Mountain Musings: On Doing Things From Scratch…

Mountain Musings – A guest column by Dottie Simmons who lives in eastern Humboldt County describes life at her rural homestead:

Musing on doing things from scratch…

It’s very satisfying eating a sandwich on bread you baked with mayonnaise you made and fillings you grew or sourced locally.

Living away from town one develops a habit of buying in bulk and having supplies on hand to last between trips, which in winter or other times (especially on Highway 36!) can be few and far between. That leaves you working with what you have, not being able to buy ingredients on a whim, all incentives to learn how to make the basics you need.

Due to my personal twist of fate, I was on my own at an early age without having had an elder kitchen mentor. My cooking skills were minimal – I could make toast, eggs and iced tea, maybe a sandwich, but that was pretty much it when I set out on my own. Kudos to my first boyfriends, the guinea pigs for my early culinary experiments.

Luckily for me and them, I got a copy of what I consider my kitchen bible – the Joy of Cooking. It was 1967 and that edition covered all you needed to figure out feeding yourself in city or backwoods! Still is! From cleaning and cooking wild game to what necessities you want stocked in your pantry (baking powder for example – ever run out of that?), keeping your freezer cold if the power goes out, to cooking on an open fire or in a fireplace, to every substitution you can imagine!

In my opinion, many changes from the 1940’s on mainly have to do with convenience. Obviously humans made it the first 40,000 years or so without refrigerator ice makers, air fryers and dishwashers, but it was a lot more work without them. We keep improving methods of food preservation and basic living both to make them more effective and less physical labor on our part. Which also leads to supermarkets and ready made food of all sorts.

Well, I don’t consider myself ‘old-fashioned’ though I suppose I am getting to where I should consider myself an ‘old-timer’, but living where we do some of the old ways make more sense. And, as I love what we do, I don’t consider it work or even inconvenient (usually) to have to whip up a loaf of bread or a jar of mayonnaise because we are running low. Canning season is part of the rhythm of the seasons and ‘waste not, want not’ is baked into my bones.

Maybe my favorite mix of the modern and the basic is mayonnaise. I can make it by hand or in a regular blender, but the stick blender makes it a 10 minute (max) job with minimal clean up. What’s not to like?

I use a 3 cup wide mouth canning jar.

…..

Making  approximately 1-3/4 c. mayonnaise:

1-1/4c vegetable oil at room temperature (I like 1/2 olive oil and 1/2 sunflower or other)

1 tsp salt

1 egg

3 Tbsp. Lemon juice

Dash cayenne

1 tsp. Dijon mustard

1 tsp. Sugar

In bottom of jar place 1/4 c oil, the egg, sugar, salt, cayenne and mustard.

Insert the stick blender, gradually increasing speed to high, and blend until mixture is emulsified. It may get quite thick. Start adding 1/2 cup of the remaining oil in a steady stream, not too fast. It will get thicker. Continue blending and when the whole 1/2 cup is in OR when it is too thick to add more, add the lemon juice, then the remaining oil – steady and slow.

The most important thing is that the oils are not cold. In winter I warm them behind the wood stove for best results.

Enjoy!

The old Joy of Cooking covered all you needed to feed yourself! Everything but gardening.  The sections: The Foods We Eat; The Foods We Heat; Know Your Ingredients; The Foods We keep; and Canning, Salting, and Smoking are all one needs to understand the basics of a homestead kitchen!

Homegrown Tuna salad for lunch
Homegrown celery & onion, home canned albacore & sweet gherkins, homemade mayonnaise, to be served up on homemade sourdough bread. Yum. It’s how we roll.

making the mayonnaise is so simple…