Early American food and necessities

Back during the virus event and today as it's recurring again, there was and is a shortage of toilet paper. Unreal how the store shelves in some stores are just bare of toilet paper. One other item back several months was the disappearance of yeast or packages of yeast. Marge bakes a lot, so we bought her yeast in bulk to have a good supply. But it got me to wondering how the old timers back in the homesteading days handled the need for yeast or lack of yeast. But also many of the other items we think are indispensable. So I've done a little searching.

In the "Little House" series Laura Ingalls Wilder describes how her pioneer family enjoyed vegetables and whatever meat they could raise or hunt. But also included in their meals was cornbread. Children started their day with corn fritters for breakfast, lunch at school was maybe a boiled egg and a corn fritter. Dinner might be boiled pork, dried apples soaked in water and baked cornbread.

One recipe I thought was interesting was making cornbread or, more specifically, sourdough cornbread. This cornbread doesn't require packets of yeast but instead requires a starter yeast made from potatoes. One simply cuts up a couple of potatoes, which almost every settler grew, into eight pieces. Once these eight pieces are boiled tender-take about two cups of the potato water and mix into it 2 cups of flour and 1 tablespoon of sugar. Cover it with a kitchen towel in a warm spot until it doubles in size. Now you can add a cup of starter, a cup of milk, 2 tablespoons of sugar, 2 eggs, 1/2 cup fat such as lard, and 1/4 teaspoon of both salt and soda. Bake this mixture for about 30 minutes at about 400 degrees. It sounds good. Marge and I are going to have to give this a try.

Most settlers could grow corn or oats or other similar grain crops. Some was used for animal feed, but some was also destined for human consumption. At first, I'm sure the settlers used the old mortar and pestle to grind the grain but eventually some bought small hand-crank grinders that are available today. There are expensive ones and reasonable priced ones. Guess what's on our buy list?

One book I've read parts of and I've got one ordered is Miss Beecher's Domestic Receipt-Book. It was written back in the mid 1800s, so it's an old book. One thing she covers is pickling produce to preserve. But during this COVID mess, vinegar was hard to find as it probably was back during the settler days. So had to find a recipe to make home-spun vinegar.

The recipe I came across says to take a half gallon or gallon jar and fill it up about half way with apple peelings and cores and even apple chunks. Fill the jar with good, clean water up to about an inch or two from the top. Stir in several tablespoons of honey or sugar, and you are good to go. Take a piece of cheesecloth or kitchen towel and cover the jar, making sure air can get to the apple mixture. You can quicken up the mixture by adding a couple to three spoons of vinegar but it's not necessary. Stir the mix daily and keep in at about 60 to 80 degrees.

After a week or two, the apple chunks will sink to the bottom of the jar. Filter out these chunks and put the juice back in a clean jar and cover with a clean cloth. Let this stand for three to four weeks and give it a try. Take the cloth off the jar and slide your spoon down the side of the jar and get enough to taste. If the taste is good then filter the mix a couple times and you are ready to bottle your vinegar or pickle some goodies. Vinegar can be made from almost any fruit, such as sand cherries or plums and on and on.

Soap is another example of turning a couple common items every settler had into hand soap or even laundry soap. All that was needed was some wood ashes that supplied the lye and hog or beef fat that supplied the rendered tallow. One could even use bear fat. I'm betting that at one time someone even used some possum fat. Lye soap was downright rough on the skin. I'm thinking that if we today used lye soap and washed and rubbed for 20 seconds, which they recommend for the virus, we'd wear off some skin. But it worked, and it was basically free.

Somewhere as I was growing up I must have talked to Dad about sugar or sugar beets or sorghum. Anyway, Dad proceeded to tell me that at some time up in the middle of Cherry County in Nebraska they raised what must have been sugarcane. As Dad described how they extracted the juice from the pulp, the picture I got mentally was of an old horse walking in a circle pulling a large circular stone around crushing sugarcane. Dad's gone, and all the old timers who were there are gone as well. So who knows? Dad did talk about it, but what I pictured might have been the result of an active imagination. Always wondered if somewhere up there in the hills is a large mill stone stained with sugarcane juice.

I don't think it hurts to take the long way sometimes when a shortcut isn't as satisfying. If you decide to try the sourdough cornbread or the apple cider vinegar or the lye soap, drop me a note. Be careful. I kind of think they were tougher than we are.