This is an archived post from “The Aroma of Bread,” and was first published 19 Jun 2012.
I was reading Dick Eastman’s Newsletter this morning and I read an article about the original recipe for Jack Daniel’s being found in a Welsh book of herbal remedies. Presumably, John ‘Jack the Lad’ Daniel’s left Wales for Lynchburg, Tennessee and was not heard from after a few letters. It was during this period that Jack Daniel’s Whisky was born.
While this is not a recipe from Marie’s collection, it is a post that was inspired by a recipe, the recipe for Jack Daniel’s. Butch enjoyed whisky, be it Jack Daniel’s or the brand he drank most often in his later years, Early Times. An Early Times and seltzer was a great way to start an evening out with friends.
In late summer 1949, probably in September, Butch and Marie joined Otto and Cel Hannen on a road trip to New Orleans. On their way south, they stopped at the Cherokee Dam on the Holston River in East Tennessee. The dam had been built recently, being completed in 1942, and we all know that Butch would have found the whole mechanics of it fascinating. In the hotel room that night, they enjoyed a night cap of whiskey – for this occasion they chose Jim Beam.
We always had a bottle of whiskey in the bar, ready for a visit from Butch. In 2000 when I was looking for a bottle of whisky to use in a new recipe, I pulled out the Early Times. It is the perfect whiskey for this recipe.
Combine first 8 ingredients in a large zip-top plastic bag, and add salmon to bag. Seal and marinate in refrigerator 1 ½ hours, turning bag occasionally.
Prepare grill or broiler.
Remove salmon from bag, reserving marinade. Place salmon on a grill rack or broiler pan coated with cooking spray. Cook 6 minutes on each side or until fish flakes easily when tested with a fork, basting frequently with reserved marinade.
NOTE: This recipe is the best with a lesser grade of bourbon, such as Butch’s favorite: Early Times
This is an archived post from “The Aroma of Bread,” and was first published 17 Jun 2012.
Today is Father’s Day, and in honor of today this post is about Butch. I scrolled through the photos that have been scanned searching for one in which he was pictured with all four boys. All but impossible to find! One or the other was always missing. So instead I have chosen an image of Butch that is very familiar to us, him sitting in a comfy chair feeding a baby. What makes this image so special is that it is not a grandchild that he is so lovingly gazing at, but his own baby son.
But on with the post:
My father-in-law loved to entertain. He loved nothing more than to arrive home and announce to Marie that he had invited a few people over for food – be it dinner, hors d’oeuvres or maybe just drinks with the ever present cheese.
He also loved to invite everyone to the “New Bar” for a Grasshopper after a Saturday night dinner at Van Abels. We would get up from the table and he would be leading the way, encouraging all to follow him, and he would start taking orders and telling the bartender what we would need. For him the perfect end to an evening, was more great conversation and relaxing with the people he loved.
While that is MY memory of Grasshopper drinks, easily retrieved from the bartender, Gary remembers the night that his dad played bartender. He and Marie were entertaining on the patio one beautiful summer evening, most likely Hank and Syd, the Van Abels, and other old friends were gathered in the balmy air. As dinner wound down it was time to take the orders for Grasshoppers. Getting an enthusiastic response, Butch headed into the kitchen to start mixing. While getting out the blender, his eye fell on Marie’s Mix-Master…..hmmmm….he could make quick work of getting everyone their drinks if he used the Mix-Master over the blender. Quick quantity was what he was after!! I can just imagine his giggle, and the sheepish look on his face as Marie walked into the house to hear the whirrrrr, struggle, whirrr, and then wisps of smoke coming out of her prized machine. Needless to say, this was just one of many kitchen experiments that didn’t go quite as planned.
Butch’s recipe for Grasshoppers consisted of 1 part Creme de Menthe, 1 part White Creme de Cacao and 1 part vanilla ice cream. Whip in a blender till smooth.
This is an archived post from “The Aroma of Bread,” and was first published 1 Jun 2012.
Yesterday, May 31st, was Dennis’ birthday, he would have been 62 years old this year. It was also his nephew Mike’s birthday. Happy Birthday!
