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More about baking

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The replacement for the pearl ash (or pot ash) I discussed in my last post was something called salterus.

Salterus is bicarbonate of soda – yes, the stuff used for stomach acid or whitening teeth. We know it as baking soda and it is the leavening agent in soda bread.

This substance has been known for millenia. The Ancient Egyptians used it as a component of natron, the salt they employed to mummify bodies.

Umm, yummy. Using it for cooking seems more recent. (I read that the Native Americans used it but haven’t found additional documentation for this.) Anyway, baking soda works with something like buttermilk, which has a lot of lactic acid. In chemistry 101, we learn that the combination of an acid and a base yields carbon dioxide and that is what raises the bread.

Baking soda itself is pretty bitter. When I make soda bread I usually use baking powder as well. Pop quiz: what is baking powder? Well, it is baking soda combined with the powdered form of a weak acid but it also leaves less of a bitter aftertaste.

baking in the old days

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Since I haven’t seen a workman for my kitchen for ten days (and counting) and I still am missing doors, knobs, and my new refrigerator, I am moving on in my blog.

I began to think about how cooks baked in the past. They had yeast but what leavener did they use for what we term quick breads.

There was no baking powder. They had yeast but that requires rising. Beer dregs can also be used – I;ve made beer bread but you would not want cookies made from beer.

So what did the cooks use? Pearlash. Wood ashes when soaked in water yield lye. Lye is used to make soap. Lye was also used to soak hominey and for other cooking purposes. Some where in 1780 some enterprising cook used it to make cookies and bread.

I’ve read, however, that it left a bitter alkaline taste in the mouth. The use of pearlash was short-lived. After 1840 a precursor of baking powder was produced.

Kitchen coming to the end

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After two weeks of nothing happening, several changes occurred in two days and I am now cautiously optimistic that I will not be camping out in my house much longer.

The new appliances arrived. But the fridge was wrong and had to be sent back so we are still using the old one.

fridge

 

 

 

 

 

 

desk

 

 

 

 

 

 

You can see the new desk and back splash.

And we finally got counters and water. Yay! No more washing dishes in the slop sink.

counter

Saga 2: Kitchen counters

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After a delay of almost a month in getting started, I now have been without a kitchen for 6 weeks and counting.  Nothing will be done this week. The place from which we ordered our stone had trouble with the forklift and couldn’t take delivery. I estimate we’ve had about 6 days work in the past 6 weeks. Am I annoyed? You bet.

counter

If you can’t stand the heat …

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There’s no getting around the fact that a renovation is stressful. I am really tired of washing dishes in the slop sink. And it keeps going on.

We got the flooring in. A little grayer than I like but still light. flooring

The same day the flooring went in the stove broke. No kidding. I was baking chicken in the oven and went to take it off and the entire handle came off in my hand. I can still get the oven door open with a potholder but it isn’t easy.

Fried food anyone?

stove

In other news, with the garage door left open so the workmen can bring in flooring, cabinets (arrived but not installed) we have had an army of mice appear. Most recent count: 10. We’ve found dead ones in our closet (yuck!) and in the bathroom. I don’t blame them for wanting out of the cold but I wish they wouldn’t choose my house.

Painted wall

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The contractors spent a few days getting up the sheetrock and painting. I see how The Property Brothers can gut a house in 4 weeks; the crew spends every day on one property. I wouldn’t like having the Property Brothers choose everything, though. I might not like the result. The contractor and I had a disagreement over the paint. He thought it should be lighter. When the flooring is in, we will see.

Meanwhile, I am finding not having running water in the kitchen tiresome. Can barely cook – no counters. green wall

The saga of the kitchen floor

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Well, we couldn’t keep the flooring that was already on the kitchen floor because of the holes under the cabinets. We were given three choices: hardwood, vinyl tiles or the engineered flooring like Pergo. (We could also have ceramic tile but I hate it – too cold and hard to walk on). We threw out the hardwood – we are already having hickory cabinets and I didn’t want a a kitchen that was like a wooden box.)  So we looked at the last two. We chose two tiles, a first choice and a second. The first is no longer available and the second won’t be available until March 9. (So, Loews,  why do you still have it in the store if it isn’t available?)

