Sample of EVER TRUE’s recipes:

RECIPES

“Boxes from Home”

by

Lisa Saunders

Edited by Jacqueline Saunders

            Food--something anyone from any time can appreciate. The folks from home took great care and pride in sending their men tasty things. Of course the soldiers were thrilled to receive them - even if they weren’t from a loved one. When Charles’s regiment arrived at a fort to replace a departing regiment, Charles writes to Nancy that he “ went where [the departing regiment] was and there was some of them had some boxes just sent to them filled with butter and cakes of all kinds and they give me a box about two feet- and- a- half square. It had about ten or twelve pounds of good Pennsylvania Butter in it and the rest was biscuit and sweet cake.  I took it on my shoulders and took it down to my company and you had better believe they was glad to see it.  I told them that it was sent to me from Wayne County and they all thought it was so and I ain’t told them any different and I tell you it went good with us.  Bill Burt said that [any] old box looked good that come from Wayne County.”

            Nancy's time at Forte Foote was spent baking pies and selling them to the soldiers. Apparently she was a large supplier of these delicacies despite the effort to enforce protection "against free trade in pies.  The men claimed that this particularly American variety of pastry offered by outside parties [such as Nancy] was much better than that sold by the subtler [army merchant], but the edict went forth that it must be the sutler's pies or none.  As an immediate result, smuggling of the most heinous character followed, for what freeman could endure having restrictions imposed on pie? Had not Ralph Waldo Emerson said that he rated the intellectuality of a people in accordance as they did or did not appreciate pie? When it came to intellect the Ninth played second to no one" (Roe 51).

            I do not have Nancy's recipe for those famous bootleg pies, but her great-granddaughter, my mother, is also known throughout our region for her delicious apple pies. She sells them through the Suffern Women’s Club to raise money for scholarship funds.  I’ve asked her to share her apple pie recipe as well as other updated versions of recipes for foods mentioned in the letters, such as apple cobbler, since her great grandfather had such an appreciation for them.  Also, Nancy's great-great-great granddaughter, my daughter Jacqueline, likes to bake and she and her friend Amy puttered in the kitchen working from old recipes in order to make the Confederate Johnnycakes or hoecakes.

Apple pie

To Friends from Charles and Nancy: "I have neglected writing for some time but to tell you the truth, I haven't got much time.  I am detailed to work on the barracks and nights, I heft to help Nancy peel apples.  Nancy is in the pie business pretty strong.  Since she has come here she has made up seven barrels of apples and most two barrels of flour.  She has a woman to help her a good deal of the time.  She pays her three shilling a day.  We sell about seventy pies a day and after payday, we can sell three times that many, if we had them…”

My mother, like Nancy, makes apple pies in bulk. Nancy and Charles’s farm had apple orchards, so when apples came into season, my mother and grandmother put together several pies and stored them in their large chest freezer that stood in their mudroom. Now my mother owns a similar freezer and fills them with apple pies every fall. The apple doesn’t fall far from the tree, does it?

Charles wrote that Nancy made seventy pies a day with the help of others doing the peeling.  My mother believes she probably put some apple filling into one crust, folded it over, pinching the sides together, making small “finger pies.”

Pastry for two crust 9 inch pie:

2 cups flour

1 tsp salt

Generous 2/3 cup shortening (Crisco)

4 - 6 tbsp milk or water

Filling
¾ - 1-cup sugar

Dash of salt

1 tsp cinnamon

¼ tsp nutmeg

6 apples

1 tbsp butter

Pastry - Sift flour with salt into large bowl.  Cut in shortening with two knives criss-crossing (I use a pastry blender) until pieces are the size of peas.  Add milk one tbsp at a time, stirring gently after each addition. Use just enough liquid to make it possible to gather half of dough together with a well-floured hand.  Too much water and/or too much stirring make pastry tough.  Shape dough with hands into a large thick round disk. Pat down somewhat with hand on a well floured piece of wax paper.  I put the wax paper on a marble slab.  Put more flour on top of dough.  Roll dough with a marble rolling pin.  Roll lightly, but evenly from center to edges.  When pastry is the correct size, pick up wax paper and drape wax paper with dough over right hand (if you are right handed).  Carefully place on pie tin with dough side down.  Gently lift wax paper off dough. If dough sticks in some areas, scrape off with floured knife.  Tears don't matter too much because dough is easy to patch.

Filling - Combine sugar, salt and spices.  Peel, core and thinly slice apples.  Stir in sugar and spices.  Place apples in pie tin making a high rounded dome of the mixture.  Dot with butter.

After filling is placed on bottom pastry in pie tin, put second rolled out pastry on top.  Pinch edges of two crusts together so that it stands up around pie.  Bake in 425F degree oven for about an hour.  Turn down to 400F after 15 min.

I generally spend a day in the kitchen making several pies.  I bake only the pies we will be using within the next couple of days.  The rest are put in freezer unbaked.

The kitchen and I are covered with flour.

Mary Ann McDowell Avazian

Sample a  RIDE A HORSE NOT AN ELEVATOR recipe:

Fudgy Fingers Fudge:

"Grandma handed me a paper bag filled with fudge for the trip.  'Now don't get fudgy fingerprints all over your parents' car.  They won't be too happy with me if you do.'" (Chapter Twenty-One)

2 cups granulated sugar
1 small can evaporated milk
12 large marshmallows

Mix together, bring to boil in two-quart pot, reduce heat slightly and cook 6 minutes while stirring constantly.

Remove from fire and add:

1 and 1/2 teaspoon vanilla
1/4 pound butter
1 cup chocolate chips

Pour in buttered 8” square pan lined with wax paper. Cool to room temperature. Wrap in wax paper and keep refrigerated. Tastes best chilled. And remember, don’t get your fudgy fingerprints on your parents’ furniture!

Suger and flour free recipes by Mary Ann Avazian:

Oatmeal Cakes     Oven 350 degrees

 Applesauce

Suger and flour free recipes by Lisa Saunders: