Lehman’s Country Life

I’m from New England, where “tradition” was pretty much every child’s first three-syllable word; and as far back as I can remember, there were certain things we always did around our house that bespoke the deepest part of winter – that time when the last of the holiday decorations had been put away, the snowstorms paid no attention to whether or not Punxsutawney Phil saw his shadow, and daylight was that brief time between when the school bus picked everyone up and when it deposited us all back at home. The mornings were pink and mid-late afternoons were purple, and there were certain things we did and certain foods we ate that belonged solely to that time from mid-January to mid-March.
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By Melinda J Hill, CFCS, CFLE
Extension Educator Family and Consumer Sciences
OSU Extension, Wayne County, Ohio

It’s cold, it’s gray and sometimes winter seems like it will last forever. What smells better at the end of the day than something warm that greets you when you open the door? We all have our favorite soup recipes. Some have been passed down through the generations and others can be additional ingredients that supplement a canned soup.

When planning your meal, all you need to add to a thick wholesome soup or stew is a slice of whole grain bread or crackers, some fruit or salad and a glass of milk, and voila – you have a healthy, well-balanced meal.

Some soups are simple and can be made in the microwave or on the stovetop in a matter of minutes. Others like to simmer and blend flavors and work best in the crock pot or soup pot, cooking and tenderizing (and filling your house with tantalizing aromas) for hours.

There are two main types of soup: those made from some kind of stock, and cream-based soups. Stock soups are made with vegetables, meats, poultry or fish; these are generally lower in calories. Cream-based soups are made of milk, cream or yogurt as a large part of the liquid.
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When winter comes, a young woman’s fancy turns to… HEAT!! Nice, warm houses, cozy fires to cuddle up to, warm blankets to wrap in. But in this day and age, living that dream can be very expensive, what with the costs of gas, propane and electricity. Wood is the best, in my mind, for good, bone-soaking heat.

But in November of 2005, my husband Norm fell off a ladder and broke his neck. We decided that wood heat would not be the best for us. With Norm’s neck so sensitive to the lifting, chopping and carrying of wood, we needed to find something else to keep this old house warm. Our first year of owning (but only staying here for a week at a time) told us that we needed something extra or we would be bankrupt by the propane cost to keep the house even mildly comfortable.

Since wood, my first choice, was out, what was next? We went to a restaurant that was using a corn stove to heat the large dining room and felt it would be a possibility, and finally decided on the corn furnace that we now have running in our basement family room.
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People were flatter in the ’70s.  I’m not talking about left to right thinner or up ‘n’ down thinner.  This hasn’t got anything to do with pounds per square inch.  What I’m talking about is front to back thinner.  In a word – flatter.  I suspect that the Nixon administration might have had something to do with that but I can’t actually prove it.  Perhaps some future historian will publish a scholarly work explaining that the government surreptitiously added some chemical to our drinking water which unintentionally resulted in a “flatter” population and, rather obviously, nobody noticed anyone else was flatter because everybody was flatter.  Flatter and maybe shorter.  Be that as it may, in the interim, we’ll go with what we can prove using a yard stick and a level.

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