Forgot to ask about your root cellar. DH has always wanted a root cellar and a smoke house. Years ago, he read about having both dug into a steep hill. (Ithink it was in Mother Earth) Sometimes they make things seem simpler than they actually are. Sounds like more work than we would get out of it. We have an old L.L. Bean small smoker that works well enough for us. We smoke turkeys, partridge, pheasant and mackeral.
My grandparents had a portion of their cellar sectioned off, put sand in it and buried carrots, beets, turnips and etc. I used to love going down and fishing around in the sand to find veggies. They also had an ice house, with hugh chunks of ice packed tightly in sawdust. That was a popular place on a hot summer day armed with an ice pick. That ice came from the river and we chilled our drinks all summer unmindful of any germs. Guess we built up a resistance to germs back then. Grandfather harvested that ice with a team of horses and a sleigh. Cold, wet job.
‘Great Depression Cooking With Clara’ videos are a YouTube sensation
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One of the hottest video hits on YouTube features a saucy, dark-haired Italian who knows her way around a kitchen.
Is it a sign of the times that it’s neither Rachael Ray nor Giada De Laurentiis, but rather a 93-year-old great-grandmother named Clara Cannucciari who cooks in a kitchen that looks like it was last redecorated when Richard Nixon was president?
“Great Depression Cooking with Clara,” a series of 10 videos shot by her filmmaker grandson Christopher, shows her skillfully preparing the humble Italian-American fare she remembers from that other cash-crunched era—pasta with peas and potatoes, egg drop soup, pepper and egg sandwiches.
“It was cheap and it was nourishing,” Clara Cannucciari said Friday from her upstate New York home. “My mother used to make [the dishes] during the Depression. These are all simple things to make.”
The videos have become an Internet phenomenon, and Clara is suddenly fielding media requests from all over. She’s set to appear next week on the “ CBS Evening News with Katie Couric.”
Her grandson describes the project, begun in 2007, as “oral history with a twist.” Clara had a following from the start, he said, but added—with a laugh—that the worsening recession inspired him to step up production in November.
http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/nationworld/chi-talk-clarafeb28,0,6228523.story
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Here’s the list of her videos:
http://www.youtube.com/results?search_type=&search_query=Great+Depression+Cooking+with+Clara&aq=f
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God love her. I’m sure she’ll teach me a thing or two. Pass it on ............ ;)
>>Forgot to ask about your root cellar.<<
Well, I use the concrete base to the old silo (where I used to raise fish) It has 12” concrete walls and is about 4 feet deep. I made 2 lids made of 4X8 sheets of plywood with 2” of styrofoam insulation board in between. It has a sand floor, and I built a shelf about half way up. I put baskets with the produce packed with straw. Works great. If I had to go from scratch, I would probably have questioned the cost/benefit of it... Just used what I already had...
>>>We have an old L.L. Bean small smoker that works well enough for us.<<<
There used to be an old smokehouse here many years ago out back. I can barely remember it, but I remember that it was pretty large about 8X10 feet - and we used to smoke 3-4 hogs at a time - Don’t remember what ever happened to it though. I do remember the smoked bacon, hams, shoulders though...
>>>They also had an ice house, with hugh chunks of ice packed tightly in sawdust.<<<
Believe it or not, it used to get cold enough here for ice houses too - we had one back by the pond (about 80 acre mill pond) they used to start at the shore and hand saw the ice, floating the blocks back to shore and then they used wheelbarrows to move it about 50’ to the ice house which was in ground. Man, I haven’t seen ice tongs in many a year... It is amazing how long it lasts when packed in the sawdust, even this far south.
Now, we seldom see more than a couple of inches of ice.
I used to love it when we used that ice and chipped it up with an ice pick - for homemade ice cream. I preferred chipping the ice to cranking... Strawberry, and Peach were two favorites in the summer. The whole family would get together back by the pond under the oak trees where we had picnic tables - Sunday afternoons maybe twice a month during the summers. Everyone made their own specialty and picnics were a snap... And lots of good eating... Aunt Nellie’s lemon butter, Grandma’s rolls, Mom fried chicken, Aunt Pat made potato salad - pretty soon all was ready - made for lots stronger families and all.
That is also the way we did most of our canning... We would do 2,500-3000 ears of corn on a Saturday with everybody pitching in... Peas, Limas were all done from the viners which have been common around here for years. First there were the stationary viners then the mobile ones that pick and shell right in the field. We also did peaches and strawberries like that and after a day of preserving, we seemed to top it off with some homemade ice cream and one of Grandma’s Coconut cake and Mom’s Devils Food cakes...(my favorite)
Speaking of canning, do you or anyone else know of a source for #2 or #2 1/2 tin cans in cases..... I can only find them in full pallet bulk or in trailer loads.
I have the can sealer and dies that I used to crank when we were canning in them but now can’t find the cans.