cents. Another child needs to go shopping to buy something for school? That can take two whole dollars.

Before you know it, those seven dollars are gone, and you're wondering where the money went.

Then there are those weeks where some big event takes over your life, forcing you to borrow from or even abandon some of these bills.  My last week was like that.  A child had a massive homework project she couldn't do alone. An expected death of an uncle gave me a few hours' pause while I gave over to grieving. A planned weekend away, while welcome, meant that many hours I could have spent on other projects went somewhere else.

As you know, Bob, I completely did not blog this week, as my time needed to be focused on other things.  I'm hoping you'll forgive me for this, for I was prepping the final copies for the print version of God of the Dark and getting Bride of the Dark prepped up as well.

And then there were the times I didn't want to do anything at all, but trawl through my cousins' memories of their awesome father.  The thing with an expected death from Stage 4 Pancreatic Cancer is that one has plenty of time to come to terms with one's graduation from mortality. Also  helps to be Mormon with the belief that death is not the end, merely a pause.

Now, if only there was a way I could earn more money in a week.