One of my earliest memories is of sitting at a table with my mother, father and little sister.  We are in a one-room, second-floor flat on Elm Street in downtown Cincinnati in the mid-1930s.  All day, Mother has watched over a simmering pot of beans with a pig hock added for flavor.  My father has come in from his timekeeper job on the WPA and we are having about the cheapest supper possible in the midst of the Great Depression.  I have a plateful of beans and a tiny bit of the small amount of meat that is on a pig hock (my father gets the biggest portion of meat and my mother claims to love chewing around on the bone).  The beans are steaming and the teaspoon or so of meat is flavorful – I love it!  It was said in my family that you weren’t an Applegate if you didn’t love beans, so I guess I qualified as a full-fledged member of my father’s side of the family.

As time went on and my father moved to better jobs with the City of Cincinnati and then Dayton Acme (a World War II defense plant), there was more money in my mother’s food budget and she stopped using the mostly-fat pig hocks and either threw in a pork chop or two to cook with the beans or had crisp bacon or fried ham on the side.  This was the only time my father ate pork … along with his beans topped with chopped onion and a lot of black pepper.

By the time my future husband started coming to the house for meals, Mother had added a big cast iron skillet full of fried potatoes to the menu.  It was his favorite supper.  After we were married, I continued to have this meal one night a week.  Every time I hear the John Denver song, “Back Home Again” and the line about “supper on the stove” and the wife who felt the baby move, I think about my young husband coming home to an expectant wife in our little apartment with the windows all steamed up and a big white and red graniteware pot of beans simmering on the range.

My four children didn’t inherit their parents’ love of a bean supper and I got out of the habit of making it.  But now that I’m alone, I crave the beans of my childhood, especially in the fall and winter.  I make a healthier, easier version with a slow cooker.

GREAT NORTHERN CROCKPOT BEANS

• 1/2 lb. Great Northern dry beans
• 6 cups cold water*
• 1-1/2 tsp. ham flavored soup base (L. B. Jamison’s)
• Salt and pepper to taste

Place the dry beans cold water in the slow cooker.  *I use this amount of water to insure that I’ll have enough broth to make dumplings.  Cook on low overnight – approximately 8 hours.  Add the ham flavoring, then taste before adding salt and pepper.

I was the only one in the family who liked dumplings with my beans and I used to make a one-person serving.  This works very well for me now when I want to make a meal just for myself.

DUMPLINGS FOR ONE

• 1/4 cup of My Biscuit Mix**
• 1-1/2 Tblsp. (approx.) of cold water

In a small bowl, stir the biscuit mix and water together to make a thick, moist dough.

Heat about 1 cup of bean broth and 1 cup of beans in a small pot to boiling.  Drop the dough into the boiling mixture by the tablespoonful, making three dumplings.

Lower the heat to simmering, cover the pot and continue simmering for 10 minutes without lifting the lid.  Note:  The white and red graniteware lid is from my original 1952 set.

Serve immediately with chopped onion and a grating of black pepper.  A small serving of meat is good, but not necessary (to me, at least).  Today, I happened to be browning hot sausage to freeze for my Thanksgiving stuffing and kept back enough to make myself a small grilled patty.  It tasted wonderful.  This is truly my soul food.

**MY BISCUIT MIX

• 2 cups all-purpose flour
• 1 tsp. salt
• 1 Tblsp. baking powder
• 1/3 cup vegetable shortening (Crisco)

Mix together the flour, salt and baking powder.  Cut in the vegetable shortening.  Store in a covered container in the refrigerator until ready to use.

This is good for making individual servings of biscuits, pancakes … and dumplings.

Recipe for Walt’s Polish Stuffing

On a recent trip to Holmes County (Ohio) Amish Country, I found a panel for a Christmas wall hanging that I couldn’t resist because it reminded me of all the depression-green items I have in my kitchen.  The panel includes a Christmas countdown calendar, 24 cookie cutouts and complete instructions.  It was very easy to make with the fabric folding up and being quilted to form the pockets.  The rest of the quilting was some very simple outline stitching.  The 24 cookie cutouts are fused onto a felt backing and then trimmed.

All that needs to be added are backing, batting and binding.  I also added a label that included a scanned image of the scottie (my favorite of the 24 different cookie cutters).

The idea is to insert a cookie into each of the 24 pockets on the calendar….

…then beginning December 1, one cookie is removed each day and placed in the big green bowl at the top of the wall hanging.

The last cookie is moved on Christmas Eve – and it’s time for Santa Claus!

The piece measures 18-1/2×26-1/2″.  A rod sleeve can be sewn onto the back, but I prefer to use drapery hooks to display the wall hanging.

I googled Cookie Cutter Christmas and Wilmington Prints, and came up with several sources for buying the panel, including eBay.

Now, I’m waiting for the grandchildren and great-grandchildren to come to my house to bake Christmas cookies – and to see the new Cookie Cutter Calendar.

I always make the fruit pies I’ll serve on Thanksgiving well ahead of time.  When I was competing in county and state fairs, I found I could bake a fruit pie and freeze it.  Then the night before I needed it, I could take it out to thaw and the next morning crisp it in a 350 degree F oven for about 10 minutes with basically no change in the original pie.  I had to do it this way for the Ohio State Fair because of time restrictions plus a 2-hour drive and I continued to win ribbons.  I’ve used the technique since the early 1980s to get a jump on holiday baking.

This morning, I baked two apple pies which will go in the freezer after they have cooled, and I was remembering other Thanksgiving pies I have made through the years.  For the 20 years we lived in Blue Jay on the Ohio/Indiana border, I had the benefits of a front yard full of fruit trees.  In July, there was one old tree that produced a huge amount of tart cherries.  These snapshots from 1991 show my son and his family who were visiting from St. Louis and helping me by picking some cherries.

The little girl with the pail graduated from college last year and the baby is now a sophomore in college.  Time flies.

I froze a lot of cherries but to have the very best pie for Thanksgiving, I made one while the cherries were fresh off the tree – my husband’s favorite.  Here’s the recipe:

TART CHERRY PIE

• Pastry for 9″ double crust pie
• 4 cups fresh tart cherries, pitted
• 1 cup granulated sugar
• 3 Tblsp. quick tapioca
• 1/8 tsp. salt
• 1/2 tsp. almond extract
• 2 Tblsp. butter
• 1 Tblsp. milk

Preheat oven to 375 degrees F

In a large bowl, mix together the cherries, sugar, tapioca, salt, and almond extract.

Fit bottom crust in a 9″ pan, pour filling into crust and dot with butter.  Place top crust on pie, crimp edges and brush with milk.  Cut vents and place on a larger flat pan to catch spills.

Bake @ 375 degrees for approximately 45 minutes.

Cool pie completely on rack.  Serve to a hungry family or wrap and place in a two-gallon ziplock bag.  Place in the freezer until needed.  For best flavor, use within 6 months.

I only wish I had one of those fresh cherry pies in the freezer for this Thanksgiving and my husband here to enjoy it.

A good piecrust recipe

My favorite apple pie recipe