Wednesday, September 17, 2008

The simple things



So the house is destroyed, the girls are cranky and if I hear anymore crying I'm going to scream. But my cornbread came out very well. Eric's grandpa let me have the cast iron skillet since he had bought two for his daughter and she didn't want both. He picked them up at an auction. So I put it in my suitcase and it flew from Ohio to California. This is the first time I've used it. The bread was moist, the bottom nice and smooth and it came very easily out of the pan. I need to work on my recipe, but that's because my grandmother told me what she usually puts in hers and I've been playing around with it. She didn't even tell me a temperature or time! Thank goodness for the internet. For some reason my paper said shortening, so I put it in the batch for my friend to whom I took dinner. Apparently I need to cross that out. I made a batch without it and it came out a lot better. But I also didn't make hers in the cast iron because I didn't know how it would go. So sorry Sarah! I always look at that and try to remember if I'm supposed to put it in there. Now I know and hopefully I'll remember! I also always forget to use buttermilk instead of milk. I'll try to remember that.

But oh, the simple things in life. They're usually far better than the supposedly super-important or super-special. If indoor plumbing and air conditioning had been invented, I think it would have been nice to live a long time ago. To have what you do matter, a woman was allowed to be a woman without being told she should not nurse and she should work. Children were expected to do chores and people didn't look at you like you were the worst mother because your kids had work to do. Kids were politer because society hadn't embraced a "ME FIRST" attitude and passed it down the line. There was no road rage or traffic (we'll ignore the highway men-this is a list of good things back then). There was less junk in our lives so the house was easier to keep clean. There were also more people to help keep it that way because you could have more kids without worrying about over-population, college costs and cars being big enough. So here's to the old days. Maybe I'll try to convince Eric to move to the boonies and we can go back to pioneer times, with a few modifications, of course.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

I told you it was good! I ate it :) Thanks again for dinner!
Sarah

This Crazy Thing Called Motherhood said...

I often think that about how houses were so much easier to keep clean back 50 years ago because people didn't have nearly as much stuff modern families today seem to.