Birthdays in Marie’s kitchen meant Angel Food Cake, and it had to have confetti in the mix. A plain angel food was not a birthday cake, although plain angel food was perfect for summer strawberries that had been sugared, mashed, and left to sit while dinner was eaten. Years after box angel food cakes became available, Marie never tired of the novelty and ease of an angel food box cake. She had a vivid memory of mixing these cakes by hand, standing at the counter and whisking, whisking, whisking the egg whites till they were stiff.
Marie, who was given the nickname of “Wee” by her father because she was so small, learned to cook at a very early age. She was always needed to help her mother prepare the meals for the thrashers and other hired hands on the farm, but when she was a small child, her mother was often ill. Because of this, Marie would be responsible for preparing the full meal on her own. When she shared stories with me from this time, I could just imagine this small girl standing on the step stool wrapped in a big apron, mixing, cooking, baking, and making angel food cakes by hand.
Growing up on the farm, they did not have indoor plumbing nor electricity until Marie was well into adulthood, so there were many years where the only way to make this favorite cake was made by hand, and then baked in an oven heated by wood. What always struck me was that she did not talk about the novelty of using an electric mixer, or for that matter an electric oven! But it was the ease of opening a box, adding water, mix, and voila! Angel food cake.
A recipe from the 1944 edition of The Settlement Cookbook, page 437.
ANGEL FOOD CAKE ~ No. 1
1 1/2 cups egg whites, 12 or 13
1 3/4 teaspoons cream of tartar
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 3/4 cups granulated sugar, measured lightly
1 1/4 teaspoons flavoring
1 cup plus 2 tablespoons cake flour
Beat egg whites with a wire whip. Add cream of tartar and salt when eggs are frothy. Continue beating until a point of the egg whites will stand upright. Gradually beat in one cup of the sugar, which has been sifted twice. Fold in the flavoring. Sift flour once before measuring. Fold in flour gradually, which has been sifted 3 times with remaining 3/4 cup of sugar. Pour into dry, ungreased 10-inch tube pan and bake 65 minutes in a moderate oven, 325 degrees F. Invert pan until cake is entirely cold.
Today I will continue to explore the listing for our previous home at 15 Pinewild Court: “Located on a quiet cul de sac is where you will find this Federal Style Home. Exceptional finishing both inside and out. Impressive all brick exterior. Side loading garage. Private yard w/beautiful garden. Stunning entrance w/turned staircase. Formal & informal spaces. Prized kitchen w/commercial appliances. Fabulous 3 Seasons Rm w/1 of 6 fireplaces thru out. Cozy hearth Rm, Piano space, 1st Fl. Office, Grand Master Suite w/private patio. Finished LL for family fun. Garage can accommodate 3 cars.”
One family’s “1st Fl. Office” is another family’s Library.
As we designed the home in 1993, we took a close look at what we loved about our current 1938 character home. This home had a small office in the front of the house that also doubled as a den. This knotty-pine paneled room had one full wall that held a built-in desk with storage and shelves. We loved the coziness of this room with its large wing chairs and the desk space for bills and other paperwork. As we also ran a small business from the house, we had a computer, and when we had finished the basement we created a corner workspace to hold the monster computer monitors of the day, and a drawer that housed the large dot matrix printer and it’s huge box of paper. Those were certainly the days! And as for the business? The main office in my in-law’s home held the “main” computer, and I remember the early days when my brother-in-law would have a question about what he was working on. He would call me on the second line, he would tell my mother-in-law that we would be using the house line, and I would dial in using PCAnywhere to take a look at his question. HA! We thought we were so high-tech, little did we know the changes that would happen in just a few short years.
We also had books, well, I had books, boxes of books. Knowing that we would need a designated computer space, a desk for Gary, and a place to hold what was then seven-ish boxes of books, we knew we wanted a library. Floor to ceiling storage for books and office files, and a corner desk to accommodate the huge monitors of the day, and a spot to hide the dot matrix printer with its box of paper. As we thought about the room, we knew we also wanted a fireplace.
