More About Food, and Washing Up Instructions

Good morning!

I seem to be in an eating phase right now, so I might as well write about it too. 

Yesterday or the day before I was talking about Tomato Sauce with a Catsup Taste, and I meant to mention that I've recently found,  in a book by Suzanne Somers , a recipe for catsup that you can make yourself.  Her recipes are good and interesting except for cutesy names like Sommersize, etc.  But anyway her catsup makes a lot more than I would want to make (it's a ton of preservatives that keep the commercial catsup stable in our refrigerators for weeks or months) as I am the only one here at present that eats it.  But you can go there for a good recipe if you want more precise quantities than "a knife tip." 

I do use a knife tip.  And it's a pointed caseknife kind of knife.  I figure the point is about 1/4 teaspoon.  More or less.  I have made entire meals (eaten them too) using only this wonderful old old English knife that we bought at an open air market in Oklahoma once long ago.  It was once two inches longer in the blade than it now is. It is dark un-stainless steel with a wooden handle that is gradually coming apart.  Once we 'd bought it I found my eight-year-old son sawing some copper wire with it, and the blade used to have two little nicks in it for years.  Those nicks are gone, now, worn away entirely.  The long tip got so thin and dangerous that I asked my husband to go to the garage and cut it down, conforming to the original curvature of the blade.  He did a great job.  It could hold up for a few more years yet.  The blade used to say "Sheffield England" but those letters have been gone years ago.  I tell people I know I'm old because I look at the sheets of  music of Debussy and Ravel which I bought new and crisp when I was young, and they are limp, faded, and flaking--telling me something about me, folks.  Same way with that knife. It was old when I got it but it is a lot older now.

I think I will end this by telling you how to wash dishes.  When I was about ten and our family lived in Laredo out on Piedra China, my father was gone a lot working in Mexico, so the adults in the family consisted of my mother, my Tennessee-born grandfather, (this was his family's dishwashing ritual) and my grandmother Annie Bell. The main meal was eaten at lunch, and after we had eaten, all three of them went into the kitchen and went to work in a practiced, expert way.  One person brought in the dishes, or maybe they all did.  One person washed the dishes, one person dried the dishes, and the third person went about the kitchen setting things to rights, wiping the work areas and the stove, and so forth. 

Two enamel pans, each one about ten or eleven inches round, held the wash water and the rinse water.  Every household, my children, had at that time a handy implement which was a little wire cage with a handle, and into that cage went all the odds and ends of all the family soap.  The wash pan was filled with hot water and the little soap implement was shaken through the water till the water  turned slightly milky and sudsy.  Not too much at all.  The rinse pan was filled with hot water.

First, glassware was washed, rinsed, and immediately dried by the two workers.  Second after glassware, the silverware: knives, forks, spoons, were washed and dried.  Thirdly, the plates and other chinaware were washed and dried. Needless to say, person number three was putting away each item after it was dried.  After that, any cooking vessels were washed and dried, although my grandmother had the habit of washing up skillets and saucepans as she used them in preparation so they were almost always all done.  Dishcloth washed out and hung up, dishtowel, likewise.  Drainboard, clean and empty. Everything put away. Kitchen, spotless.  Workers off to put their feet up for a minute.  Actually nobody ever really put their feet up that I saw.  They were all skinny and didn't get too tired even in Laredo's hundred degree noontime heat.  We kids participated in that ritual from time to time, but mostly the adults did it to get it over with.  That was fun to remember. Thanks for letting me go back in time for a moment! YAZZYBEL