Vivian's Corn Bread

The Southern section of the New York Times Heritage Cookbook has no less than twelve recipes for cornbread, so I wasn't about to pass up the opportunity to serve it at Thanksgiving. My son, in the sharing spirit of the day, brought excellent pumpkin biscuits that I passed with the soup, so many guests gave the corn bread a pass.
Actually, they were wise. This corn bread is way too dry. If you don't have time to hunt through all the millions of recipes on line, you can easily rescue this one from dryness by following my instructions, which doubles the milk. That would make it much better. Other than that, it's an okay recipe, not dramatically different from the recipe I used to make in The Joy of Cooking.

Vivian's Corn Bread

2 cups yellow corn meal
1 cup flour
1 tablespoon baking powder
2 eggs, lightly beaten
1 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon sugar
2 cups milk
2 tablespoons shortening or melted butter

1. Preheat the oven to 400 degrees.
2 Sift together the corn meal, flour and baking powder into a mixing bowl. Stir in the eggs, salt, sugar, milk and shortening or butter. Pour into greased nine-inch square pan.
3. Bake twenty to twenty-five minutes or until bread is firm in the center. Makes six servings.

Orange Glazed Sweet Potatoes (Gluten Free)

 It seems to be a Thanksgiving tradition to have two kinds of potatoes at our dinner, white mashed and sweet. I am actually not sure how this thing got started. It may have been when the kids were younger and requested mashed sweet potatoes topped with marshmallows, which, although schmaltzy, are really good. The cookbook continues to provide me with sweet potato recipes, so this is an opportunity to make them. My husband, Bob, does not care for sweet potatoes, so they do not usually appear at our table.
As sweet potato dishes go, this one is okay. Note that the sweet potatoes are supposed to be mostly cooked before you orange glaze them. (I didn't.) In fact, in a spectacular failure to read the recipe I neglected to buy orange juice when I went to the supermarket on Tuesday. So around 1:00 on Thursday, halfway through the four hour cooking marathon, I took Watson, the corgi, out to CVS to buy a bottle of orange juice. So, to make your Thanksgiving, or whatever, go more smoothly, be sure to buy orange juice and precook the sweet potatoes. Unless you want to get out of the kitchen for a few minutes and walk the dog.
The recipe author envisioned serving the potatoes whole. I sliced them, which seems like a better strategy when dealing with several side dishes. People may take what they want and leave the rest. I also only put in the brown sugar. It was plenty sweet.

Orange-Glazed Sweet Potatoes

6 medium sized yams or sweet potatoes, scrubbed and boiled or baked until barely tender and peeled. (Peel these first. If you cook them first, you risk burned fingers.)
1 cup orange juice
2 teaspoons grated orange rind
1 tablespoon cornstarch
3 tablespoons melted butter
1/3 cup light brown sugar
1/3 cup granulated sugar
1/8 teaspoon salt

1. Preheat the oven to 350 degrees.
2. Place the already cooked yams or sweet potatoes in  greased shallow baking dish. Combine the remaining ingredients in a small pan an bring to a boil, stirring. Pour over the potatoes and bake thirty minutes, basting occasionally. Makes six servings.

Mincemeat Pumpkin Pie

A week or so before Thanksgiving, I was leafing through the cookbook, and discovered, lo and behold, that I had actually not made all the pumpkin pie recipes. There was this little gem, from Oregon, lurking in the back of the book. Not only that, but I had, sitting in the back of my refrigerator, a jar of homemade mincemeat, left over from last year's mincemeat marathon. So, since my husband Bob specifically requested pumpkin pie here was a way of knocking off a recipe.
It is an incredibly easy recipe as well. You dump the mincemeat in the bottom of the premade pie shell, mix up the rest of the ingredients, pour and bake. I was able to made the pie on Monday evening and place it on the table on the day after the turkey marathon. This can backfire. I made the pecan pie Friday night. We were going out, and the pie wasn't done so I set the oven timer for 15 minutes and went out the door..
When we got back at 9:30, a "very thoroughly cooked pie" was sitting on the stove. We investigated it later in the weekend and found it to be cement-like in texture, so I made another one and watched the oven myself.
Bob found the pie under seasoned. If you like a more spicy pumpkin pie, you could double the cinnamon, and add 1/4 teaspoon ground cloves. Unfortunately, it did not seem to be to every one's taste. We found a couple of half eaten pieces in the living room, as well as a plate containing all the mincemeat, carefully picked out. I ate it Friday night at leftovers fest. Seemed fine to me.  Well, it might be an acquired taste.

