Meet Margo In Junker's Heaven

Hi Primmies -
I found an interesting site this evening while looking at rusty bed springs crafts. Look at what a gal named Margo came

up with: 
Click the link below to go to her page of DIY craft projects
using reclaimed vintage cast offs (junk!).
Rusty Bed Springs Votive Holders On Patio Planter 
Her site is also categorized by items on this site RoboMargo 
with little file folders to click by items like 'windows',
'shutters', 'frames','china','luggage'.
I also got a LINK HERE for Vintage Textile Soak for vintage quilts and linens. It's supposed to be safe for all antique
fabrics. I'm going to try it on my vintage quilts.
So there are hundreds of ideas from different sites that
contribute their trash to  treasure projects and some of
them are really cute and can be used in prim decorating.
A lot of them are more for shabby chic and garden settings
so I wouldn't use a lot of the ideas but the one above I
would definitely make. There're probably a few ideas in
there for everyone's taste.
These U.S. Mail bags make great prim porch pillows for
your wooden benches or wicker:

She just stuffed the bags with 2 standard bed pillows and she can sell the bags if she gets tired of them. I will use my old
feed sack/flour/sugar bags to make some pillows for my porch.
I'm stitching and I'll tell you, I'm having a very difficult time seeing the threads in the linen even with my magnifying glasses and the magnifier that you wear around your neck.
It hangs right over the needlework and I thought I would be good to go with that but I still need the 2.5+ glasses from CVS. I remember stitching the same count linen 20 years ago without ANY visual aids! Now look at me, I had no idea my eyes were so "old"! This has been harder than I thought
it would be so it's going to take a lot of time to finish these
projects. 
It was 18 degrees last night  and will only get up to 34 degrees today, I suppose this is the beginning of our cold weather. 
Stay warm Prim friends -
Susan

Don't Forget ...

Tonight at midnight is the deadline to enter the giveaway
from The Olde Country Cupboard. Sandy is giving away a

jar candle light and the second giveaway is for 2 candles

from the Black Crow Candle Company. Good Luck.
Susan

IT'S 1796: WHAT'S FOR DINNER?

So it's winter and what better time to have a nice chicken pot pie and some pumpkin pie for desert?
You can go to Stop n Shop for a Willow Tree chicken pie and
stop in the bakery for a nice pumpkin pie, or you can run
outside in the yard and catch you some chickens and go to the root cellar for your pompion, a 1796 spelling of pumpkin:

 

Now, six chickens,  with their inwards (what we get in those little paper bags inside the chickens) in a deep dish. 

I think I like the oven be poor method. If you are thinking that the writing doesn't make sense, remember that in 1796 they printed the letter 's' as an 'f' when it began a word and followed a vowel.

Here are the receipts by Amelia Simmons as written in 1796 "American Cookery":

 So using No. 8 Paste (pastry) recipe is 6 pounds of flour! With 1 1/2 lbs. of suet and 2 1/2 lbs of butter. I'd like to try this just for fun if butter, shortening and flour didn't cost so much. Our Crisco shortening today is probably their 

equivalent of suet in this recipe. And I think that the quantities seem large to us (No.2 for example) but remember that they most likely did the baking for the week when they got the beehive oven going in the fireplace. No. 1 recipe

and No. 5 recipe look like they might actually work as they are written. Remember that they didn't have thermometers so they knew the temp of the oven by how many seconds they could hold their hand over the heat. O.K., on to pumpkins:

Until this cookery book was published, the only other recipe for something close to pumpkin pie called for sliced apples and sliced pumpkin, uncooked and covered with sugar, layered in 2 crusts and baked like today's apple pies. This is the first recipe known to contain eggs, spices, milk & molasses made with pumpkin that was stewed and put through a strainer (our pureed can pumpkin) into the custard like pie that we know today. This recipe appears in Amelia's section of Puddings and not pies. The dough spur  is what we know as our pastry wheel of today.

Amelia Simmons was said to be an "American orphan". She

is credited with adapting Indian corn into the first printed American recipes using corn meal; our Indian pudding, Johny Cakes and "Indian Slapjacks". She also includes pot ash, or pearl- ash, the baking powder of her time, in her recipes for gingerbread.

