You Should See Me Eat

“We sailed away from the U.S.A., Friday at noon and it’s a thrill I’ll never forget. Band playing, flags waving, streamers flying - gosh it was wonderful. Had quite a crowd down to see us off. We are certainly enjoying this. Gee, Mom, you should see me eat and sleep. We eat about six times a day. They wake us up at 7 with a glass of orange juice. At 8 we eat breakfast and even breakfast has six courses. At 10 o’clock they serve boullion and crackers on deck - wherever you happen to be - and at noon we have lunch. At 3 they serve tea - and what a tea - all those pretty gooey cakes, and you know my weakness for them. At 6:30 we have dinner and then at 9:30 after our movies or bridge game we eat again - lemonade and sandwiches. I never ate so many different things in my life. Eat a shrimp omelet for breakfast after grapefruit and bran and then top it off with buckwheat cakes and coffee. And to eat soup, fish, meat, potatoes, and vegetable salad and dessert for LUNCH. Each meal has about eight courses and about four choices to each course - and you may have as many choices of each course as you wish - comes in hand for desserts - that’s what I like best - to eat about 3 desserts instead of one.” - Annette, writing to her mother in March 1940

One of my favorite parts about this project has been ‘getting to know’ family members from my past. Even more exciting is reuniting with my living family members! Through this process, I’ve been able to talk to my Aunt Jackie, who is married to Annette’s youngest brother Don. I remember Aunt Jackie and Uncle Don visiting us when we were children. It has been such a joy to reconnect with her. She has so many stories about Annette and that side of the family. Which leads me to this entry.

Aunt Jackie sent me a book of letters sent from Annette and Clary, and in all my years of reading Annette’s diaries and letters, I had never seen these! Before Annette left for China, she worked for a publisher, and he offered to publish the letters they sent home while they made their way to China. This slim book contains their letters from February 1940 - September 1940, detailing their journey from St. Louis, MO to Enshih, China. The letters start off in Chicago, their first stop, and continue on to San Francisco, where they boarded a ship to carry them across the Pacific.

Reading her stories about the journey across the globe has been amazing. It fills in some gaps, and confirms some family legends about their big adventure. I just love this entry describing her ship, the Asama Maru.

Annette and Clary set sail on the Asama Maru on March 15, 1940. It was the fastest ship of its time, making the voyage from California to Japan in 15 days. A few months before, that same ship gained notoriety by attempting to smuggle German crew members into Japan - check out the ‘Asama Maru Incident.’

After a few days of sea sickness, Annette really got into the swing of life on the boat. I love her descriptions of all the meals! Her preference for sweets is, once again, quite evident. While on board, they played deck golf, shot clay pigeons, and took relaxing salt-water baths. One of my favorite lines in the entry was this - “here on the ocean, where the sea and the sky meet, you somehow seem so close to heaven - and it was so beautiful - I’ll never forget it.”

She was on her way to a brand new world, with her brand new husband, on a big fancy boat for 15 days straight. Can you imagine?? I can’t wait to explore these letters a bit more. Thanks, Aunt Jackie, for brand new insights into our family’s past!

Clean + Straighten

Mending - baby dress, Bug's overalls, darn hose

Wash blanket - sweaters

Clean rooms - windows, rugs, curtains, wash wicker chairs, pillows, bed sp.

Porches

Plan menus

Guest room - flowers, peanuts, air closet, hangers, etc

Middle room - clean + straighten

Make plenty cookies, peanuts, puffed rice candy ahead of time

Clary's study

- Annette, 1941-1944?

Most people get the Spring Cleaning bug in March/April.  No matter how hard I try, I can never seem to catch that bug.  Between playing gigs and getting students ready for juries and recitals, I am just barely keeping my head above water during early Spring.  For me, it's all about Summer Cleaning.  Students are on their summer break, and that means I finally have some time during the day to get the house in order.  I know, I know, it is technically still Spring, but with temperatures in the 90s and what feels like 400% humidity, I'm going ahead and calling it Summer.  Now, instead of teaching schedules, my mind is full of closet organization techniques and recipes for homemade cleaning products.

It's easy to get overwhelmed with house projects.  Enter Lists!!  Annette often made lists in the back of her diary, but she never wrote the date.  I can only guess what event she was preparing here.  It seems like company was coming, with the Guest Room and Middle Room both making the cut.  Of course, she had baking on the list as well - plenty of cookies!  I would be one happy house guest if my visit involved fresh flowers and puffed rice candy!  Of course, there was always sewing to be done as well.  In China, they did not have the luxury of getting new clothes when the old ones wore out.  Every item of clothing had to last, and even when it was in tatters, Annette turned it into something new - like dolls or blankets for the kids.  It was a waste-not way of living.

I feel like more and more people are turning towards self-sustainability.  One of my friends has a garden that produces more green beans than they can handle.  Another is re-working old t-shirts into a quilt.  I have spent a few evenings darning socks, myself.  Just like Annette, we can all make the most of the resources we have.  Sometimes, all we need to get started is a list.  

Recreating "The Queen's" Dinner

I had such a blast with this project!  For those of you just joining us, I recreated one of Frances' meals from 1892 (original post below).  There were several components to this menu, so I've compiled the photos into collages.  Hope you are hungry!

Let's start with the butter.  Maybe Frances had store-bought butter, but I figured I would make my own, just in case.  It is delicious, and I kind of want to make it all the time.  

Next up - biscuits.  My go-to biscuit recipe is from Southern Living, and uses grated frozen butter.  I used store-bought butter for this one, but did use the buttermilk from my homemade butter.  White Lily Flour proved to be a huge success.  The biscuits were light, flaky, and delicious!

I really wasn't sure what to do with Irish potatoes.  I'm guessing that distinction means that they were hard to come by.  The Irish Potato Famine was from 1845-49, so maybe this was still pretty special.  I scrubbed the potatoes, peeled and chopped them, then popped them in a pot and boiled them with salt.

Now the star - fried pork!  I found some beautiful bone-in pork chops and went to town!  Dredged them in a mix of flour, salt, pepper, and cayenne pepper.  Somehow, I can't seem to make anything that DOESN'T include cayenne pepper.  I heated up some vegetable oil and butter in a cast iron skillet, and fried the chops, 4 minutes on each side.  A cool side note - I inherited this cast iron skillet from my Grandmother - also named Frances, after her Grandmother (whose diary we are reading).  Now, I'm not what side of the family passed this skillet to her, but wouldn't it be amazing if this was the same skillet that Frances used in the 1890s??  I think so!!

The finished plate!  I settled on whole milk for the 'sweet milk,' so I poured a tall glass and sat down to a really tasty meal!  I worried that the potatoes would be bland, but they were actually quite good.  The pork was crispy, and the warm biscuits with butter were pure happiness.

As we ate dinner, my fiancé commented that this meal is pretty close to meals we have had here in Atlanta.  There is a huge 'Southern American' trend happening in restaurants right now, and this meal stacks up with the best of them.  We started talking about the MANY changes in the world since the 1890s, and yet, we can still enjoy the same food.  But there is something bigger, too.

Frances didn't just write what she had for dinner - she wrote about enjoying the meal with her family.  Dinner together can be the quiet moment of the day where you get to sit down and talk to the people you love.  Not everyone has the luxury of a made-from-scratch meal every night, but when we do, it is usually a special occasion.  It's not just about the food - it's about the people.