Mincemeat-Pumpkin Pie

1 1/2 cups mincemeat
1 unbaked nine-inch pie shell, chilled
1 cup mashed cooked (canned) pumpkin
1/2 cup sugar
1/2 teaspoon cinnamon
2 eggs lightly beaten
1/4 teaspoon salt
1/4 teaspoon nutmeg
1/2 cup milk

1. Preheat the oven to 425 degrees.
2. Place the mincemeat in the bottom of the pie shell.
3. Using a rotary beater, combine the remaining ingredients. Pour over mincemeat. Bake thirty-five to forty minutes or until set. Serve slightly warm or at room temperature.
Makes six servings.

Really Fantastic Green Tomato Relish

While I was leafing through the cookbook looking for dessert recipes I came across a couple of recipes for green tomato pie. That didn't quite work because of the oven, but it gave me an idea. Look at the chutneys and relishes. There it was, Green Tomato Relish.
This is not any Green Tomato Relish. This relish made me want to rush out and buy hot dogs on Saturday night, just so I could eat the relish with the hot dogs. The fact that I had already had dinner was of no consequence. This relish is amazing as topping for cheese and crackers. This relish is so good, you want to eat it with a spoon. If you can still find green tomatoes in your local farmers market, you should make this relish right now.
This is green tomato season. Farmers pick the tomatoes that are left on the vines, ripe or not. Some people ripen them on the window sill. I use them to can.

The last tomatoes of 2014

On November 13, the first frost of the season was forecast. I went out to the garden to see what we had that might be harvested. We had an amazing crop of green tomatoes, which I picked, as well as quite a respectable number of hot peppers. That took care of the tomatoes. I walked up to Bethesda to the Women's Farm Market in search of the peppers and onions called for in the recipe.
The farmer had a basket of  "smaller" peppers, half green, half red  and large sweet onions. I was perplexed as to quantities. The recipe called for 15 green tomatoes, which I had, and 36 red and green peppers. Even the smaller peppers were pretty large by the standards of the 1960s , so I reasoned that 15 peppers would be enough to make the full amount of the recipe. This may have been somewhat faulty reasoning, but it seemed to work out in the end.
The friendly farmer sold me the peppers, onions and a pound of Brussels sprouts, and gave me a large paper shopping bag from Whole Foods to cart it home in. No sooner had I walked out of the market that I noticed that the handle was torn, and would certainly not last the two mile walk home. I loaded as many peppers into my too small carry bag as it would take, thus reducing the weight on the paper bag,  and took the bus back to Friendship Heights. There I went to Giant to buy the rest of the ingredients, white vinegar and sugar, as well as a plastic bag to carry everything home in.
Once home, I started chopping. The tomatoes had to be chopped and then sprinkled with salt, after which they had to sit for an hour. Then came cutting up the peppers into "large cubes". This is a time consuming process that had to be interrupted when Bob and I went to church for the cabaret that a choir member stages every few months. The parish hall is transformed into a night club and singers in sparkly outfits sing torch songs.
I got back to the relish Saturday afternoon. This is a recipe that is greatly enhanced by a Cuisinart. The directions say, run the onions and vegetables through a food grinder. The Cuisinart, judiciously used, results in relish of a perfect consistency. Pulse, scrape and check. Don't just buzz, or you will have soup.  Another item that speeds things up is the tea ball.  The directions say to sew the spices into a cheesecloth bag.  I dumped the cloves and celery seed into the tea ball, and put the two cinnamon sticks into the relish, to be fished out prior to canning.
This recipe results in a perfect sweet/sour balance of flavors, and slightly crunchy relish. Many times my canned goods end up gathering dust at the back of the closet in the kitchen, but this one will be used up, I know it.

