Culinary Confession: Where are you shirking?

[andiesenji]

This to me is yet one more interesting example as to how times have changed.  I remember that, when I was very young, getting two table knives and cutting the butter into the flour was a kid's job.  I liked doing it, watching the knives flash as the butter and flour morphed into tiny beads.  And that was a pretty common task among all my friends, as well.  Along with other routine chores assigned to the family's children, like cleaning the shrimp and polishing the silver.

 

Other household chores which seem to have gone the way of starched linens and cloth diapers.

Much too true, Jaymes.  So many people I have met over the years are absolutely shocked that I make my own butter, yogurt, sour cream, cream cheese, etc., and that I make candied peel and ginger, applesauce, preserves and bake my own bread. 

Their attitude is "why bother?"  especially since I am "old" and live alone - and "isn't this all a waste of your time?"   The fact is that I have plenty of time, especially since retiring, and I am never, ever bored. 

I like doing all these things, especially since now there are so many additives in prepared foods.  I like to know what I am eating. 

 

I too was taught how to cut fat into dry ingredients for all types of pastry when I was a child and had to stand on a chair at the big kitchen work table to "help" the cook and her helpers.  I'm sure my being underfoot was not conducive to efficient meal preparation, but I was an indulged child and cook had endless patience.  And I learned a lot from her as well as my grandmother who did some cooking, as did the aunts who lived in the house. 

Giving me "chores" to do also helped me develop a sense of self worth that I think was important in the development of my character - just as I had to muck out after my pony (later my horses) and keep them groomed and the tack clean. 

As I got older, I was trusted to gather the eggs from the henhouse, the duck and goose sheds and the game bird eggs that were not going to be hatched - and that included checking off which hens were producing and noting ones that were "failing" so they could be separated to see if they should be either "retired" to brooding or to the stew pot...  (We had some fairly old hens that were no longer laying but were great brooders). 

I was not required to do these chores but I enjoyed them.  I wasn't too keen on house cleaning but could be inveigled into dusting the lower portions of tables, cabinets, sideboards and etc., of which there were a great many.