Then we looked at the flooring and chose a whitewashed look but the contractor told us it wouldn’t look good with the paint color we’d chosen. So we tried again for different forms of vinyl tile.We spent hours in both Loews and Home Depot putting samples on the floor and trying to imagine them in our kitchen.

After a week, we opted to go with the whitewashed flooring and change the paint. Who would guess that flooring would be such an issue?

A new kitchen

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I have heard it said that a kitchen is the heart of a house. I believe it. My kitchen is not only the heart metaphorically but also by location. Man, is it hard to live. The pantry where all our canned food is now stuffed and the slop sink (yes, the same slop sink I use for washing out dyes and other crafty things) is on the other side. The first day I did not realize I wouldn’t be able to get there. I had thought ahead somewhat; I had food, milk, juice etc for the babies. But I couldn’t get to my coffee pot Now we are talking a sacrifice. And there was no way to get a can of soup. So, after I fed the babies, I ate two handfuls of cocoa puffs. I hate cocoa puffs. To me they taste like chocolate flavored vitamins. I now have only a stove and a refrigerator.

kitchen floor

Plus, we of course hit a surprise. We’d hoped to reuse the floor. Do you see? They went around the cabinets. So now we have to choose and pay for flooring and it sets the project back a week.

. kitchen

Milk paint

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Before we humans made paint with oil (or our modern latex), paint was made with a variety of ingredients. Paint has to have something that provides color like ochre or, during colonial times in the USA, brick dust, and a medium for the color that provides stability and hopefully durability. Egg yolks was at one time used for paint. Anyone who has tried to scrub hardened egg yolks off a plate knows that egg hardens to something like cement. But it does wash off in water.

Another substance used in paint was milk. Since most people lived on farms up until the present, milk was something readily obtainable. We know that milk paint was used. Occasionally antique furniture and old houses in this country are discovered to have been painted with milk paint.

However, the recipe for milk paint is very important. In 1801 a French artist described painting with a milk paint and wrote that it was not durable. Among other things, it came off with the slightest friction (Don’t ever brush against it or it would come off on one’s clothing, and would dissolve in wet weather.) And milk paint must be used right away. It has a short shelf life.

The important ingredient is the protein casein. Sometimes borax is used to the lime to help dissolve the casein. Different recipes have been tried to make milk paint durable. We know that at least some of them were successful; surfaces painted with milk have been discovered in some old houses. It has a hard very smooth finish and was usually in pale pastel colors. It is impervious to paint strippers and is difficult to paint over. It is totally non-toxic, though, and can be used to give furniture an antique look.

Oh, and one final fun fact. House painters in the past did not ‘paint’; they distempered the walls.

More about American music

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When my husband and I were in Greece this past summer and went down to breakfast that first morning, a woman at a nearby table suddenly burst into a James Brown song. No lyrics, just the hook, bookended by a flood of Greek.

Although we haven’t had members of the native populations bursting into song in other countries, we have heard American music everywhere. Perhaps I should say American/British since the Stones and Led Zeppelin are well represented. As tourists, we hear plenty of the native Greek or Peruvian or other local music but the pop music is all the music we grew up with. And even the Stones and other British Bands we hear have been heavily influenced by the Blues, R and B and so on.

American music is one of our greatest exports, along with our movies.

And the interesting thing is that the ‘melting pot’ of the United States is really obvious in the music. From the Chansons Profanes of the French trappers, to the work songs (the sea shanties and field hollers), the drums of the Native Americans and of course the rhythmic music of the black slaves, American music is a combination that has really gone everywhere. (Think the popularity of Metallica in Japan!)

The history of rock from its beginnings in Blues is well documented but of course there have been other important influences, all ending up in James Brown sung by a Greek.