The fireplace took a bit of figuring as the wall for the fireplace was the wall common with the family room, and that wall already was designated for the family room fireplace. Do we do side-by-side fireboxes? That placed one or the other in an awkward, not centered, sort of way. We settled on a two-sided extra large fireplace to accommodate both rooms.
The design complete, we knew we wanted this to be a cozy room for our family to gather. The living room sofa had been purchased for perfect scale in our current home, and was also the perfect size to fit in the living room, it just needed to be reupholstered. And we chose a deep dark green for the walls and carpet to give it the warm feeling we were going for.
This room so lived up to our expectations! We spent hours and hours in the winter in the library with snacks or hors d’oeuvre dinners in front of the fire. The corner desk turned into a sleeper great design choice as the kids started to use the computer, then the internet for school projects. I could be cooking in the kitchen and see the monitor from there to answer questions, or just to make sure they were making safe choices. The biggest change we made in the room was to move Gary’s large desk that sat nestled in the bay window upstairs to our bedroom and place his grandparent’s library table in its place. Other than that, it was just making adjustments to our growing book collection.
When we moved it was a huge task to sort through what books were going with us, and what books needed to be donated, or sold to Half Price Books. Now that we are here in Rhode Island we are designing our next library. The maid’s quarters on the 3rd floor offer us the opportunity to create a wall of bookshelves in the eaves of one of the rooms. This transition is on the list for this winter, as the summer is the time for outside projects such as restoring windows and getting the house painted. I do so miss the ability to just walk into the room for a book that I know we own and I know has the answer to a question that is being asked. Hopefully, we will soon be able to unpack the many boxes that fill the closet in that room. For now, I have many memories of having once owned a home that housed a library.
I write a lot about house histories, and I love to speak about how much fun they are to research and to write about. What is not to like? Learning the origin story of a house that you live in, or lived in, and love? Nothing. Until it becomes painful to write about. If you had asked me a few months ago if I thought this feeling would be possible, I would have said no. That is until we discovered that almost exactly to the day, two years after we left, 15 Pinewild Court was back on the market, and had sold.
We chose to leave a house that we designed, improved, maintained and loved, because we felt it was the right time. Time to retire, time to downsize, and time to move closer to our children. We also decided it would be a great opportunity to purchase a fixer-upper and bring another home back to life. But the story of our current home has not yet been fully written, time will tell how this house will speak to my heart and soul. But I have learned that not a day goes by that I don’t miss, and yes, sometimes mourn having left our old house behind.
The house that holds my heart entered our lives as Lot 68 in the Evergreen Meadows subdivision of Appleton, Outagamie, Wisconsin. Located at the top of Pinewild Court, we learned that it would be number 15. If I were to sit down to write its full story, it could be novel length, rather than blog post length. With that in mind, I have decided to approach our homes story through the eyes of its latest real estate listing.
“Located on a quiet cul de sac is where you will find this Federal Style Home. Exceptional finishing both inside and out. Impressive all brick exterior. Side loading garage. Private yard w/beautiful garden. Stunning entrance w/turned staircase. Formal & informal spaces. Prized kitchen w/commercial appliances. Fabulous 3 Seasons Rm w/1 of 6 fireplaces thru out. Cozy hearth Rm, Piano space, 1st Fl. Office, Grand Master Suite w/private patio. Finished LL for family fun. Garage can accommodate 3 cars.”
How do I unpack the above description, as there is so much going through my mind. I stop on one sentence then another. Let’s start with “Prized kitchen w/commercial appliances.”
In 1993 when we were in the design process for our new home, we were very hands on with opinions on may of the design details. But as I recall, the kitchen was not one of those details we spent a lot of time with. We saw it as a workable space, and we chose finishes that fit our budget at that time. Corian was not in the budget, so we chose a neutral, but pleasant formica top (this was many years before granite and stainless steel appliances became the desired design finish), we chose what we thought would be long lasting appliances – heck, they were in all the magazines that year, and moved on to other decisions.
