First of all, how in the world did the women in my family do it? My Mémeré Riendeau and Mémeré Robidoux must have spent their whole lives in the kitchen. My maternal grandmother had 9 kids (8 survived infancy) and my paternal grandmother had 14 kids (10 survived infancy). I’m sure that after a while the older kids were watching the babies, but still, all they had time for was cooking and making babies!
What I’m getting at…and I repeat…how in the world did they do it? I spend 2 hours in the kitchen and I’m beat right down to my socks. And I don’t have any kids at home to take care of and I’m through with making babies. (I’m sure that will be a relief to my children!)
The most time I spend in the kitchen is when I’m “putting up” for the freezer. I currently have 5 containers of chicken noodle soup; 8 of veggie rice soup; 5 homemade pasta sauce; 3 beef stew. The last thing I put up was the veggie rice soup and I thought my feet and knees were going to give out on me. After standing while measuring all the spices, chopping the veggies, pressing the garlic, sautéing, cooking the rice, crushing the tomatoes from last year’s garden, combining, and stirring…I was happy to get to the simmering part.
A short rest in my favorite rocker with a cup of hot coffee brought me back to life!
Yesterday I decided I was going to cook some corn on the cob and, with a handy-dandy gadget I have, scrape the kernels off the cobs and freeze them. If anyone out there wants my handy-dandy gadget for scraping corn, let me know and it’s yours. I could not make it work. Out came my handy-dandy sharp utility knife and made short, albeit messy, work of those kernels. I started out with six ears. I ate one for dinner and stripped the other five. The five ears gave me two one-cup servings and I had the left-over one-half cup with my lunch today.
I have decided that of all the foods I have put up for the freezer, the corn was the only failure. And I say that because I wasn’t able to use the gadget; it was very messy, and the yield was less than I had hoped. Plus, the cost came to $1.20/cup. I can buy frozen corn all year round for much less than that. It was successful, however, in that at least I tried, and now I know!
Does anyone want this gadget?