Really Fantastic Green Tomato Relish

12 green tomatoes cored
1/3 cup coarse salt
24 green peppers
6 red sweet peppers
12 large sweet onions
1 gallon boiling water
4 cups white vinegar
3 cups sugar
1 tablespoon whole cloves
2 tablespoons stick cinnamon pieces
1 teaspoon celery seed

1. Chop the tomatoes and sprinkle with the salt. Let stand one hour. Drain.
2. Core and seed green and red peppers and trim away the white veins. Cut peppers into large cubes. Put peppers and the onions through a food chopper. (Cuisinart, please.) Add half the water and drain immediately in a colander.
3. Add the remaining water and let stand ten minutes. Drain.
4. Add the vinegar and sugar. Tie the cloves, stick cinnamon and celery seeds in a cheesecloth bag and add it. (Use a tea ball.) Bring the mixture to a boil and simmer, uncovered, exactly thirty minutes. Discard the spice bag.
5. Pour the relish into hot sterilized jars and seal in a boiling water bath for fifteen minutes, beginning the timing after the water is boiling. Remove from the boiling water allow to cool and store in a cool, dark, dry place. Makes about six quarts.

Sweet Potato Pone (Gluten Free)

Our son and daughter-in-law came to dinner Thursday night. I decided to make lasagna because we had enough lasagna noodles to make at least two pans of lasagna. Also, they like lasagna. Dessert was a close call. I was going to make apple crumble, which I  had made in the distant past and so would not result in a post. Then I started paging through the cookbook and discovered this. Easy, tasty, and as it happens, leaving a half sweet potato to make sweet potato quesadillas.
After walking to the grocery store, which I do nowadays in order to get in fitbit steps, I began boiling water for the lasagna noodles  and grating sweet potato. It has to bake for three hours, so, I got it in at 4:30.
By 6:30, we needed the oven for the lasagna. Bob examined the pone, which was still in a largely liquid state, and suggested we leave it in as we turned the oven up to 350 degrees for the pasta. That was what we did. It turned out soft and sweet. It would have been better if I had started it later, because it is a dish best served warm.
This is a good fall dessert. It has all the fall flavors, molasses, cinnamon, nutmeg, ginger. Put it in the oven and forget about it. (Don't forget to set the timer, however!)

Sweet Potato Pone

2 cups grated raw sweet potatoes
1 egg beaten
1/2 cup unsulphered molasses
3 tablespoons sugar
3 tablespoons melted butter
grated rind of one orange
2 cups milk
1/2 teaspoon grated fresh or ground ginger
1/2 teaspoon cinnamon
1/2 teaspoon nutmeg
1/2 teaspoon salt
heavy cream or ice cream

1. Preheat the oven to 275 degrees.
2. Combine all the ingredients and pour into a one and one half quart baking dish. Bake three hours. Serve warm with heavy cream or ice cream. Makes six servings.