Fast forward through many family night dinners, holidays with 20+ people, the hosting on non-profit holiday parties of 50+, and Mac & Cheese dinners when dad had to work late, and the appliances were starting to fail. The worst offender were the double ovens. In order for them to turn on, you had to first hit the control panel, then say a quick prayer. I wanted these double ovens, and loved them for most of their lives, but at this moment in 2012, I began to wonder if I should not have taken the appliance company up on their offer way back in 1993. We had ordered Jenn Air ovens, and they arrived with a Kitchen Aid double oven combo, that was an oven on the bottom, and a microwave on the top. They tried to convince me to keep them. I said no. I wanted the obscene luxury of two ovens. But Easter of 2012 when I opened the lower oven to find what looked like metal honeycomb nestled in the potatoes, we knew it was time to do something.
We could have just made the decision to replace the appliances, upgrade the countertop, sink, faucets and call it a day. It could have been a nice looking kitchen. But, we learned when the long awaited double ovens were finally installed and working that the cabinet maker had used an experimental paint on our job. A defective finish. The panel that enclosed the ovens, and was the first thing you saw as you came down the stairs blistered from the heat of the ovens. It looked horrible. This was a factor, but the real push to create a new kitchen was that we were in the remodel business, and looked forward to the challenge of designing a kitchen for ourselves.
We had already made a few changes to the original design as we settled into life at Pinewild Court. We like to cook together, so in 1997 a small sink had been installed on the “C Island” for Gary to do his prep work. He had his own set of knives in the drawer on the island, and the odds and ends tools for cleaning the fruits and vegetables that he was prepping.
All that we loved, wishes for changes, and the question of “Does this work for us?” were considered as we tweaked the layout for the new kitchen. We knew that we would stay within in the original footprint, but with a few changes. A 30” Wolf range would be installed were the cooktop had been, on the oven wall, we created a wall of Wolf ovens, at the top was a convection microwave, below that a wall oven, and below that a warming drawer. A Sub Zero refrigerator replaced the old side by side Kitchen Aid, and we swapped the dishwasher from the right side of the sink to the left. We are not fans of granite, but we loved the Cambria quartz that we chose for the countertops.
When we were through, we knew we had something special. As members of NARI (National Association of the Remodel Industry) we put together a project binder and entered the COtY Award process, (COtY is Contractor of the Year) at the National Level. The first step is to win at the Regional level, and those winners are placed into competition at the National level. We won at the Regional level. So this kitchen is not just prized, but prize winning!
I will let my binder tell the story of our new kitchen.
DESCRIPTION OF PROJECT
The time had come for the homeowners to remodel their 19-year-old kitchen. They had been babying the failing appliances for over two years as they discussed the pros and cons of their original kitchen design, determining what worked for them and what didn’t. What was working for them was the basic floor plan and the white cabinetry which was in keeping with their Federal style home. What wasn’t working for them was a much longer list.
What was not working:
The appliances. It was hit or miss as to whether the ovens would even turn on, or stay on for the duration of the cooking time required.
The location of the dishwasher. Although located next to the sink, it was not easy for one person to empty the dishwasher while another was cooking.
The location of the garbage pullout was not conveniently accessed from all angles.
The existing prep sink was too small.
Although conveniently located the planning desk was never used as the homeowner felt as though she was sitting in a dark hole.
The Butler’s Pantry upper cabinet had been installed at 16″ which was too low for effectively using the space. More height was needed.
The open space between the cabinets and the ceiling. It was just a catch-all for dirt and was clearly visible when walking down the stairs to the kitchen.
The Challenges:
Designing the kitchen to exactly fit the existing floor plan of the cabinets.
The homeowner wished to retain the existing oak hardwood flooring.
The homeowners wished to keep the existing wallpaper. All cabinets needed to fit within the existing lines, and the custom crown molding needed to be saved and re-used.
Create easier access to the prep sink plumbing.
Change from an interior wall, down draft vent, to an updraft range hood.
Center the range within the visual space and actual space.
