Small acts of thrift

(From Johanna Knox)

My Canadian great-grandmother used to say, ‘Look after the cents, and the dollars take care of themselves.' It was an expression of her thrifty approach to life which is still repeated in my family today ... the saying that is, not necessarily, I'm sorry to say, the approach itself!

Even the smallest acts of thrift were important to my great-grandmother. I imagine they were to many women of her time. Some of these small acts were passed down, and became family habits. 

Like the butter wrappers that my great-grandmother, then my grandmother and my mother saved, so that no part of that gold was wasted. Neatly folded in the top compartment of the fridge door, a wrapper could always be brought out when a pie dish or baking tray needed greasing. Did most of us have mothers or grandmothers who did this? 

In my grandmother’s old Mennonite Community Cookbook (by Mary Emma Showalter), there is a ‘Household Hints’ section containing this tip:

‘Before discarding the empty catsup bottle, pour some vinegar into the bottle and use in making French dressing.’

What a neat trick for any sauce bottle when it gets to that frustrating stage where you can see all that perfectly good stuff at the bottom but no matter how much you tip or shake or bang - it WON’T. COME. OUT.

Another family thrift tradition: When my mother made schnitzel or crumbed fish, after all the pieces were egged and crumbed she tipped the few leftover breadcrumbs into the blob of leftover egg, and fried the mix as a ‘crumb pancake’. There was only ever enough for one tiny pancake, but in spite of its meagre size – or more likely because of it – it was my favourite part of the meal.

(Years later, I seized on the way my own son loved crumb pancakes and began to make them deliberately for him, by the bowlful. We got bored of them and went off them, and I learned that some traditions should not be tampered with!)

What small acts of thrift have been passed down and become habits in your family?

Aunty Jean's Christmas Pie

(from Mary Knox)


My mother's sister Jean Owen was perhaps the loveliest person I've ever known - gentle, kind and gracious.

When our daughters were little we spent a Christmas season in Montreal, and I remember Auntie Jean saying she would make a "Christmas Pie" for a special lunch. We had no idea what this would be, though later I realised I had seen Auntie Jean knitting unobtrusively for a while ...

Anyway, on the lunch table was a cake-shaped decoration made of cardboard and paper, with ribbons radiating from it, each going to a place with a child's name attached. When they were told to, each child slowly pulled the ribbon, and drew from inside the pie a little gift. The girls each got a tiny doll with knitted nightie and sleeping bag.

That was typical of Auntie Jean's thoughtfulness. She was a good cook too, but that's another story.

                         

  Jean Owen in 1964

Florence Christy Anglin's doughnuts (and holes)

(from Johanna Knox)

At least four generations of women in my family have enjoyed using this recipe, with Florence Christy Anglin probably the first.


As a child I adored making these with my mum and sister. We cut out the ring-shaped doughnuts from the pastry using a big jar and a small jar. The little 'holes' from the middle got thrown into the frying pan along with the rings. They were the best bit!


I have no idea if it's true, but I like to think that it was frugal Florence Christy, in wartime, who was the first in the family to cook the holes as well as the doughnuts. What could be more frugal than that? :)

To make:

2 eggs - beat.


Add:
Salt
Vanilla
1 cup sugar
2 tbsp melted butter
3/4 cup milk


Then add (or sift in):
2 large tsp baking powder
Enough flour just to roll pastry.
It shouldn't be too stiff.


Roll pastry and cut out doughnut shapes.


Fry in deep fat.


(Note: after frying, we would often roll the doughnuts in cinnamon and castor sugar.)

Frances Anglin's favourite Pompadour Pudding

(from Johanna Knox)

My grandmother seemed nothing like the bucolic blonde pictured in her American cookbook.

Frances Anglin was a large, stately widow, dark-haired, with urbane tastes. Hard to please, some said. But I don’t remember that. I was seven when she died.

There’s plenty I've forgotten – like exactly how her recipes sidled into our family repertoire. Her kitchen as far as I recall, was a place for her to smoke and drink coffee. Perhaps she was cooking less by the time I was born (and my mother says she didn't like cooking in front of other people).

What I do remember is her Canadian-ness. This was a basic piece of childhood knowledge, as foundational to my existence as facts like cats meow, dogs bark, and leaves fall in autumm. 

I was proud of my Canadian ancestry. I never considered how it must have felt for my grandmother to follow her husband all the way to New Zealand, an ocean away from her own sophisticated continent, and her continental-sized family.

I can still hear her smoky laugh, and see her Lower Hutt home with its velvet curtains and plush expanses of silver-grey carpet. I can feel her sleek Burmese cats wending around my legs. Artworks hung on every wall; watercolours, oils, prints ... some by friends and local artists, others her own. Hers were unsigned, as if she felt them unworthy.

Paper doll books were her treat for me. A new one every time I visited. I wonder now, was she herself as fascinated with them as I was? After training as a commercial artist, she'd enjoyed working for an expensive department store sketching women’s fashions for their advertisements. The Depression put paid to that job, and sometime later she married, never to enter the workforce again.

When my grandmother died, my Mum, her daughter, found a stash of paper doll books in a high cupboard, ready to be doled out one by one. I got them all at once - a thrilling inheritance!

But her cooking? There was nothing to miss. In fact, I now realise, her culinary legacy had already slipped seamlessly into my life. The recipes my mother made, especially desserts, were often her mother's.

Pomapdour Pudding was a star in the repertoire.

Mum says my grandmother often used to make blancmange from a packet, a bit like instant pudding, but nicer. You couldn't get convenience food like that in New Zealand in those days. Her blancmange arrived in parcels from Canada. That was a staple dessert, but for special occasions she made a Pompadour Pudding.

Here is the recipe, from the Culinary Arts Institute Cook Book. It's one of those 'never-fails-to-get-compliments' recipes, and it works well in tiny pots at bring-a-plate events. (Click to enlarge.)

These days you could use dark cooking chocolate, as per the recipe, but back when my grandmother pointedly marked up the book, you couldn't get good cooking chocolate in New Zealand, and cocoa had to do!