  They separated potash by putting  wood ashes in big iron pots of water; when the water evaporated they had a white powder, "pot ash".  Potash was baked in a kiln to remove the impurities and a white powder was left from that,  which they called pearl ash. This was their "baking powder". Pearl ash was a commonly used ingredient by 18th century cooks but it was to appear in Amelia's cookbook as the first printed reference using this as a leavening ingredient in baking recipes.

The words "cookey" and cookies were in use at the time but 

their appearance in American Cookery is the first known cookbook where they are used in recipes. British cookbooks

had called cookies "little cakes". The Dutch word "koekje" is where the word "cooky" was derived from. Remember that colonial New York had many Dutch settlers, and it was the cookie that was offered on New Year's Day to their visitors.

Now I want to go into the kitchen and bake something sweet, but I have to snack on celery and carrot sticks instead!

(But you don't...)

'Nite, Primmies

 

I WAS BOWLED OVER

Hello, Primmies -
Well here I was just sitting around reading about samplers cuz I'm behind in doing a
follow up post and in walks Mr. Glen Oaks
with a little package for me. I wasn't
expecting anything so I couldn't figure out
what it was. TOTAL SURPRISE, it is from
Linda of Parker's Paradise. Do you remember her post from January 3rd when Linda 
shared her latest works, adorable hand- 
stitched pillows with the cute childlike writing and drawings. Linda backed them with mattress ticking fabric and some with red check fabric. WELL, THAT'S WHAT I
GOT, a stitched pillow from her. Mine has
the vine with little red berries stitched from
French knots and the alphabet in the middle, signed like a sampler by "Ann Z 1864".
How did she know one of my favorite times
in history is the Civil War period?? My pillow
is backed with a simple tiny pale blue and white striped fabric. I love it, Linda! 
This is a truly genuine act of kindness, thoughtfulness and love. 
You are amazing, Linda. I will always think of you when I look at my sweet pillow.
Hopefully gals, photos will follow. 
But I wanted to get this posted today . Go to
Linda's Jan.3rd post HERE to get an idea of
what my pillow looks like.
Back to my samplers, I'm still re-working the
wording and scanned photos.
Hugs,
Susan

OFF TO THE MARKET THIS MORNING?

Correction to book referenced below: it should

read a 19th century cookery book titled 

The Frugal Housewife by Susannah Carter

from the 1823 published edition. I apologize.

Good Morning, Primmies - 

For your A.M. enjoyment, here are some more snippets of a 19th century cookery book titled

Early American Cookery "The Good Housekeeper" by Sarah Josepha Hale. Note

the instructions she gives regarding how to

tell if meat is fresh when going to market. For

when we *sigh* and think we should have lived

in this quaint time compare this to going to

your local grocery store and picking up your

nicely chilled and shrink wrapped meat bundle:

Smell under the kidney, she was serious about that. Oh, my...

O.K., now for those of you who enjoy your glass of wine, beer or cocktail hang on to your prim drawers:

Isn't this a hoot? And I did the editing at 4:30

a.m. this morning, it was even funnier then.

I'm going to be doing some sampler research this morning and then we are off to the border of

MA and NY to bring Mr. Glen Oaks Jr., back

to his home. It's another 2 1/2 hours into upstate

NY for them to reach home from there. He's doing much better and has stopped coughing and isn't so very congested anymore. Papa Glen Oaks is also

on the mend and I so far have seemed to escape

with just the killer headache and some mild con-

gestion. I feel good today (knock on wood) and

need to make stops at the post office and the

vet before we take off. It's a nice ride when there isn't traffic and we meet at the outlets in Lee and

usually have a bite to eat together. Junior didn't want to go to bed last night and I'm sure it's because he knew it was his last night and he's going to miss being here. He's almost 14 so he can stay up kind of late on vacation. He transitions well when he has to get back to waking up early for school.

We had a really good visit with him and we'll miss him a lot.

I'll be back later tonight I think with that sampler

history and more of those priceless cookery snippets. 

Until later,

Susan