Fannie Farmer's Watermelon Pickle

Even though pickled watermelon rind is a quintessential American food, appearing in Laura Ingalls Wilder's Farmer Boy, The New York Times Heritage Cookbook does not have a recipe for it. Go figure. However, since a half watermelon had been lurking in our crisper since June 2, and both my husband and Laura, who lives in our basement, go nuts over pickled watermelon rind, I decided to put the rind to good use.
Canning seems to have increased in popularity among the younger foodies out there, so there should be an audience for this. As pickle recipes go, it is moderately time consuming. The rind needs to soak for three hours if you add lime water (more on this later) and all the cutting, peeling, and boiling takes about three more hours. It also requires a fairly substantial outlay of cash on canning equipment. You will need a canning kettle for the boiling water bath, equipped with a rack so the jars are not sitting on the bottom of the kettle, and jars, lids and rings. These things are now available at your local hardware store. If you make the expenditure, you will be able to enjoy canning vegetables, fruits, jams and pickles for the rest of your life.
I chose this particular recipe, among several out there, including one in the always popular Joy of Cooking, because it did not call for hard to find ingredients such as oil of cloves and oil of cinnamon. The Fannie Farmer Cookbooks were a staple in our house when I was growing up. My mother had the 1941 edition when she embarked upon her married life and actually had to learn how to cook. I used to pour over the menu section, drooling over such highlights of entertaining as the smorgasbord, the young children's party and the buffet. By the time I cleaned out my parents' house, 20 years after their deaths, the 1941 edition had virtually crumbled into oblivion. I did keep my sister's copy, the 1965 edition, its pages slightly singed from the time she fell asleep and burned up the cabinets in her New York apartment. This recipe comes from that cookbook.
Watermelon pickle is the original "Use it up, wear it out, make it last or do without," recipe in the spirit of the Depression. The cook is making use of a part of the fruit that would ordinarily be thrown away. I wanted to use up the half watermelon, but as I looked at it, and at the recipe, I decided that one half watermelon would not be enough. So, Thursday, after yoga, I found myself in the odd position of buying a food product so I would have enough material so as not to let leftovers go to waste. I lugged my new watermelon home on the bus, along with two pounds of sugar and two quarts of white vinegar.
After lunch, I started cutting, peeling and boiling. For some reason, this recipe, along with many others written before 2000 suggests that the cook boil the watermelon rind and then peel it. That always seems dumb to me. I find it easier to peel vegetables first, and then boil them. For one thing, it is easier to peel a cold vegetable than a hot vegetable. You need a good peeler to peel watermelons. The peel is tough. Remember to peel away from you. I forgot this elementary safety tip and took a hunk of skin the size of a navy bean off my left thumb. Blood began flowing everywhere. I wrapped my thumb up in a kitchen towel and went back to work. It was a moderately serious injury. By dinnertime, there was a collection of bloody towels worthy of Sweeny Todd lying at the foot of the basement stairs.

By four o'clock, I had cut up my left over watermelon and half a new watermelon, boiled it, cut what was left of the watermelon fruit off the rind, and put it to soak in lime water, or its modern equivalent. Last week, when I was looking into making watermelon pickle, but decided I wasn't up to canning, my husband Bob came back from the hardware store with a jar of something called Pickle Crisp Granules. This is the chemical calcium chloride. Lime is actually calcium oxide. The label on the jar of granules says it works three times faster than pickling lime. So, if I had read the directions, I would have had to soak the rind only one hour instead of three. But, I didn't read the directions. Pickle Crisp Granules are available at your hardware store, and possibly at your local supermarket if you live in an area that does a lot of canning. I don't expect much from my supermarket.
While the rind is soaking, make the pickling syrup. Fannie's quantities turned out not to be sufficient for an entire melon, so I am increasing the proportions by one-fourth. The result is spicy, not too sweet, and a beautiful, translucent gold. Bob pronounced the finished pickles up to standard.

Watermelon Pickle

Rind of one watermelon, about the size of a basketball

Pickling Syrup

5 cups white vinegar
1 1/4 cups water
5 cups sugar
1 tablespoon whole cloves
1 1/2 sticks of cinnamon
1 tablespoon allspice berries

Put all the ingredients of the syrup in a large saucepan and boil until the sugar dissolves. (About five minutes.)

1. Cut the watermelon in the traditional crescent shaped slices, remove the flesh of the melon, and peel the rind. Cut the rind into six inch pieces and boil it for five minutes. Scrape the remaining melon flesh off the rind, and cut the pieces into cubes.
2. Cover the cubes with water in which Pickle Crisp Granules have been dissolved and soak for one hour.
3. Meanwhile, make the pickling syrup, wash your jars and sterilize them and the lids and rings in the boiling water bath kettle.
4. Drain the melon rind, rinse it off, and cover with fresh water. Simmer until the melon rind is tender.
5. Drain off the water, and cover the melon rind with the pickling syrup. Simmer until the rind is clear (translucent, really) and the syrup thick, adding water if necessary.
Note: My rind became translucent after about 40 minutes of simmering, but the syrup did not thicken. I just went ahead and canned the pickles at that point.
6. Pack the hot pickles and syrup in the hot, sterilized jars. Put on the lids and rings, and submerge the filled jars in the boiling water bath. The pickles should stay in the boiling water for 15 minutes.
7. Lift the hot jars out of the boiling water bath with the rack and leave them to cool.
Makes seven pints.

