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Sep
10

Daily Farmhouse Journal

Over the years, I’ve gotten the most touching letters, and later, emails, from readers who would tell me all sorts of things (some very odd!), but mostly about what my books meant to them. The widow who read romance novels to remember what it felt like to fall in love. The daughter who read them to get through long hours at a parent’s hospital bed. The mother who just needed that break between diapers and dinner. The ex-con who had a great idea for a book he’d sell me if I’d write it, a story about an ex-con who wins the lottery and marries a farmgirl from Kansas with big- Never mind that last one. That was one of the odd ones.

I’ve always believed that romance novels are maligned because some people who don’t read them don’t understand why other people do and it certainly has nothing to do with the love scenes. It’s because the books touch them, inspire memories and emotions-wistfulness, sentiment, joy, hope-and in many ways also validate their core values. And then there is the question non-romance readers often ask-why read a story when you know how it ends before you even begin? They are missing the point, of course. It’s not about the ending. It’s about the journey.

I receive emails quite often from readers of this website, and sometimes people express why they read it. They lived on a farm sometime in the past and enjoy remembering what it was like. They want to live on a farm sometime in the future. Or they are even living on a farm now and can relate to my experiences. Whatever the case, my posts inspire memories and emotions, sometimes sadness for what is past, or hope for what they anticipate in the future. Or they just read it for a laugh with their coffee in the morning. I got an email from a young girl recently (I’m very aware that children look at my website, which is why I don’t finish sentences like that one in the above paragraph about the ex-con) who said she read my blog while she was abroad for the summer, knowing her mother was reading it back at home, and it made her feel closer to her family thinking that they were reading the same thing. And an email from a reader who printed out my blog posts and showed them to her ailing family member at the hospital. And, well, do you notice a pattern? Many of the reasons people read my books are similar to the reasons people read my blog.

And I would be totally remiss if I were to pretend as if I either write romance novels or this blog to make you all feel good. I do it to make me feel good. It makes me feel good to make other people feel good. (See, it just sounds like it’s about you-it’s really about me!) I’ve had a number of different jobs in my life but I’ve only been obsessed with two-writing books and writing this blog. Obsessed to the point that it doesn’t seem to stop me if I don’t make much money doing either one, and the blog in particular. I receive emails occasionally asking me to write sponsored posts, the most interesting of which was a recent offer of cheese. Not just any cheese, no! Imported French cheese! Seriously. They wanted to give me cheese-if I would blog about their fabulous cheese and include a link to their website in the post. I can’t even tell you how tempting that was and I’m not being sarcastic! I love cheese!

And I will admit that some days I struggle to justify the amount of time I spend on this website, time that I could or even should be spending on something that would produce, like, MONEY, but one thing I will never do is write a sponsored post. Even for cheese. Income is a result, an ending if you will, that one hopes to achieve from work. (In my case, writing, whether books or this blog.) But as with my books, it’s not about the ending. It’s about the journey.

I do host advertising on my site in a desperate attempt to pay my electric bill, but I will never write a post in which I try to sell you cheese. (The advertising at the top of the far right sidebar is flat rate advertising through BlogAds and the other advertising is affiliate-based-I have no pay-per-click or pay-per-page-impression advertising at this time, which is a bummer when I get a stumble that brings 20,000 page impressions in the last two days, but such is my luck! I believe in being upfront about advertising. I’m not one of those million-dollar bloggers. I’m one of those hundred-dollar bloggers.)

It is a year ago now since I wrote The Slanted Little House post. Behind the scenes-I actually wrote that piece for a West Virginia website that had indicated interest in having contributions. I worked on it for a long time and contacted the person I had been speaking with, but never heard back from him. I considered putting the piece away forever, not sure if it was even appropriate for the intended website. But I had put my heart into it, so I decided to post it on my own blog. The day I posted it changed my site forever. It marked the end of my blog as a writer’s blog and inspired a need I hadn’t even known I had-to create a site that was about more than me. I realized that I wanted to talk about my life in the country, and that, surprisingly, other people wanted to read it, and that there was a purpose to things that had happened in my life that I had barely begun to grasp, that there was a way I could serve people with my website that I had never imagined.

And so, here I am, cheeseless and with a very big unpaid electric bill (I knew it was a bad idea for them to finally come read the meter!!! I shall explain to them that we are on a journey), but every day filled up by your kind, funny, touching comments. Thank you!!

Note: This is not what you think.

I was not….

….trying….

….to make….

….Clover….

….wear….

….a bonnet!

I would totally never do that. Cuz she’d try to eat it.

Okay, honestly, I did try to get her to wear a bonnet. She really did like it, though.

Even if you can’t tell.

P.S. This post was sponsored by Clover.

P.P.S. She didn’t actually pay me any money.

P.P.P.S. She did promise me some cheese.

P.P.P.P.S. She said I had to make it myself, though.

