Category Archives: Life on Brick Row

Grandma’s Butcher Knife – or How I Learned to Behave at the Table

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When I tell people that my Grandmother Eveline set her place at the table with a butcher knife so she could hit you with it if you misbehaved, they get the wrong idea.

It wasn’t like that. Really.

I think it may have had something to do with this guy…
I hear he was a bit of a mischief maker….and then there were his two older brothers…. and maybe his two older sisters weren’t always perfectly behaved either.

And anyway, she wouldn’t have hit you with the blade end. She held the knife by the blade, thus assuming any risk of serious injury herself. The butcher knife was merely an extension of her arm with a heavy wooden “hand” on the end of it, allowing her to deliver a whack on the hand to a deserving miscreant sitting anywhere at the table.

By the time I came to live at Grandma’s house most of the kids were grown, although Uncle Mont (the aforementioned mischief maker) and Aunt Wilma were still in high school. Even so, the butcher knife remained on the table at mealtime. It was enough to make me behave just knowing it was there.

Family Recipe Friday – Apple Butter (after a Texas drought)

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We had an extreme drought in Texas last year.  The summer was long and extraordinarily hot, marked by a record 90 days of 100+ temperatures in central Texas.

Squirrel in a Hole

Every evening when we went out to check on our plants, we would find a newly dug hole in our flowerbed. We would fill it in and the next day there would be another one – or two. I finally caught the culprit in action – a squirrel trying to stay cool during the heat of the day – belly in a hole. I spent a lot of the summer entertaining myself by trying to sneak a picture of him (and sometimes her) and posting “squirrel in a hole” pictures as my Facebook status.

Loquats

We have two loquat trees in our back yard. They rarely bear much fruit, but this spring was the exception. Loquat trees all over town were laden with fruit. The local paper said we had the drought to thank. After a time of severe stress, a tree may produce an overabundance of fruit to increase the likelihood of survival. We ate our first loquats this year and I made a cobbler which was quite good. The squirrels were really happy too!

Our Apple Tree

Which brings me to our little apple tree. Just like the loquat tree, it has produced an abundance of fruit this year. Plenty for the squirrels to share with us. It is so heavy with fruit that my husband has propped up a branch with a bungee cord so it won’t break.

Our supply of apples reminded me of Grandmother Eveline’s Apple Butter. I sure loved it when she made apple butter – especially if there was homemade bread to go with it! My mom once told me that she remembers her mother (Eveline) cooking apple butter in a large pot on the back of their coal stove.

Sometimes Grandma’s recipes are a bit lean on directions. This is one of those times. Eveline probably didn’t use a recipe and wrote this down when her kids asked her for one.

Eveline (Coates) Hoskins’ Apple Butter

4 quarts apples, peeled and quartered
2-3 cups sugar
2-3 teaspoons cinnamon
1  teaspoon cloves

Cook until apples are thoroughly done. Use a potato masher, if necessary. Turn temperature to low. Add sugar and spices. Cook until thick. Seal while hot. Makes about 2 quarts.

So let’s think this through. Eveline assumes that we know to cook the apples with some water. When they are soft, mash them if necessary, add the sugar and spice to make everything nice, and cook on low for a good long time…. as in hours…. and we should probably stir occasionally. And she is certain that we know how to can, so no need to go into specifics.

As for me, I’ll freeze mine.

Off to the kitchen now to get started. I’ll let you know how it turns out.

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5/26/2012 Update

I made apple butter as promised. Yummy!  Had some with my breakfast this morning.

I had a hard time finding the conversion for quarts of whole apples to pounds, but finally came up with this equation (can’t verify the accuracy, but it’s what I used):
4 quarts = 8 pounds
My biggest pan only held 6 lb. of quartered apples, so I adjusted the rest of the recipe based on that.
Here’s what I did:

Cooked 6 lb. apples with 3 cups water for about 30 minutes. Added more water as needed. Added 1 3/4 c. sugar, 1 3/4 t. cinnamon, and 3/4 t. cloves. (I just went with the mid-range of the measurements.) The low setting on my electric stove top isn’t low enough to be able to walk away from the stove without the threat of scorching, so I transferred the mashed apples mixed with sugar and spices to my crockpot. Cooked on low in crockpot for about 5 1/2 hours. I read online to test for doneness by putting a spoonful on a saucer. If no liquid spreads out onto the saucer, it’s done. 

1st Grade Hairstory: Ringlets, A Peeled Onion, and a Clueless Boy

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Every Saturday Mom shampooed my hair in Grandma Eveline’s kitchen and followed up with a vinegar rinse. I didn’t much care for the smell of the vinegar, but it was supposed to leave my hair squeaky clean. I always ran my fingers across a strand of hair to be sure it squeaked. It did.

Mom would comb out my hair and divide it into little sections that she wrapped around her index finger, then secured the long curls with a couple of bobby pins. If I was lucky, the bobby pins held my curls in place through the rest of the day and through the night giving me a head full of ringlets for church on Sunday morning.

On school days, it was Grandmother Eveline who got me ready for school and my hairstyle changed from ringlets to a ponytail. My fine hair tangled easily and when I got up in the morning, it was a mess. Grandma had a large, pearl blue comb that she used on me. And when I say “used on me” I mean more than just using it to comb my hair. The fact is, Grandma didn’t have much patience for my complaints. Every time I said “Ouch,” I got a little whack on the head with that blue comb.

I liked my ponytail and imagined myself as stylish as the teenaged girls on TV. Grandma didn’t think my ponytail was particularly flattering. She told me more than once that I looked like a “peeled onion.” I’m thinking maybe she was right….

A peeled onion and her grandmother

At school, we played chase (boys vs. girls) nearly every day during recess. A boy with the last name Applegate was my boyfriend because I was the girl he always chased – and I would then chase him in return. That pretty much sums up our relationship. I also thought about his name a lot. It seemed unusual to me and I spent a good bit of time wondering what an apple gate would look like. Had his family been famous for their apples? Would an apple orchard have a fence around it with a gate? Maybe a white picket fence and a white gate with an arch. Or perhaps a black iron gate. Or maybe just plain wood. I preferred the white.

Anyway, I ran around the playground with my ponytail swinging until the day came when it was decided that I should get a haircut. I showed up at school the next Monday morning, proud of my new shorter hairdo with bangs. No more peeled onion look for me! I wondered what my boyfriend would think.

Imagine my disbelief when Mr. Applegate made his way to the teacher’s desk and asked her about the NEW GIRL! Had a haircut made me unrecognizable? Had he not paid enough attention to me, his girlfriend, to know what my face looked like? Did he prefer the looks of this “new girl” over …. me? Was he planning to chase HER on the playground?

1st Grade Hairstory lessons:
1. Keep your mouth shut when Grandma is combing your hair.
2. Avoid looking like a peeled onion.
3. Beware of boys who are always on the lookout for their next girlfriend, who don’t care enough about you to know who you really are, or who simply don’t have a clue.

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