Venison Mincemeat

This year is looking to be a two mincemeat year, especially if I want to finally finish the Northeast section of the cookbook. On Thursday, finding myself with some extra time, I tackled venison mincemeat. The first goal was to locate the venison. Not a problem. In DC, venison is available at the Eastern Market, at the poultry purveyor across the aisle from Union Meat. A good blogger would have made a note of the name of the stall, but sad to say, I paid cash and don't have a record of the name. In 2012, a blogger reported that she bought ground venison at Lets Meats in Del Ray, a neighborhood of Alexandria, and that it was sometimes available at Wegman's.
One may also find venison on the Internet. www.brokenarrowranch.com  is one of several businesses which sell venison by mail. I have never ordered from them. I am merely passing on the information.
Anyhow, I bought a frozen, two pound slab for about $29, and toted it home to defrost it. The recipe calls for Northern Spy apples. Unfortunately, Homestead Farm in Poolesville doesn't have Northern Spies. I got Staymans, an apple that was described as a good cooking apple, with a thick skin.
The recipe envisions the cook using the leftover venison, the tough cuts. Well, those of us without farms or a hunter in the family to bring down your deer, are not going to have tough cuts. The venison I got was insanely tender, as though the deer it came off  had spent its entire career sitting in a lounge chair drinking mai tais and having massages.
In order to deal with the supposed toughness of the meat, the cook is ordered to boil it until it becomes tender. I followed these instructions, with mixed results. This is a problem with Hewitt's recipes. The author probably made venison mincemeat every fall, after deer season. She/he knew how much water it took to boil the meat, etc. I didn't know how much water to use. You might try just adding everything and then cooking it without the pre boiling and be very sparing with the water.
Initially, my mincemeat was more like soup and less like a pie filling that could be dished out in ice cream scoops. I ended up boiling it for three hours to bring down the water content. The result was not satisfying in texture. The apples had virtually disintegrated, and the raisins were huge. I ground the meat in the Cuisinart, which left it very fine. You might want to try to get the venison already ground for a better texture.

Venison Mincemeat

5 pounds tough cuts venison, very finely cut or diced 
1 tablespoon plus one-quarter teaspoon salt
4 pounds Northern Spy apples, peeled, cored and chopped
2 cups cider, scalded
1 cup unsulphured molasses
2 cups honey
2 cups sugar
1 teaspoon ground cloves
1 teaspoon cinnamon
1 teaspoon ground allspice
1/2 pound raisins
1 pint blackberry brandy

1. Cover the venison with cold water. Add one tablespoon salt. Let stand at room temperature two hours. Drain and place in a kettle.
2. Cover with fresh water.  Add remaining salt and the pepper and cook, covered, until meat is very tender.
3. Add the remaining ingredients except the brandy. Bring to a boil and simmer until apples are tender. Cool.
4. Add brandy, reheat almost to the boiling point and pack into hot sterilized  jars. Seal. Cool and store in a cool, dry, dark place for at  least one month before using. Makes eight quarts.

Angel Food Cake

I must have, at some point in my life, made angel food cake. We have an angel food cake pan, after all. I am not a person given to buying kitchen equipment because I might need it sometime in the far distant future. Usually I buy stuff after I have muddled along for a while and then decide, yes, I really do need whatever it might be. So, obviously, I made angel food cake. The index and my scrawled dates next to the recipe tells me, yes, I made Prize Angel Food Cake from the Northeast on January 20, 1995. It was not a memorable occasion.
I made this angel food cake because my son and daughter-in-law were coming to dinner. I wanted something easy. If you have an electric mixer, and who does not in these days, angel food cake is easy. You beat, mix, pour and bake. No standing over a hot stove stirring some concoction that does not want to thicken.  You do need a big bowl. Twelve egg whites beaten takes up a lot of space.
I can see why they call it angel food cake. In the bowl, the batter is pure white, as a child might imagine the robes of angels. It is also very fluffy, of course, with all those egg whites.
Readers might be puzzled by the picture. The directions for angel food cake tell the cook to stick the neck of the cake pan into a bottle, and let the cake cool upside down. This is a picture of my angel food cake cooling over the neck of a bottle. 
There is very little about the angel food cake to be intimidated by. One thing I suggest, is breaking your egg whites into a small bowl and adding them one at a time to the large bowl you plan to beat them in. That way, if your eleventh egg white gets some yolk in it, you have not contaminated an entire dozen eggs.
The recipe says not to grease the pan. This is important. The batter, as it rises, clings to the side of the pan and therefore stays up.
Wikipedia says angel food cakes are usually not served frosted, but with some kind of a sauce poured over. Bob, when informed that there was no frosting, went rummaging in indignation through the jams and jellies collection and heated up ginger marmalade to pour over the cake. That worked, and so would any other jam that you prefer.

