'Mom's Special Home Economics Classes'

Story ID:	1050
Written by:	Bonnie Jarvis-Lowe
Organization:	Retired RN/Freelance Writer and Photographer
Story type:	Family Memories
Location:	Clarenville Newfoundland and Labrador Canada
Year:	1957
Person:	Mother

‘MOM’S SPECIAL HOME ECONOMICS CLASSES'

Growing up in a family of five siblings, and living in small communities around Newfoundland gave me opportunities, probably because I was the oldest of the group of rascals that we were, to experiment with all sorts of cooking and baking. Mother never minded the mess, and she taught me the basics often called ‘THE METHOD’ in a recipe. After that I was on my own and Mother had many a terrible mess to clean up after some of my culinary exploits.

Many years later, while living away from Newfoundland, a friend was visiting while I was baking muffins.

There happened to be six muffin spaces in the muffin pan and I was finishing up, so I only had enough mix for four muffins. I just filled the empty muffins spaces with water, to keep the pan from burning.

My friend watched all of this and finally asked "Where did you learn that water trick? I always get burnt muffin pans, you must have gotten that from Home Economics."
She received a strange look from me, and then I broke into uncontrollable laughter!

"No, my dear, there was no Home Economics where I went to school" I managed to tell her as she looked at me with a bewildered look, "My home economics was my mother’s kitchen. I do the things she taught me, and I passed it down to my other siblings over the course of ten years or so before I left home."

"I don’t believe that for a minute," she went on to say. But I finally convinced her by telling stories of making fudge, cookies, loaves, taffy candy, and even birthday cakes, all with my mother as my guide. Although finding it somewhat hard to believe, she learned that in a one room school house, especially long ago in the 1950s, home economics was not on the list of courses.

I, of course, had to tell her of the time I made the fudge too hard and had it on a foil or plastic plate, and took the knife to cut it into squares and, to my dismay, the knife went through the fudge, through the plate, and into my hand, with the sharp end sticking out of the back of my hand.

Impaled on a plate of fudge! Now that caused quite a stir around our house, but it did not stop my baking all sorts of new and different things. Any new scars added to the story telling around the dinner table later.

I visited my mother and father’s house recently, and of course the big thick cookbook is still there in Mom’s kitchen. Taking the book from it’s resting place I sat and browsed through it. It is a good cookbook, and every recipe I ever used can be readily noted, as those pages are messy, covered in stains, and quite used looking. Yes, I learned from my mother, and this wonderful cookbook.

Page after page, stain after stain, the memories came streaking through my mind. I thought of all the messes I must have made and yet I don’t recall hearing a mean word. All my father would have to say was "Now, Bonnie my dear, why don’t you make your dear dad a treat?"

And out would come the book, and all the ingredients for some special cake or cookie that he enjoyed the most. I think I made enough Marshmallow squares and Macaroons to fill a swimming pool.

Hence the story my family holds over my head about the "Blue Cookies." Saying I should have published the recipe, and how in heaven’s name did I think people would eat ‘Blue Cookies’?
Dad did, and it was forty years ago, so get over it please, is my usual way to handle that bit of teasing. How I managed the blue is more than I can say, but my siblings cannot pass up the opportunity to comment on those darn blue cookies of mine.

Over the years, I conquered the basics of stuffing a turkey, preparing Jiggs Dinner, making cheesecakes, loaves, muffins, fish dishes such as ‘Cod au Gratin’, and finally became a half decent cook.

But I could never catch up to Mom. She would make biscuits, and I would ask what page they were on in the ‘the book’?

Mom would say "Oh, they’re not in the book, they’re in my head."

So I would get her to tell me and I would write it down, and some of those childhood notes are still in that cookbook, Mom has kept them all those years. I am 57, and started in the kitchen at the age of eight or nine so that’s a heck of a lot of tested recipes, and a darn good mess to go with each one I tackled.

Still she never complained.

Years and years ago she told me that I should never use a metal spoon on a metal pot, because it would scrape the metal off the pan or pot, and she would give me the proper wooden spoon.

Then there was the trick of not reversing anything you are stirring in a bowl to make a cake, keep stirring the same way she told me because your cake will be fluffier if air is stirred into it, reversing the stirring action would cause air loss. Oh, yes ,lots of things to learn in Mother’s Home Economic Class!
However no matter how hard she tried, I could not conquer pies. And to this day I have not achieved the ability to make pies. Nothing she told me helped nothing I read helped, but I was determined that someday I would find the trick to making good pastry.

After I married and moved away I would often, when home on vacation, take ‘the cookbook’ and write off recipes. My sister came up with a Christmas gift one year of an empty book, with ‘BONNIE’S COOKBOOK-FROM MY KITCHEN’ written on it and I cherish it, and use it often. That book is filled with Mom’s recipes, and now it too is stained, and worn, and held together with tape.

One magic moment stands out in my mind. I found a recipe for pie pastry called 'Brides Never Fail Pastry' in a cookbook and wrote it down for future reference. Of course I never took into consideration that the writer of this book had never seen ‘this bride’ in action.

When my young husband and I returned home after our vacation, I set out one day to bake a Nova Scotia Strawberry Pie, using the ‘Brides Never Fail’ pastry recipe.

I had flour everywhere, and when I finally got the finished product into the oven I heaved a sigh of relief. Then, of course, I forgot all about the pie, and it burned a little, giving it a rim of black around the pastry edges.

Woe was I! But I cut a section out and ate it and it was quite good, and I was ‘pleased as punch’ as they say.

My husband arrived home, hours later, and of course, immediately went to the refrigerator. He stood back, looked, then looked some more, then turned to me and asked "WHO OWNS THE CLUTCH IN THE FRIDGE?"

Needless to say I was devastated, he said he was joking, I didn’t believe him and although he ate it.

But I promised myself, "NO MORE PIES!"! I still have no interest in making pies, and am not going to try it again. You have to know when to quit, and I did know, and I did quit! Thirty-seven years after that episode have passed and I have never ever tried making pies again, and I never will.

Baking, cooking, making meals and serving them, and knowing how to serve them well, came from my Mother’s Home Economic Class 101. Mom’s book has been stained, the pages worn, but I quit the pies. In due time my daughter will inherit a book of mine with stained pages, and stored memories. And I have kept her notes, and her funny quotes in the back of the book, like Mother did for me.

So I can cook, and I can bake, but not pies thank you! For the most important lessons of all I learned in Mom’s Home Economics, was knowing when to quit, and don’t waste supplies.

Yes, Home Economics is a good class, even better when the teacher is your mother, and you have free reign of her kitchen, and her special, faded, much used cookbook, worn from the years when Mom was able to teach, and I was a willing student.

And when the "Brides Never Fail" pastry recipe did fail, it was Mom who said "Do it my way."

"And how is that?" I asked.

"Oh, I don’t know, it's all in my head"she answered!

Sure it was! I never pursued it any further. And the pastry recipe ,and many other recipes, in her special cookbook never failed, nor did the recipes she kept filed in her head, and made such tasty things from memory.

So, I failed ‘Pie making’, but all the other things make up for the one failure.

At least that’s what Mom says!