Big thanks to Arlene for identifying the use of that little bowl. She not only let me know it is in fact for cream soup. More amazingly, she told me that you are supposed to pick it up by the handles to drink the soup. I have tried in vain to imagine my extremely proper, manner conscious grandmother, owner of the china, picking up anything to drink soup. I now know why she never used these bowls with us. She had spent endless meals trying to enforce a rule against picking up a bowl to drink from it, whether it was the last of the Frosted Flakes or the drips of the melted ice cream. She knew us well enough to imagine our arguments about cream soup versus melted ice cream to get those bowls out of the cupboard.

I remember a while back writing about table manners and getting a reply about which direction one was to move the spoon when eating soup. I have forgotten that rule and happily drink most of my soup out of mugs.

But both the recent post and that one have led me to think about soup in general. Until I was grown I never knew people actually made their own soup. Every soup I ever ate came out of a bright red and white can. The kinds I loved then seem to have disappeared from the shelf, particularly scotch broth and pepper pot. The strong lamb taste in the broth and the chewy tripe in the pepper pot must have repulsed more modern palates so they were replaced by lots of bacon. It’s just as well. The sodium content of canned soup exceeds the limits my blood pressure sets for me.

Well fall has begun. I know how to make delicious soups of my own. Soon the smell of chicken, vegetables and noodles will fill the kitchen. But I still won’t use those little bowls. No cream soup for us. Back into storage they go.

A while back I mentioned I would post photos of some of the china I inherited. This little bowl is part of a set from Noritake that must have come from my grandmother. It is a lovely little piece with handles and is maybe four inches across and two inches deep.

I also have so far been unable to identify the pattern. I tried Google Image Search, but that seems to be in a very early stage. It presented me with countless images of bowls, all sizes and shapes. Not helpful.

My mother never used any of these dishes as far as I know, and I am still not sure the intended use of the bowl. I tried to figure out if it is the cream soup bowl discussed on various etiquette sites. Of course that search led me down the rabbit trail of the proper way to eat soup from one of these bowls. If in fact it is a cream soup bowl.

So I have a six fragile bowls with handles lying in wait in my storage cabinet. Perhaps one of my readers can either identify the pattern or clue me into its use. And maybe, even though we don’t eat cream soups, we can at least know more about it.

Thanks.

Not only did I stop using Jiffy Corn Muffin mix, I also began to avoid all mixes after noticing how many alien ingredients they used. I continued to bake my own bread, cookies, cakes and bars. Once living in New England, I began to use flour from King Arthur company in Norwich, Vermont. I particularly like their white whole wheat flour which I use in my bread. I had to order it from the mill in Vermont since it wasn’t carried in my local grocery store. Soon I began to receive regular catalogs from King Arthur displaying a wide range of available products.

I bought a number of helpful tools from the catalog including a tablespoon scoop, just right for measuring out cookie dough. I also acquired cookie sheets, sheet pans, an instant read thermometer and cake pans over the years. But I never tried their mixes, despite the abundance of ones they produce. I still had the horror of Jiffy hanging over me, turning me away from mixes.

A couple of years ago we stopped at the King Arthur store in Vermont. Not only do they display all of their products, they also serve wonderful baked goods, salads and soups, just right for a lunch stop. While there, I took a look at various mixes. To my surprise they contained the same ingredients I put in my home baked goods. I would need to add eggs, butter, oil or milk, but everything else was included. I bought a few mixes to try out.

Now I have a couple of boxes of mixes on hand for the last minute demands I encounter. Last weekend we celebrated the 190th anniversary of our church and I needed to bring cookies. I opened the coconut macaroon mix, added water, put scoops of dough on a sheet, baked them and took them to church. Pictured above, you can see the results. No strange additives, just coconut, flour and sugar. No need to run to the store on a crowded day. As I said, King Arthur came to my rescue.

“As I have stated strongly before, and just to reiterate, if Turkey does anything that I, in my great and unmatched wisdom, consider to be off limits, I will totally destroy and obliterate the Economy of Turkey (I’ve done before!).”