To follow through with the Federal architectural detail found elsewhere in the home, and create a space that blends into the existing open floor plan without screaming “New!”
The Homeowners Desires:
Professional grade appliances. The homeowners are avid cooks, and they desired professional grade appliances to enhance the enjoyment of preparing meals for family and friends.
A quartz countertop
More lighting, both recessed and under cabinet lighting.
Deep sinks
A new hot water dispenser, with filtered water drinking option.
A kitchen that really fit the style of the home.
Pinterest:
The homeowner was a fan of Pinterest so we took advantage of this and she created a Board just for pinning ideas she had for the kitchen. By linking to this board, we were able to see exactly what she was interested in, and to read her thoughts about how and where she envisioned using the idea. From sinks to knobs and drawer pulls, to tile, the homeowner shared all of her ideas with us through Pinterest.
Letter writing is a lost art. It is so easy to slam out a text or write that “quick email” that our penmanship is failing, and our ability to put together a proper complete sentence is suffering.
This past week I have been busy transcribing my mother’s travel journal. The summer after she graduated from Drake University in Des Moines, Iowa, she and two of her sorority sisters left to spend the summer traveling around Europe. They rented a 4-door Renault in Paris, a car so small that only one suitcase and the coats fit in the trunk, the other suitcases were strapped to the roof of the car. Leaving Paris, they would drive 2900 miles over the next 31 days, traveling through France, Germany, Switzerland, and Italy, before returning the car, and boarding a train to spend another week between London and Edinburgh, Scotland.
Mom was diligent about recording the Date, Place, and Weather for each day, along with a short synopsis of how they had spent their day, and what they had seen. I thought that this small journal was giving me a great insight into her trip, and all of the wonders she had seen. That is until I read her letters home. My grandparents had saved each letter and postcard that she had sent home, mom had saved all the letters that she received at American Express offices throughout Europe, and neighbors had “returned” to her the postcards that she had sent to them.
After I had finished the journal, I started to transcribe the letters, inserting the transcription of the letter following the date of the journal entry. Suddenly the trip came alive! From her journal entry I learn: “… ate a wonderful meal of snails, wine (Claret) & ice cream & raspberries…” From her letter home I discover that “… That evening we enjoyed a wonderful meal of snails & claret & ice cream & raspberries. They are served in their shells on trays, which look something like tiny, shallow muffin tins. Each snail is covered with melted butter, garlic, and parsley. You are given a small fork and tong like things (to hold the shell) with which you eat them. After you eat the snail you soak tiny bits of your bread in the garlic butter. It is really very tasty — of course you leave reeking of garlic, but happy.” As my grandma said in her August 7th letter to mom “You will never know how much your wonderful letters & cards mean to us. Am saving all of them & just to read about what you are seeing and such thrills us to death. Your letters are almost like a travelogue. Gosh but it sure sounds wonderful and we are so pleased that you are having such a wonderful time.”
Speaking of grandma. In the summer of 1955, Verna Amelia Gray Tapper was 44 years old. My grandfather, Roland John Tapper, Sr. was 45, turning 46 on August 1st. That summer, on August 6th, they celebrated their 25th wedding anniversary. They were so young!! And grandma was just full of news to share. Mom’s trip spanned ten weeks, and grandma wrote seven letters during that time, and mom sent 12 letters home, plus several postcards. For grandma and grandpa, they received a travelogue, and for mom, she kept up with all the news from home. And me? Well, I can sit down and “see” into the past. I can enjoy mom’s trip along with grandma and grandpa, and I can feel the heat of the 100° days, the happiness that grandma felt when “Dad had my diamond reset & got me a new wedding ring. So — for the first time I have matched rings…The settings are simple but dainty & beautiful & he is so proud of them he could just burst.”
Now I am scanning and organizing the letters, the postcards, the travel journal, and the book that mom put together at my request. In 2011 I had asked her to document her trip, which she did in the form of a photo journal, as she organized and captioned the photos that she had from the trip. I am working on putting this together in book format so that the whole summer can be savored in one bite, “The Summer of 1955.”
