My mother would cook without recipes, for the most part, I don't have her particular recipe, but another recipe that very similar is below.
GERMAN POTATO SALAD
5 bacon strips
3/4 cup chopped onion
2 Tbs. all-purpose flour
2/3 cup cider vinegar
1 1/3 cups water
1/4 cup sugar
1 tsp. salt
1/8 tsp. pepper
6 cups sliced cooked peeled potatoes
In a large skillet, fry bacon until crisp; remove and set aside. Drain all but 2-3 tablespoons of drippings; cook onion until tender. Stir in flour; blend well. Add vinegar and water; cook and stir until bubbly and slightly thick. Add sugar and stir until it dissolves. Crumble bacon; gently stir in bacon and potatoes. Heat through, stirring lightly to coat potato slices. Serve warm. Yield: 6-8 servings.
It seems that my mother would often have milk on the back burner of the "old cook store" for the first steps of making Huttenkase (the German name for Cottage Cheese). However, we always called it "Smearcase" and I thought that was the correct German name, but just recently found out differently. I know there is high German and Low German and I don't know the difference. Anyway, when the milk curdled just right. My mother would put this in a cheesecloth and hang it up to get all the whey out. Cottage cheese was not to have the whey left in for a really "good" tasting cottage cheese. Then she would put cream, milk and salt and pepper to taste. We had a lot of milk, so this was a staple on the table.
Another memory seems to loom up, is my mother would after supper and before bedtime would make a large pot of Mush. We would often eat a bowl just before bedtime, but she made it mainly for the next morning breakfast. The next morning she sliced it and we would have "Fried Mush". To this day, I have never tasted fried mush as good as she made it. She fried the slices until golden brown and we ate it with butter and syrup poured over it. Of course it was served with ham or bacon. Yummy!
Below is some Pan Cookies that my mother made a lot and is the same recipe that she used, but I modernized it into today's kitchen appliance language.
PAN COOKIES
1 cup raisins or nuts
3 eggs
2 cups sugar
3 cups flour
1 tsp. soda
1 tsp. cinnamon
1/4 tsp. cloves
1/4 tsp nutmeg
1 tsp vanilla
3/4 cup lard (I use butter or oleo)
1 cup sour milk (I've used buttermilk and that works)
Sift together dry ingredients--flour, soda, cinnamon, cloves, nutmeg and set aside. Cream shortening, sugar, eggs, vanilla in mixer until fluffy. Start adding 1/3 of dry ingredients alternating with half of milk, 1/3 dry, and rest of milk, ending with 1/3 dry ingredients. Fold in nuts and raisins. Pour in flat sheet pan. Bake at 350 degrees. Depending on the size of pan and how thick it is, take it out when it tests right with a tooth pick. Frost with thin layer of butter cream icing. Cut in squares. (My husband likes it plain without icing)
I ran across this next recipe for homemade Lye Soap. One of my stories told about my mother making homemade Lye soap. At the time I wrote about this, I didn't have a recipe, but this is very close to what I remember how she did it.
HOME MADE LYE SOAP
5 to 7 lbs. melted grease
16 oz. lye (1 can plus 1/3 can)
1 qt. cold water
3 Tbs. Borax
1/2 Cup hot water
1 Tbs. salt
1/4 Cup ammonia
2 Tbs. sugar
Early in the day, put 1 quart cold water in a steel bowl and carefully pour in 16 ounces lye; stir with a wooden paddle or spoon. Let set until cool. In a small bowl, pour hot water over Borax and stir. Add salt, sugar and ammonia and set aside. In an enamel pan (use an old dishpan or an enamel canning pan), heat grease to 110 degree on thermometer. Have ready a good wooden paddle, 2 feet long, to stir. Outside or garage (open area), slowly pour the cooked lye into the pan of grease, stirring all the while. Then stir the Borax mixture and add it, stirring. Keep stirring and if it doesn't get thicker, leave it a while and return. When it starts to thicken, pour it into a flat enamel pan and let set. It must be scored (cut into squares) with a sharp knife, maybe that evening or the next morning, let set a day or 2. It must be removed and cakes placed on brown paper in a cardboard box. Let cure. Easy on hands, great soap. Use pans only for soap. Can not use for cooking soup or anything after containing lye.
Now I don't suppose any of you have 5 to 7 # of fat around, (well maybe around our waist, perhaps) but thought you might be interested in the process anyway. This recipe was taken from my sister's church cookbook.
When cleaning out my mother's town house, I wish we would have kept an old cookbook that her mother used when she was homesteading in Nebraska. It called for butter the size of an egg, in the instructions, etc. Probably the date on the cookbook was back in the 1800's. I suppose, we threw it away thinking that the instructions were so far removed from our current cookbooks, that it was useless.
Wisdom today--God's law shows us a need that only God's grace can supply.
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