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Posted by Suzanne McMinn @ 1:05 am | Permalink

Sep
9

Breads, The Farmhouse Table

Mama’s little baby loves short’nin’, short’nin’, Mama’s little baby loves short’nin’ bread.

My daughter took a fixation with this song a while back. You can’t get it out of your head now, either, hunh? Sorry…..

What is short’nin’ bread? She wanted to know. So we researched it and discovered there is really not a lot of clear documentation, at least not that anyone agrees on, but there are a lot of theories that you can find proposed around the internet. (Which is a sometimes good, sometimes iffy, source of information.) What can be ruled out, with most accord, is any relation to the Scottish shortening bread, or shortbread. On the family tree of world recipes, shortbread is on a different branch, despite the similarity of the monikers. The “short’nin’ bread” song, also with its own plethora of variations and unknown original authorship, is an old plantation song glorifying a dish that was popular in the pre- and immediate post-Civil War era in the slave (and subsequently former slave) population, and the most common concurrence is that it was a simple fried cornmeal-based treat.

Put on the skillet. Put on the lid. Mama’s gonna make a little short’nin’ bread. That ain’t all she’s gonna do. Mama’s gonna make a little coffee, too.

Sifting through the possibilities and historical perspective, I put together what I believe to be a suitably authentic reproduction recipe that marries both the ingredients that would have been available and the most basic understanding of the recipe’s concept-all with the notion of honoring the song and the population that created both the lyrics and the dish.

Three little babies lying in bed. Two was sick and the other ‘most dead. Sent for the doctor and the doctor said, “Give those babies some short’nin’ bread.”

Notice how simple the ingredients are-cornmeal, flour, salt, egg, baking powder, shortening, molasses, sugar, and water. Slaves would have used the least expensive grain available to them, which would most often be cornmeal, with the addition of some more refined flour in a smaller quantity if they had it. They either used baking soda or baking powder, but may have even made it at times without any leavening agent at all if it wasn’t available, sort of like a fried flatbread. The short’nin’ would have been lard, which they probably just called pig fat. They would have most ready access to some type of unrefined cane, such as molasses, for sweetener, but sugar isn’t entirely out of the question as an ingredient in times and places where it was available. Any sweetener at all is a debatable issue in this recipe as some quarters believe it to be a “poor man’s” cornbread, but the sense of the song tells another story-this was a treat. We’re thinking it was sweet! That, at least, is my theory, based on the song and its era and circumstances, and so is the direction I took when developing this recipe. Notice what the song is telling us. Children love it! SUGAR!! (Froot Loops, anyone?) It makes a man fall in love with a woman who knows how to make it. It’s worth going to jail over!

Slipped in the kitchen, slipped up the lid, slipped my pockets full of short’nin’ bread. Stole the skillet, stole the lid, stole the girl makin’ short’nin’ bread.

How to make Short’nin’ Bread:

1 cup cornmeal
1/2 cup flour
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 egg
2 tablespoons shortening (or go for it, use lard)
1 teaspoon baking powder
1/2 cup molasses
3/4 cup boiling water
1/4 cup refined white sugar, reserved*

Set water on to boil in a pot while you combine the rest of the ingredients except for the reserved sugar and start your oil heating in a skillet. (Use approximately one-half inch oil and set to medium heat. I used vegetable oil.) Add the boiling water. You want a consistency similar to pancake batter, so add a bit more (or less) water if needed for your mixture. (The point of the boiling water is to melt the shortening in the batter. You might want to go ahead and boil a full cup so you have extra if needed to get your batter to the right consistency. Three-fourths cup boiling water works reliably for me.) Test a small dab in the skillet to make sure you’ve got it hot enough to cook quickly, but not so quickly it will burn before it cooks through or before you can turn it. Adjust your heat as necessary and taste-test the the fried dab. Sweeten to taste-add the 1/4 cup sugar if it’s not sweet enough for you. Or, add half the 1/4 cup sugar and fry another dab to test; add more sugar (or molasses if you prefer to avoid refined sugar) until you’re satisfied.

Fry pancake-size rounds of batter, a few minutes on each side, to a golden brown. Drain on a plate on a paper towel.

Caught me with the skillet, caught me with the lid, caught me with the girl makin’ short’nin’ bread. Paid six dollars for the skillet, six dollars for the lid, stayed in jail six months eatin’ short’nin’ bread.

Serve immediately, warm, as a breakfast treat with a sprinkling of powdered sugar (similar to how you would serve funnel cake-the powdered sugar is entirely historically inaccurate and just for fun) and even additional syrup and fruit etc (as with pancakes). Or, serve as an easy dessert in a bowl with vanilla ice cream (again, not authentic, just a new way to serve an old-time taste). For the most authenticity, serve with no topping at all as a hand-held treat. It’s simply, fabulously delicious and surprisingly tender and almost cake-like (considering the lack of milk, the absence of which speaks to the frugality of the recipe). No wonder they made up songs about it! Though the whole going-to-jail thing over it might be overdone……..