Lucille / was largely of Church of the Brethren
stock, and at big holiday meals the family would have sweet
chips, a couple sours, dilly beans, and maybe a beet or onion
thing, but no more.

Maybe 4 or 6 at a time on the table but probably 14 if not more in
total stored in the cellar.

I'd guess that on special occasions the table might have a
bigger representation: after all, if you were a housewife
in the middle of nowhere, you might take special pride in
offering a good spread; anyhow seven is a nice mythic
number. For every day, a truncated selection would be just
fine, no doubt.

Polish immigrants tended to be in the Irish neighbourhoods. It
was all about which church one attended back then.)

All those guys if left to their own devices hated one
another but banded together against the Dirty Prods!

There was no real hatred just a sense of comfort being with a group
of similarly people. It was said that one half of the neighbourhood
would show up for a wedding or a funeral but everyone came out to
re-build a house or a barn after a fire.

In more densely populated parts of the world - the ones
I'm familiar with being Boston by having known some of
the antagonists and New York by reputation, there was
certainly animosity among ethnic groups even though they
were coreligionists. Of course, in my Boston, there was
nothing to distinguish except ethnicity: they were all
white folks, sons and grandsons of immigrants, Catholics,
fans of the Patriots, Celtics, Bruins, and Red Sox, "and
everybody hates the Jews." So the Italians and Irish were
always at each others' throats, with the Poles sort of on
the sideline to fight in the consolation round. Not much
of a Hispanic presence then, as there was in New York, but
that's different now.

boiled dinner

In New England more typically beets are cooked separately.
It's in the leftovers that all the ingredients come together,
That's 5% salt. Brine being 5 to 7%, that implies no
rinsing at all.

The drained meat is 5% salt; the brine is very strong. I use the
brine in small doses to cook dried beans, potatoes and vegetables
for sewveral days to follow.

I'm thinking that with a long soak the meat should
approach an equilibrium with the brine.

Maggie and Jiggs Bring Up Father comic strip because Jiggs like
corned beef and cabbage so much.

Ah. One would have thought Maggie did a lot of baking,
as she always had a rolling pin handy.

Yep!

I remember some things right!

Walden used to and may again (the accusations against
Clinton turned out to be false).

The fees were reasonable, the course work challenging and useful,
and the school was highly regarded by both HR people in the GNWT's
Dept of Hhealth as well as the student loans people over at the Dept
of Education.

Distance learning and learning while earning have a long and
checkered though mostly honorable history. The University of
Chicago, against whose quality nobody can say anything, was
early to the game, as subsequently in Massachusetts were
Antioch (based in Ohio) and Northeastern. We used to scoff
from our lofty vista at the graduates of these two last, but
on the whole those alumni seem to have done well in the
middle sector, where all the work gets done, as opposed to
those of the fancy schools, who seem to dominate in the
"10%" - and the lowest echelons as well, q.v. myself.

... Whenever I write about food, I get mail from the Serious Chefs.

Okay, that one wasn't a Wellerism. Where'd it come from,
anybody know?

I posted it here but no, it's not original to me. Before I reveal my
sourse, does anyone recognise who I paraphrased?

George Gilder? Joel Ehrlich? No, they were on other networks.
Haven't a clue. Could it be ... Satan? See post 145 below.

Dill beans
categories: Penn Dutch, Groff's Farm, relishes, pickles
yield: 1 batch

4 lb whole firm young green beans, trimmed
1/2 c salt
Water to cover
6 c white vinegar
4 c water
2 Tb dill seed
2 ts dillweed
4 sprigs fresh tarragon
- or 2 ts dried tarragon

Soak the beans for 1 hr in a pot with 1/2 c salt and water
to cover. Rinse and cover with fresh cold water. Bring to
a boil and cook, uncovered, for 2 min only. Drain in a
colander. When cool enough to handle, pack the trimmed
whole beans lengthwise, carefully, in hot sterilized
jars. Tuck a sprig of tarragon (or put 1/2 ts dried
tarragon) in each jar. Combine the vinegar, water, dill
seed and dillweed in a saucepan, bring to a boil and boil
2 min. Pour over the beans in the jars and seal.

Betty Groff's Country Goodness Cookbook
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