family Archives - Cheryl Brunette

2009-12-122017-05-19

White bread

I never did finish my stories about white bread . . .

Already you know that I buy it only to make dressing at Thanksgiving. Sometimes I make dressing at other times of the year if my nephew (who is in the Navy and not always here for holidays) is in town, just because he likes it a LOT. I ask for turkey backs and necks at my local grocery (they don’t often have them) and freeze them so that I have them on hand for a dressing emergency. Only occasionally can I find giblets, and I freeze them as well to add to the mix.

But I have other experiences with white bread.

White Bread Story #1

The first one involves my Grandma. She went through a stage about 10 years before she died that can only be described as “vivid.” This was in the late 60s and early 70s and hot pink, lime green and tangerine orange were . . . well . . . available. Grandma started crocheting afghans that were loud enough to keep you awake at night. It turned out it was her cataracts. As things grew dim through her eyes she sought out the colors she could see. She had created artistic things all her life. . . the queen of craftdom . . . and she liked color. But now she could see only the neon varieties which I’m guessing looked like tasteful pastels to her.

During this period she discovered a new craft . . . White Bread Clay. She mixed half and half water and Elmer’s Glue and kneaded it with white bread (crusts removed) and some food coloring . . . that would be my mother’s professional cake-decorator colors that knocked your socks off if you weren’t careful.

Grandma patiently kneaded the mixture into a fine sculpting medium. It was the precurser of Sculpey it was so smooth . . . and she sculpted flowers. Small, delicate, one-petal-at-a-time, perfectly formed roses and tulips and zinnias . . . that looked like they came from Mars because surely the flowers are brighter there.

Once she had her cataract operation her creations settled back into colors that were more “acceptable.” I missed her color flamboyance, but her gifts started to match my decor better.

White Bread Story #2

When my son was about 4 years old, new people bought the property next door and they had 2 children only slightly older than he. This was a huge boon . . . to have kids “next door” to play with at any time.

One day he came running home, excited to no end . . . “Momma!!!! They have the best sandwiches there!!! You can squoosh’em down to real skinny. Just push on’em and they get flat.” Beloved Son had met white bread in its native form for the first time.

[Side note: Beloved Son also met Kool-aid at this house. This family had plenty of money to buy real food and mom was home all the time. They only lived next to us 4 or 5 years and both children broke bones while they were there from small falls. Beloved son fell out of trees and tumbled 360º off his moving ATV (All-Terrain-Vehicle, his father’s idea when he was 10) and had bruises only. Good nutrition makes a difference,]

White Bread Story #3

From 1990 until 1998, every winter but one, we went to Baja California and other southern places for 2 to 4 months in the winter. We had a 20-foot 1970-something Minnie Winnie motor home. It had high clearance and took us to remote outposts. This was when Cabo San Lucas was a sleepy fishing village . . . no luxury hotels, free camping on the beach. Large (6″5″) husband, large dog (German/Australian Shepherd mix), me and Beloved Son. We had some adventures, I tell you, with hurricanes and washed out roads . . . but that’s a story for another day.

Remember I said that Ma’s Thanksgiving dressing takes about 1 and a half loaves of bread. I usually cheat and use one loaf of white bread and make up the rest with the good stuff . . . the real staff of life . . . but one of those years, along about 1993 or 4 I bought 2 loaves of white bread for Thanksgiving dressing. I used the requisite one-and-a-half-loaves and that left one-half loaf that I put on top of the refrigerator and forgot.

We took off shortly after Thanksgiving that year and returned 4 months later. The bread was still on top of the refrigerator. Now . . . granted . . . it was winter and cold in the house while we were gone. But it didn’t freeze. And the sun came in to warm things up on some days . . .

I saw the bread and said, “Geeze! I forgot and left this bread out.” (I hate to waste anything.)

It was in its original plastic bag packaging. I opened it up and called Beloved Son to witness what I had found . . . (Home-schooling Mom Syndrome. Everything is a teachable event.)

“Honey . . . look at this. This bread has been sitting here for 4 months and it has no mold. Mold is one of the lowest of life forms. If this stuff cannot support mold, it will not support your body.”

Except for dressing, Beloved Son does not eat White Bread. Neither do I.

