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Jan. 27, 2010
By Milli Gilbaugh
NORTH LIBERTY LEADER
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| Milli Gilbaugh |
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Snowy, icy, windy, wet, chilly, and gloomy weather inspires me to stay in the house and cook. It's what my mother used to do on those long, dreary winter days when we were all in school and Dad was willing to stop at the Jack & Jill and pick up bananas and milk and maybe a can of sauerkraut on his way home from work. In summer, Mother spent those wet, cloudy days sewing - usually school clothes in preparation for fall - but winter brought on fits of baking and making long-simmering soups and stews.
Granted, some of the household chores required more time and effort in the winter, though a few were easier or nearly eliminated in cold weather. With the house closed up tight against the cold, we didn't get all the dust that rolled off the dirt road in front of our house in summer, and of course we didn't track in all the grass clippings and sand-pile sand that came with warm weather. Windows didn't get washed as often in winter, and laundry was reduced to a minimum because of the difficulty of getting things dry once they were washed. The beds were made with plaid flannel sheets that kept us cozier on long winter nights and deposited little knots of lint in our hair as we slept. These didn't get sweaty like the summer sheets did, so they weren't washed every week. Long before the days of clothes-dryers, the weekly laundry was strung about the house on temporary rope lines attached to hooks Dad had installed in various locations around the living room and dining room. There would be a folding wooden rack positioned near the heat register in the kitchen for light-weight items that dried quickly, such as lingerie, handkerchiefs, aprons, blouses and baby clothes. These were handy for Mother to keep an eye on and replace the damp items with wet ones as soon as they were sufficiently dried for ironing. We'd arrive home after school to find all the windows covered with elaborate fern designs of accumulated frost from all the extra moisture in the air. The house smelled like soap and bleach and fresh oatmeal cookies which Mother had baked between hanging and taking down various loads of laundry. Tomorrow, she would iron all the things that had been taken down damp, rolled into tight bundles and placed in the oilcloth-lined ironing basket.
But, once the ironing had been finished and put away, those raw winter days were responsible for a lot of special treats. Before the days of television, there wasn't much to entertain the average stay-at-home homemaker unless she liked to gossip on the telephone, listen to soap operas on the radio or read magazines. My mother didn't do any of those things. She liked to stay busy with "important things" that had to do with taking care of her home and family. If there was no sewing or mending to do and the dusting and vacuuming had been done, Mother cooked. She called it "lazy cooking" because it wasn't exactly necessary and because she did it as much for recreation as for feeding her brood. These were always special things: a big batch of paper-thin homemade noodles that she dried and stored in a big cake tin in the cupboard, a chocolate layer cake or angel food when it wasn't anybody's birthday, a batch of homemade marshmallows flavored with peppermint and tinted pretty colors long before we could buy such extravagances, popcorn balls when Halloween had come and gone months ago.
There would be chocolate chip cookies or frosted cupcakes for after-school munching and, if the weather was too nasty for us to play outdoors, some intriguing project - usually messy and usually confined to the kitchen - to keep us occupied until suppertime. Mother didn't seem to mind messes or noisy kids as long as they were happy messes and happy noises. No squabbling though! And we had to vacate the kitchen table in time for supper. Sometimes she'd have a messy project involving papier māche or an old wallpaper book and lots of paste. We redecorated our dollhouses or made treasure chests out of empty oatmeal boxes. Sometimes, we'd make plaster-of-Paris wall plaques decorated with cutouts of flowers cut from old seed catalogs. And I remember making an extensive family of clothespin dolls to entertain my youngest sister. Time passed quickly on those late winter afternoons and it seemed we were never ready to quit when it was time to clear the table for the supper that Mother had prepared while we were engrossed in our projects.
Often there would be a big batch of her rich, brown beef stew, loaded with onion, carrots and chunks of potato and cabbage, topped off with light-as-clouds fluffy dumplings as big as your fist, which we split, slathered with butter and drizzled with the rich, brown gravy-like stew. This was a feast better than any fancy Sunday dinner that ever came out of her kitchen. My mother was what was known as a good, plain cook and she had a magic touch for those dumplings. I've watched her make them and helped her make them, I've read all sorts of supposed "secrets" in various cookbooks, I've practiced and practiced, but I've never been able to make a dumpling that was anywhere close to the ones my mother made.
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