Mother Lines Genealogy –
Part 5 – by Savvy Mom Ruth Paget
Once
in Wisconsin, the Sawles bought a dairy farm, set up a mill on a stream on
their property, set up chicken coops, and made friends with the pig farmers down the road. They had blackberry bushes on their property for pie and grew strawberries and cantaloupe. They added nasturtium leaves to lettuce for salads.
Aunt Winnie also picked a white wildflower and deep fried it for lunches with salads. I think this flower is a wild black locust flower. The center is black, but the flowers around it are white. Before deep-frying it, the wildflower is dunked in a batter made with egg, flour, and cream. It crunches like a French fry, but has a sweet flavor. I loved these as a kid.
Aunt Winnie also picked a white wildflower and deep fried it for lunches with salads. I think this flower is a wild black locust flower. The center is black, but the flowers around it are white. Before deep-frying it, the wildflower is dunked in a batter made with egg, flour, and cream. It crunches like a French fry, but has a sweet flavor. I loved these as a kid.
The
Sawles supplemented their basic goods at home with market goods like cheese,
coffee, and oysters for New Year’s oyster stew. I remember Aunt Winnie showing me Chinese bok choy cabbage and saying that she and Uncle Sam chopped it up to go with a vinegar-and-oil salad. I think she alternated bok chou with baked beets dressed in vinegar-and-oil dressing as a salad. Both are anti-oxidants.
They also bought watermelons in town and made watermelon rind pickles for winter after the cores had been eaten.
Aunt Winnie had a sense of humor. She once made me Christmas Mincemeat pie and said you had to have beef suet in it to give the chopped fruit the right texture. She told me that younger girls in families tended to eat a lot of it.
The farm was very self-sufficient, because bacon was eaten everyday. Roast beef with potatoes, salad, and pie was Sunday lunch. This farm was English and New England through heritage. I love what my female ancestors set up after arriving here on a boat.
On the Wisconsin farm, morning glories and gladiolus flowers were permanently on the dining tables in the summer to liven up meals.
They also bought watermelons in town and made watermelon rind pickles for winter after the cores had been eaten.
Aunt Winnie had a sense of humor. She once made me Christmas Mincemeat pie and said you had to have beef suet in it to give the chopped fruit the right texture. She told me that younger girls in families tended to eat a lot of it.
The farm was very self-sufficient, because bacon was eaten everyday. Roast beef with potatoes, salad, and pie was Sunday lunch. This farm was English and New England through heritage. I love what my female ancestors set up after arriving here on a boat.
On the Wisconsin farm, morning glories and gladiolus flowers were permanently on the dining tables in the summer to liven up meals.
I
found recipes for the cookies Aunt Winnie made in British Cookery, including saffron ones.
My
great-great grandmother probably learned recipes from her female ancestors in
Cornwall. Our official family
genealogists David and Frances located birth certificates and gravestones for
Margaret’s ancestors including her mother with the same name – Margaret Dunn,
Elizabeth Curgenven, Eliza Wakel, Frances Collett, Marry Andrew, Barbara Wills,
and Jane Dorrington.
Margaret
Dunn Rowe no doubt learned to make Cornish pasties filled with beef and
vegetables from her mother. Pasties
resemble meat pies called empanadas from Galicia, Spain originally.
My
great-great grandmother, Charlotte Sawle, live in a sea captain’s row house in
Porscatho, England. As a child, I stayed
in her quayside home, which had become a bread and breakfast and collected
snails on the quay stairs like my ancestors.
Now
I imagine Charlotte Sawle entertaining guests with rum-based English drinks
like Cornish punch, rumstafian, and Samson.
Our
family’s genealogists have documented a mother line that extends back to 1688
when one Rebecca Hay married Pasco Collins in that year.
I
wonder if the chocolate fudge, brown sugar penuché fudge, and confectioner’s
sugar divinity fudge that my family eats and makes comes from Pasco’s mother?
In any case, my female ancestors taught me how to set up a food system in my home using quality products.
By
Ruth Paget, author of Eating Soup with Chopsticks and Marrying France
Click here for: Ruth Paget's Amazon Books
Click here for: Ruth Paget's Amazon Books