2009-12-102017-05-19

Wonder Bread and Ma’s Thanksgiving dressing

This week I want to talk about my experiences with store-bought white bread. First of all, we didn’t eat it in our house when I was growing up in the 1950s. My dad said that if you ate it it would make a dough ball in your stomach and gum up your whole system. It might even cause you to explode. We ate my Mom’s home-baked white bread and the local bakery’s pumpernickel and rye swirl.

My dad died in 1959 and that changed our diets considerably. We had much less money and Ma got to make what she darn well pleased and that included more gluten-rich Austro-Hungarian fare like chicken and dumplings . . . thus began the really good Thanksgiving dressing. Actually, I think this was always her dressing, even when Dad was alive but I only remember it as a pre-teen when I started to help her make it.

Ma’s Thanksgiving Dressing

The prelude to the holiday season in my house is the smell of white bread. It’s the only time of the year that I buy the stuff because it’s my job to make Ma’s dressing for Thanksgiving. If I don’t use the real (and, paradoxically, non-real) item the family will know and I will have failed my one puny job . . . so I do it.

I start a couple of days before the event by drying out the bread.

Buy a loaf or two of white bread (it takes about 1.5 loaves, but I cheat by using one loaf and supplementing with real bread.)
Dry out the bread. As in, get out as much moisture as you can without toasting or burning it. This is easy for me because I have a wood stove and I put the pieces on racks on the wood stove until they’re crispy but still white.

and here are my cheater breads . . . a nicely sliced baguette

and one of my tokens to health in this recipe . . . a whole grain bread full of various seeds.

As the bread dries, crumple it into a BIG bowl and when it’s all there and the big day has arrived, get out the other ingredients: pork sausage, celery and two MAMMOTH onions (they were a over pound each).

Oh . . . I forgot to tell you. A couple of days before I made the dressing I cooked up a couple of turkey backs with some water, a little salt, a small onion, quartered, and some big celery chunks. I picked off the meat, discarded the bones and skin and “defatted” the broth by putting it in the fridge and lifting off the fat that floats to the top and becomes solid with the cold (there wasn’t much). I didn’t photograph this process. It wasn’t until the next day that I decided I might blog about it. By that time the process was done. Sorry. But here are the results:

The broth, of course, is on the left. You can see big chunks of onion and celery in it. The little bits of turkey meat are on the right. My mom always used to say, “The meat’s sweeter close to the bone.” I think what she meant was that it was more flavorful, and that has been my experience.

But . . . to the process . . . and there is both nostalgia and practicality involved in this. My almost newest nephew is miles from me he will deep fry the turkey and I’m making the dressing . . . ergo WE DO NOT STUFF THE TURKEY. It’s perfectly fine if you stuff your turkey but, contrary to popular belief, you don’t have to have a turkey to make stuffing. As in, you can make the dressing off site of the main event.

Starting over again at #1) get out The Dressing Pot . . .

It’s aluminum. It’s the only aluminum pot I own and the only time I use it is to make dressing at Thanksgiving. It was Ma’s and she used it to make dressing . . . what can I say? It’s big, can go into the oven, and I’m a sap for tradition.

2) Put the pot on the stove, turn on the heat (mediumish) and add the pork sausage to the pot. Break it up into small pieces and stir it a lot. (I used my wood stove. It was hot-enough-to-cook-it, whatever temperature that was.)

After it’s cooked through it looks like this:

3) Add those 2 pounds or so of yellow onions that you’ve chopped up. I leave the pieces pretty big.

and stir them around, cooking them until they’re softened. They look a little translucent.

Next, I added the small turkey bits.

I let those warm up while I chopped some celery . . .

which I then added to the pot. I don’t cook it much at this point, just stir it well to distribute the ingredients evenly and then I remove the pot from the heat source.

4) Next, I added the dried bread, mixed it up with the the other stuff, and poured the warm (not hot) broth over the whole shebang.

You can see the very cooked onion and celery that were in the broth. They’re soft and will disappear when you do the next step which is to mix it by hand . . . as in, you simply must put your hand in there and start kneading it together. Your broth can’t be too hot or else you’ll burn yourself.

Now . . . every year, at this point in the process, I can hear Ma in my head . . . “You should do this the day before so that all the bread has a chance to absorb the moisture,” she says. And, of course, she’s right. But unlike her, I’m not always on top of the food-scheduling thing, and for the most part, my dressing is pretty good.

