GRANDMA HORNS KITCHEN

I wanted to describe my Grandma Horn's farm kitchen.  She had all of the mod/con's that a farm wife needed to feed her family and I enjoyed the benefit of her talents.

She baked all of the bread. Whenever I was there visiting my job was to help baste the loaves of bread once they had cooled a bit.  She kept the left over bacon grease for this task   I wielded my brush proudly.

There were two cupboards under the sink. They each hda a half round metal bin attached to the door that held 100 lb bags of flour and sugar.  There was just enough room for a small kid to hide behind them when the doors were closed.  Hide and seek was very fun.  All the giggles were a dead give-a-way. 

Grandma cooked on a wood stove most of her adult life.  The last new stove they owned in Colorado was a brand new Home Comfort Range.  It came with a small recipe book and from that book we gained the family recipe for pumpkin pie.  My sister Carla has that recipe book and there are some lovely recipes for pies in there.  The peach cream one is delicious.  

Pumpkin pie

1 cup pumpkin

2 eggs

1 cup sugar

1/2 tsp cinnamon

1/2 tsp allspice

1 tbsp. melted butter

mix well, bake in medium oven until toothpick comes out clean.

Recipe can be tripled nicely.

Since Grandma grew a truck garden, it was many times that I got to help snap beans and shell peas.  The corn was always obtained from the end rows of the field corn. Tomatoes grew like weeks.  Grandma had a wonderful wide brimmed hat that she wore to work in the garden.  

Her pie crust was a thing of beauty.  I tried to get amounts of ingredients from her once but she said she didn't measure, she did it by feel.  Pie crust was simply flour, lard, a bit of water and the trick was to blend this together quickly, do not work it to death and you would have wonderful pie crust every time without fail.

Grandma had zig zag fingers from a high fever when she was a girl, surprisingly these finger were very helpful in skimming cream and other items. 

Her best meat dish was fried chicken.  I got to help make mashed potatoes and the gravy.....Oh god, so good. 

She did a lot of canning mostly fruit and veggies.  She had an old treadle Singer sewing machine that she let me play around on but I do not actually remember ever seeing her use the thing, probably too busy with other stuff.

The washing machine was on the porch.  It was a standard three tub wringer washer. one tub for hot soapy water, one tub with clear rinse water and one tub to hold the wrung out clothes.  This was fascinating.  I was cautioned many times to keep my fingers away from the wringer. The clothes then went onto the clothes line with wooden clothes pins. We grandkids were NOT allowed to run around under the drying clothes. 

I know she ironed because I was fascinated with the black and red checked box that the electric iron was stored in.  I did learn how to iron a shirt properly growing up, so in a pinch, yeah I can take out your shameful wrinkles.

She did some hand work by which I mean some crochet and she did quilting and had a fine hand for seams.  She did some embroidery but that was usually confined to pillow cases. 

There was not much time to grow flowers. If I remember correctly I think there were lilac bushes around the yard.  I love lilac.  She did have a few plants in the house.  She loved fuschia but every plant she ever got for a birthday promptly died of aphid infestation.  They started out pretty though.  She gave me an Angle Wing Begonia and it took me FOREVER to kill.  There were always some red gardenia type flowers that smeller very stringent, probably kept insect life down in the house. 

Oh one last thing, in the summer she would prepare the ice cream machine.  Someone got the job of stirring the thing for about 30 minutes.  I remember a particular batch of strawberry that was fabulous.