No. It wasn’t the great and powerful wizard of Oz.

If you pray, please pray for the leaders of the United States. If you don’t pray, please join me in outrage that we are under the direction of someone who actually writes tweets like this.

*Donald Trump, October 7, 2019

A few days ago, we went to bed, turned on the window air conditioner and slept soundly as the bedroom cooled off from the day’s heat. Early in the morning my husband heard the furnace kick on. Since the thermostat was set for 56 degrees F, this was surprising. No, the air conditioner hadn’t affected the furnace. Rather, in the night the outside weather had turned from Indian summer to full on fall. The change rapidly cooled the first floor and turned on the heat.

Only here have I ever experienced such dramatic changes in the seasons, but I have to expect it after 18 years of living in New England. Now the window air conditioners need to come out, the storm windows go up, additional weatherstripping applied around any loose windows, the snow shovels found, the ice melt readied and the sweaters retrieved from the downstairs closet. Thankfully my husband attends to all these chores except the clothing rotation. My job is to begin cooking stews, meat loaves, soups, pot roasts and squash. Once the temperature falls, these dishes suddenly seem very appealing after meals of salads and quick chicken recipes.

Snow seems unlikely for at least six more weeks, though we had a massive snow storm a few Halloweens ago which knocked out power for a week. I hope the leaves will fall before the snow starts. I hope the town collects the leaves before snow buries them until next spring. But I have no control over the weather. All I can do is turn off the air conditioner, turn on the furnace and look for the flannel sheets. It’s fall at last.

Sometimes I used to bake things that I had never eaten growing up. Corn muffins and corn bread were new to me when I first married. I was introduced to Jiffy Corn Muffin Mix and used it regularly. It was simple, tasty and very very quick. I never stopped to think about what the mix contained, assuming that it was pretty basic ingredients like corn meal and flour.

When she was twelve, one of my daughters became a vegetarian after realizing that she couldn’t eat “anything with a face” as she put it. She informed me that Jiffy Corn Mix contained lard, that lard was animal fat, and that she wouldn’t eat it any more. Glancing at the familiar package, I realized that it not only contained lard but also a bunch of unpronounceable ingredients. By then I had decided to no longer eat ingredients I couldn’t identify, so the mix was out for the rest of us too.

Fortunately at about the same time an entrepreneur called Bob started a local milling operation as a response to the consumer demand for more whole grain products. We drove over to his place and was given tour by Bob himself, a genial man with a passion for whole grains. We bought a bag of ground whole grain cornmeal and I found a simple recipe for corn bread. We liked the crunch that the whole grain gave, the batter was free of lard, and I could identify all the ingredients. It took 5 minutes longer to make, but it was worth it.

In the years since then, Bob grew his business exponentially. Now sold across the United States as “Bob’s Red Mill” it offers every kind of grain and flour imaginable. I count myself lucky to have met Bob when he was just starting out, able to tour the mill with us, and introduce me to a newly favorite ingredient–whole grain ground cornmeal.

My husband love sourdough bread, so I was intrigued by a long article in the food section of yesterday’s New York Times. A lovely photo of two loaves of sourdough was followed by step by step instructions to make it. The instructions went on over three pages. At this point I realized I could have walked to our Whole Foods Market (not a short walk), bought his favorite bread, brought it home and he could have consumed it during the time it would have taken to make their “simple” loaf. So there will be no sourdough baked here any time soon.

I was reminded, however, of Herman, a gift that circulated endlessly among my friends in the 1970’s. Herman was a starter contained in a glass jar with instructions on his feeding and use. Containing just milk, flour, sugar and water, Herman grew with each feeding, producing the concoction pictured above. I used it to make coffee cake and was then supposed to pass on the extra to a friend.

What did zucchini and Herman have in common in rural Oregon in the 1970’s? Everyone I knew had too many of each. Of course it was horrifying to throw out either, so I am sure that we found ways to bake zucchini bread with the starter Herman. And we kept asking each other if anyone needed Herman or zucchini. No one ever did.