How much broth to add? Well, you want your dressing to be kind of gooey. It’s what Ma called “wet dressing.” It sticks together but it doesn’t have excess liquid. Therefore, I don’t add all the turkey broth at once. I add it as the bread absorbs it. It’s usually about a quart total. If you didn’t want to make your own broth you could add a quart of chicken broth. This is a good brand I get at Costco:

But really . . . you need those little turkey bits to make it taste like turkey dressing. If you want the real deal you need to boil up some backs or necks and pick off the meat.

Also . . . salt . . . I taste the dressing as I’m squishing it together and add salt to my taste if it needs it. The breads have salt in them and I can’t be sure how much. I tend to “under salt” as I cook. People can always add what they want at the table.

Now . . . a true confession . . . I love to eat the dressing at this stage. I loved it as a kid. My mom would shudder and say, “You’re eating RAW dressing!!” but she let me do it. It’s not really raw at this point, except for the celery.

However . . . before I serve it to the family I bake it at 350º for about 1½ hours. Cover it for the first hour and bake it uncovered for the last half hour. When it’s done it looks like this . . .

For the record? Most of my family loves the dressing more than the turkey. Me too.

2009-09-162017-05-19

Grandma’s chicken and dumplings

I’m posting this to fill a request from someone who read The Power of Food #2 post. . . and because Grandma would be tickled by the thought of me passing it on to the world . . .

Chicken and Dumplings . . . Fegyvernek Style

For the “stew” part:
one chicken, cut up into pieces
a medium onion, yellow or other sharp variety, chopped
a little bacon fat or lard (I use an olive oil/butter mix nowadays)
parsley, fresh or dried (a couple of tablespoons if dried, twice that if fresh)
paprika (sweet, not hot, Hungarian paprika)
salt and pepper
water

For the dumplings (a large batch. You can halve this recipe.)
4 eggs
about 1½ cups of water
½ teaspoon salt
3 to 3½ cups flour

Lightly brown the onion in the fat you’ve chosen in a large pot. Then add the paprika and stir for a minute or so. Add the parsley, chicken pieces, salt and pepper and enough water to barely cover the chicken. Cover and simmer until done, about ½ to 1 hour depending on the size of your chicken pieces. Remove the chicken from the pot and put it in a bowl. Cover to keep it warm.

Add more water to the pot (an inch or so, maybe two or three if you make the whole recipe for dumplings), put the cover on and bring it to a boil as you prepare the dumplings.

Beat the eggs and salt with a fork in a plastic bowl. (You can use any bowl but it’s good if it’s lightweight because you’re going to hold it over the boiling broth as you drop the dumplings into the pot.) Add about 1½ cups water to the eggs mixture and beat again. Add the flour and beat until it has a “sticky” consistency. This is wetter than regular bread dough.

Uncover your pot of boiling broth and hold the bowl of dumpling dough just over it. Tilt it toward the pot. Dip a teaspoon into the hot broth, then go up to the bowl and scoop about ½ teaspoon full of dough and drop it into the broth. Repeat, dipping the spoon into the broth and scooping a little dough into it until all the dough is gone. Move the bowl around so that you drop the dumplings more or less evenly over the whole pot. DO NOT STIR THE DUMPLINGS YET!

Cover the pot and let it boil about 7 to 10 minutes. NOW YOU CAN STIR THE DUMPLINGS. Cook them for another 5 to 10 minutes, add the chicken back into the pot and reheat it for a few minutes. You’re ready to serve. (I like to sprinkle on a little fresh parsley at the end, but Grandma didn’t do that.)

Family food feud

When my dad was alive (he died in 1959) we didn’t eat these at my house. He called this style of dumplings “bullets” and wasn’t having any of them. As a French-Canadian, he knew dumplings as fluffy clouds that floated over beef stew. But I ate them every time I stayed at Grandma and Grandpa’s and that was often. My mother deferred to Dad’s tastes and always made him his fluffy, with-baking-powder, favorites, and always over beef, not chicken, stew.

I’m not sure why but I never asked Ma how to make fluffy dumplings. But I learned, as a very young girl, how to make bullets because I loved them. In that wonderful alchemy of genetic stew that makes a baby, I ended up with straight blonde hair and blue eyes. My dad had wavy brunette hair and hazel eyes. I adored him . . . but I’ve always loved the bullet dumplings best . . . and I never halve the recipe.