Angel Food Cake

1 1/3 cups sugar, sifted twice
1 cup sifted cake flour
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 1/2 cups egg whites, (about 12 whites)
1 1/4 teaspoons cream of tartar
1 teaspoon vanilla
1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract

1. Preheat the oven to 350 degrees.
2. Add one-third cup of the sifted sugar to the cake flour. Add the salt and sift the mixture together three times.
3. Beat the egg whites, preferably with a wire whisk (ahem, unless you are some sort of off the grid purist, use a hand mixer.), until they are foamy and add the cream of tartar. Continue beating until whites are stiff but not dry. Gradually beat in the remaining sugar, one tablespoon at a time. Fold in the vanilla and almond extract. Sift approximately one-quarter cup of the sugar and flour mixture over the batter. Fold in with a rubber spatula. Continue adding the sugar and flour mixture, folding in after each addition.
4. Pour the batter into an ungreased nine-inch tube pan. Bake about fouty-five minutes, or until the top springs back when lightly touched. Immediately turn the pan upside down, suspending tube part over the neck of a funnel or bottle. Let cake stand in the pan until cold, about one and one half hours. Makes enough cake to serve ten.

Quince Marmalade

Quince Marmalade is the last of the unusual and may I say daunting, marmalade recipes in the Northeast section of the New York Times Heritage Cookbook. Whoever heard of cucumber marmalade, or carrot marmalade or tomato marmalade? Not me. Marmalade came from Dundee, in Scotland,  in those white ceramic jars which one then appropriated to put one's pencils in.
Quinces present their own special problem, namely, what are they, and where do you get them? I thought quinces were bright orange, had a smooth skin like a tomato, and sort of a star shaped stem end. I thought I had seen them at Magruder's grocery story in Chevy Chase a couple of years ago. I had  inquired of a fruit and vegetable man at Whole Foods as to when they were available. He told me quinces come in the fall.
When it got to be fall, mid September, I started scratching around grocery stores and the Internet looking for the things.
They were tougher to run down than I would have thought. Harris Teeter might have them in a few weeks. Whole Foods didn't  have them at all. I was shown some uninspiring specimens at the Davenport Safeway and rejected them. I finally found what appeared to be good quality quinces at the Safeway in Potomac. Yay Safeway. They weren't what I had expected at all. They were a pale green with a shape like a lemon on steroids. The fruit and vegetable man told  me they turned yellow when they ripened.
I stuck them in the ornamental fruit bowl on the table and waited to see if they would ripen. Wikipedia tells us that they do not ripen on the tree unless they are frosted and subsequently decay (Huh?). Wikipedia also refers to their strong perfume. I don't have the sharpest nose on the block, but these quinces were not particularly fragrant. Wikipedia also says that quinces, which should properly be referred to in the plural as quince, are not usually eaten raw. I'm  not surprised.
On the first of October, just before we were due to leave for Massachusetts, I decided I had better deal with the quince. I did not want to return to a bowlful of rotten quince.
This recipe, as always, presents certain problems. First of all, it says, four to six medium size quince. Okay. I suspect my quince are bigger than the ones the cook had in mind. I used six. "Put them in a pan" the recipe says.  I guess the author of the recipe had her quince jelly pan in mind. I used the big saucepan. Even then, the quinces wouldn't all fit. One sat on top of the other four. The recipe instructed me to cover it three-quarters of the way with water. Well, in order to have any water at all touching the quince perched on top of the others, I had to use more water than the recipe inferred that I should use.As a result, I had to boil it longer to get the fruit to "jam." But that is getting ahead of myself.
First I had to scald the quince in order to peel them. Peeling my quince was unlike peeling any other fruit, such as peaches, where if one scalds them, the peels slide right off. After doubling the boiling time to account for the quince on top of the other four underwater, I ended  up peeling them with a potato peeler.
Boiling took longer than anticipated. After all, it always does when I make marmalade. I believe in this case the cause was I used more water than the author of the recipe used. Since I don't know how much she used, it is impossible to use the same amount. But I do think I used more because I covered my quince in order to partially submerge the one sitting on top of the others.
How does it taste? Sweet, but without a definite fruit flavor. Even though it contains orange juice and orange peel, it does not taste of oranges. If you want to try this, now's the time, while quince are somewhat available. You do not need a boiling water bath. To can it, one need only boil the clean jars to sterilize them,  put the hot jam in the jars and cover the jam with melted paraffin.