Herman must have eventually died. I don’t remember any ceremony for him. But I do remember the initial joy of receiving him as a gift followed by the nagging sense that I needed to both feed him on schedule and find a friend to gift with the excess.

Does anyone else remember those days?

We had the pleasure this afternoon of watching the new documentary shown above, “Linda Ronstadt: The Sound of My Voice.” If you are anywhere near my age, 72, Ronstadt’s music can seem like a playlist of your life. From the earliest music with the Stone Poneys to her exquisite trios with Dolly Parton and EmmyLou Harris, Ronstadt belted out all kinds of music from pop to country to gospel to Mexican folk songs. She even starred in the memorable “Pirates of Penzance” with Kevin Kline because her mother loved Gilbert and Sullivan.

Struck with Parkinson’s disease, Ronstadt has lost the range of her voice that carried her through her life. But rather than the film ending on this tragic note, it finishes with her singing with her brother and nephew in their living room. Very muted, barely audible, her singing still connects her with her roots–the family singing at home.

Well worth seeing.

The other day I was talking about the dentist with a friend and my surprise that most people don’t like going there. Since I have always enjoyed, or at least not disliked, going to the dentist, I began to wonder why. Then I remembered the ever present admonishment in my home to “keep my teeth.” Apparently it had been a matter of pride that my grandparents and my parents had all managed to “keep their teeth.”

I suppose to a young person in the U.S. today the phrase would seem odd. Here there are fluoridated water, fluoridated toothpaste and countless reminders everywhere to brush your teeth. In fact the ads for denture paste seem to have been replaced by ads for whitening products. For older people today yellow teeth, while the natural result of using them for a life time, need bleaching. At least according to the teeth whitening industry.

But when I was a kid I knew many adults my parents’ age who had false teeth. We didn’t use the more polite term “dentures,” but called them false teeth. One of my favorite family friends could not only blow pipe smoke out his ears but could also wiggle his teeth in and out. We thought it was hilarious. Even my orthodontist had lost his teeth, though it was from the Bataan Death March and not from neglect.

But not our family. No way. We were a family who kept our teeth. In retrospect I think this may have had more to do with the rock solid hard water they grew up with. Portland, where I grew up, had water so soft anything could produce suds. Not so in the Minnesota of my forebears. So geography rather than personal habits shaped their teeth. I was going to have to work to “keep” mine.

Going to the dentist meant I was continuing in the family tradition. I still go. I still feel unnecessarily virtuous. And I still have my teeth.

When I am at the dentist a television hovers over the chair allowing me to distract myself from procedures. I almost always choose cooking shows. Lately instead of watching the news I have been viewing season after season of the “Great British Baking Show” with the original cast pictured above. Why on earth am I spending time looking at other people cook?

After thinking about this question for a while, I still have only a partial answer, but thought I would share what I know right now. Cooking shows are calming. Other people do the heavy lifting of grocery shopping, storage, cutting, dicing, measuring and mixing. I sit back and watch them. I imagine that I have an elf getting everything ready for me and I know I would be an outstanding cook in that situation!

Cooking shows promote a can-do attitude. Although they occasionally make mistakes or cut themselves, the cooks carry on. Curiously it doesn’t translate for me into an “I can cook this same dish.” Rather it seems to increase my general sense of optimism. I certainly need that both at the dentist and in the American political climate.

Cooking shows are utterly predictable. In the case of the “Great British Baking Show,” each week one baker will get the “star baker” award and one will leave the show. At the end of the season the three bakers left will compete for the prize. A grand picnic of family, friends and all the eliminated bakers celebrate as the winner is announced and handed a large bouquet and a glass plate. In other cooking shows each episode ends with a smiling cook and a tempting display of cooked food. I am calmed by this predictability in a country where I never know what will happen next with my “leaders.”

Having binged on cooking shows the only question left is “what’s for dinner?” Take-out maybe?