"The Time For Pickling is Nigh"

September. How fast the summer actually slips away. The days shift from: Barbeques. Heat. Humidity. MOSQUITOES!!!

To a more quiet, slower paced version. Perhaps catching up on some books. More bikes rides and hikes in the cooler weather. Coffee on the deck.

In the garden, all that planting and weeding and watering starts to pay off. Or, if you're like me, more trips to Toby's..............

My Chow, Mustard Pickles and Bread & Butters are safely tucked away to add a little brightness to fall and winter meals, as are my jams and jellies. That's a wrap for 2025, far earlier than I can ever remember. The only thing left is perhaps Crabapple Jelly, and I haven't decided on that yet, but Apple Pies, for sure. And they will be early too.

But I was chatting with my old friend Mary this week as she was finishing up her Chow and she mentioned her Mom's well worn old cookbook that contained the recipe for Chow that they both used. Her dear Mom passed away just a few years ago and anyone who knew her would have trusted that recipe with their lives! Pat Burke was a terrific cook, baker, and neighbor. She meant the world to my family. And Mary is just like her. I guess as the only girl in that big family of boys, she was well versed in taking on her share of the chores.

But when I scanned the pages of Pat's old cookbook which Mary keeps stored in a plastic bag, it brought back an old memory that Momma used to chuckle over. She and Pat were great friends.

There's a recipe for Old Fashioned Date Squares and Nut Smacks, two old local favorites. I still can't beat my Aunt Isabell's Nut Smacks! The pages of this book are well used and well loved.

And there's the Chow recipe, with an obvious page marker, a piece of paper ripped from the Guardian. I see Pat's notes, and then additions by Mary. What a treasure.

Back in the day when Momma was much younger and neighbors were much closer than they are today, if you had a particularly good recipe or found a better way to use potatoes for instance, everyone found out about it and adapted their own recipes. There was one irritating lady in the area that liked to brag a lot, and she would tell the other women that she got her housework done so early in the day that she had all the sheets and bedclothes out on the line before anybody in the house got out of bed.....seriously? Talk for stunned......

But this one summer, someone got their hands on a new chow recipe to end all chow recipes. Everybody wanted to try it. And this would have been the days when every household had their own garden full of juicy green tomatoes and lots of onions.

The recipes for preserves mostly start out the same way, and if you make pickles, there is always instructions to soak the veggies in salt for a few hours or overnight.

Good enough, we all know the science behind that.

But in this new recipe the next critical step wasn't there, and some people only follow instructions to the letter. No common sense.

"Thoroughly rinse the soaked veggies under cold running water and drain well."

Most of us would automatically do that, that's an awful lot of salt to leave on pickles.

But this recipe that the local lady got her hands on omitted that step, and the ladies sharing it would have known that. But they just followed along without doing it.

Well, you know where the story goes. Every single batch of pickles in the small community was completely inedible. Ruined. The old wall phone got an awful going over.

"Did you try your chow? Mine is awful salty."

"What in the name of God happened? I had to throw mine out. Henry wasn't too pleased. All that sugar and work."

"I was talking to Jean and she said the same thing."

"I should have known better and just used my old recipe. That new one just went in the stove and the pigs got the chow. And I bet even they won't eat it."

Well, it just goes to prove that there isn't always a better mousetrap, nor a better way of doing things. If you have a good recipe, why keep trying to perfect it, when it's probably already perfect for your family?

That was definitely a lesson hard learned, but Momma always got a great charge out of it telling it. She would have known who was responsible for the recipe, and whether she was one of the cooks who fell for it, well, either she didn't share that with us, or she did and we'll never know.

My chow recipe is an old one, I've used it a long time. It always took prizes when I entered it in the Exhibition, but I'm far too lazy to do that anymore. Ohhhhh, that prompts another story I must share.

Most people knew or heard stories of Tisa Deveau. She loved it when people remembered that she was born on St. Patrick's Day and her name was actually Patricia!

Tisa was a fabulous cook and baker, and she was known for unannounced visits wherever she went. I did a lot of sewing for her in those days, so she was a frequent visitor at our old house. I'll never forget the time she walked over to my house from her little camper on the bank, with a tea towel wrapped around her non-existent bosom. She had washed out a few of her rags, she said, and hung them in a tree to dry, and used a tea towel as a make shift top. You had to know her to get that!

Very often when she popped in, I had bread or muffins or something coming out of the old wood stove oven.

This one day, and maybe more than once, I had Cinnamon Rolls coming out and of course they always smell delicious. Everybody has their own favorite way of making them, and so did I. Instead of slicing them and baking them on a cookie sheet where they pour their buttery cinnamony goodness all over the pan to basically fry, I had the great notion of baking mine in muffin tins, to contain all that flavor. Instead of flattening out like an old crone's tits, they bake up nice and evenly.

Revelation!!! for Tisa. And she wasn't leaving til she got my recipe. Which I was very wont to pass over, as it was my own recipe, and not a cook book recipe, and I swore by it. I still do.

But I copied it out for her and off she went.

Weeks went by and it was Souris Exhibition time, and I always entered probably a dozen different things and always did well. Krystal was in 4-H and also entered some things as part of her course, so we encouraged each other. It was always a lot of good fun.

But that was over when I turned up on judging day to see if I'd won anything. After all, it's like going to cards at the Legion and praying you'll lose all night. No one says that!! I wanted to win!

(and I'm just making up a winning list here, I don't remember any of that)

Chow? 1st!!!

Raspberry Jam? 1st!!!!

Biscuits? 2nd!!!

Cinnamon Rolls? 2nd!!

Wait a minute, I always won first for my Cinnamon Rolls. What gives?

And then, to add insult to injury I took notice of who took the red ribbon for first prize.........frig me, it was Tisa.

WITH MY RECIPE!!!!

Well, of course we both laughed about it, her a little more loudly than me perhaps.......and I'm sure there's a lesson in there. But I still make my Cinnamon Rolls the same way and it's one of many fond memories I have of Tisa. And would she ever love to be involved in the new "Cinnamon Roll Contest" going on right now on the Island, she be arse over kettle into it!

So to wrap up this Blog, check out the useful (?) tips and hints on what's left of the last page of Pat's cookbook, a time capsule of the day, to be sure!!

Thanks for allowing me to share, Mary LeClaire!!