Quince Marmalade

4 to six medium-sized quinces (Sorry, can't help you there. I would say, get what you can.)
grated rind and juice of one orange
2 apples, peeled, cored and sliced
1 teaspoon finely chopped yellow part of lemon peel
sugar (a lot. Buy a five pound bag) 

1. Wash the quince. Place in a pan and add water to three-quarters cover. Bring to a boil and simmer ten minutes.
2. Remove the quince from the cooking liquid. Peel and core the quince, returning the skin and cores to the cooking liquid. Chop the quince and reserve.
3. Cook the skin and cores slowly thirty minutes. Strain and reserve liquid.
4. Place the chopped quince, grated rind and juice of the orange, apples and lemon peel in a heavy pan. Add reserved liquid until pulp is covered by one-half-inch liquid. Bring to boil and simmer gently until fruit is very tender. Mash the fruit. (I used a potato masher.)
5. Measure the pulp into a pan and add three-quarters cup sugar for each cup of pulp. Heat and stir until the sugar dissolves. Boil rapidly until a set is reached, about ten minutes. (It took me over an hour.) )To test for set, put a drop of mixture on a saucer, refrigerate and push your finger into the cooled drop of marmalade. Your finger should leave a clean path when the marmalade is done.)
6. Pour the marmalade into hot sterilized jelly glasses, pour a thin layer of paraffin over and cool. Cover and store in a cool, dark, dry lace. Makes  about 6 six ounce jelly jars.

Poppy Seed Dressing

Hey! All you 21st Century food snobs! (Me included) Salad dressing with sugar in it is good. Not necessarily good for you, but tasty. I cut back on the sugar in this a little. If you follow the recipe, it contains 1/2 cup of sugar and 1/3 cup honey. Which is a lot of sweetener. I cut the sugar in half. What you have is a sweeter oil and vinegar dressing.
The note at the end of the recipe, which usually tells you where you might have been able to buy the ingredients should you have lived in New York City in the 1970s, this time said "Mrs. Linz uses the poppy seed dressing for orange, grapefruit and endive salad." Well, thought I, if it's good enough for the unknown Mrs. Linz of Connecticut, we ought to try it. So we had orange, grapefruit and endive salad which everyone seemed to like. Hey, hey, Mrs. Linz. Are you still out there in Connecticut?
There are various Internet recipes for orange, grapefruit and endive salad. I think we had two grapefruits and 4 oranges for 9 people, plus purple onion strips and, of course, endive. Just kind of do whatever you think best here.

Poppy Seed Dressing

1/2 cup sugar
1 teaspoon dry mustard
1 teaspoon paprika
1/4 teaspoon salt
5 tablespoons tarragon vinegar
1/3 cup honey
1 tablespoon lemon juice
2 tablespoons onion juice or finely grated onion
1 cup vegetable oil (not olive oil)
1 tablespoon poppy seeds

1. Mix together the sugar, mustard, paprika, salt and vinegar until sugar dissolves completely.
2. Add the honey, lemon juice and onion juice or onion. Gradually beat in the oil. Chill.
3. Add the poppy seeds just before serving. Makes about one and one half cups.