Homemaking – Page 22 – Home's Cool!

Whew! This Is Getting Deep!

Posted on October 30, 2010September 24, 2014 by Katharine

Next week won’t be much better, but come on and get a great start to the most hectic time on earth–America’s solstice social habits.

I promise, after November 7th, we’ll get on to something lighter, like recipes and time savers. We’ll need the break.

After all, recipes and time savers are part of being home, right? Right!

And home’s cool, right? Right!

In fact, here’s a sneak preview recipe. I call it Lightning Emergency Biscuits. Only two ingredients, ready in 15 seconds flat.

Here goes: Mix equal parts of self-rising flour and whipping cream. Period.

Mix with a fork and be quick about it because this starts out runny and thickens itself to biscuit dough consistency like lightning. You are done. Just knead, cut, and bake as usual. My family swoons over these. They don’t make good dumplings, though. Sighs.

The best part about this, in my opinion, is you can mix just 1/4 cup cream with 1/4 cup self-rising flour and have yourself a nice big biscuit in no time, with no leftovers. OR, you can mix a whole quart of cream with 4 cups s/r flour and feed the whole Thanksgiving crowd, in almost the same zero time.

After November 7th, I’ll share how to make your own self-rising flour out of whole wheat flour, for the extra-special real-food folks.

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(Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Homemaking, Inspiring, Scripture, Wisdom, Wives, Womanhood

Gramma’s Wisdom – Small Things

Posted on October 9, 2010March 19, 2015 by Katharine

Scripture says knowing God’s will is a blessing. Sometimes doing it is hard.

At every step, the enemy of our souls is waiting for an opportunity to take out anyone he can and always watching for a chance to steal, kill, and destroy. We can be his victims. Or we can fight that good fight of faith. The choice is ours and this is the meaning of the verse: Choose ye this day whom ye will serve… We serve the Lord when we:

make progress, move forward,
see our invisible enemy and beat him to the blessing,
receive the goodness God had planned for us,
take our place at the front, in any role from king to pawn.

So many think we must be doing something big for God, but He created a world full of small things that also serve Him.

The humble bee, for instance, has recently encountered much more respect for its astonishing service to us all. Calmly buzzing from flower to flower for centuries, it feeds us. It goes where no man can go. We have learned: its demise is our demise.

The humble housewife, lately, has not enjoyed such an uplifting experience. Calmly buzzing from laundry to kitchen for centuries, she has kept us and her demise is our demise.

The humble mother has not enjoyed such uplifting, either. Calmly buzzing from diapers to diploma, she keeps us until we are adults. Her demise is the demise of our children.

No, the woman, as she is, has not enjoyed uplifting. Only when she pretends at being a man does even she, herself, acknowledge her value as a creature.

What if the woman were to beat off the one who would chase her into this disorder? What if she were to reach for the blessings of being herself? What if she were to take the lead as a woman, instead of grasping at being the man. She would serve the Lord.

It sure gives “charge” a new meaning.

When life is right-side up, the world works better, and our world is not working so well. We can learn this. We need to learn this. We can charge into this survival battle with confidence. Someone has to, if only for the children.

So, who has the equipment? Who has the temperament? Who has the muscles, strengths, right desires? Is it not woman, in numbers too big to ignore?

We buzz. We go where no man can go.

Homemaking, Husbands, Inspiring, Wisdom, Wives

Gramma’s Wisdom – Go Faster!

Posted on October 8, 2010March 19, 2015 by Katharine

Life can fill so quickly with predicaments that weaken our intentions. A simple variation can derail me.

One day last spring was all about laundry until I woke up. Really late. The recent time change had messed up my life. I aimed at sleep, but missed the mark. When I asked a pharmacist about melatonin, he told me the brain already makes that. When I said, “I know it, but my brain is confused,” he nearly fell down laughing.

The melatonin hurt my stomach. The gift of sleep presented itself to me, those days, in three-hour shifts, with three hours between each shift.

Eventually everything catches up with everyone. The impossibility of waking at 7:30 to do all the laundry and arrive in town before 10:00 ruled my every action. Some of the laundry washed while some dried, when I left without my usual shower. Half-way to town, I remembered what I forgot: breakfast. Lunching, finally, at 2:00, left me weak.

Anyway, during that day, I experienced a refreshing visit with an old friend. She showed me her reproduction quilt. Some of the pieces are about a half-inch square. Of course, she hand-pieced it, over 2000 pieces. She lives alone in what she calls “this broken down house” and delights, as I do, in fabrics. She showed me how she quilts and how she locks her stitches. We discussed my curtains. I save this visit with her as a treat for when I need a return to reality.

Then it was on to the printer, on to the bank, on to the library, zooming as best I could without breaking any laws. Zooming to grab a short lunch, zooming to transfer laundry loads, zooming to fold and hang clothing, zooming to check chickens, zooming to make the bed (anytime before 4:30 p.m. counts), zooming to answer the phone, zooming to—does it matter?

Does it matter as much as a friend and her quilt?

My husband was out of white socks and hoped to play racquetball the next day. I paid close attention to folding his socks, stayed up late to get it done. I believe in making laundry happen for my people. It is my profession: I am an expert, and I believe a person can teach himself to enjoy any activity. I enjoy doing laundry. It calms me. I derive satisfaction from gazing at a long row of expertly-ironed, long-sleeved shirts and watching my husband leave in the morning, wearing a crisp, good-smelling shirt. It is a competition, although most women do not realize it, and secretly, I win.

Next morning, when I again awoke late, I remembered what I had forgotten: to place the folded socks where my husband could find them. They were still atop the file cabinet, where I had sleepily left them, and he was gone.

Okay, so you win, after all.

Blessings of Habit, Homemaking, Inspiring, Scripture, Wisdom, Wives

Gramma’s Wisdom – Spring Cleaning

Posted on October 7, 2010November 29, 2016 by Katharine

They tell me old timers used to practice Spring-cleaning every year. My mother did. For a long while, I felt guilty when I failed even to nod in that direction. Now I realize why they did it and why they had the energy.

And what a blessing it was, in disguise.

They had to. Winter warmth cost them more than just the husband’s fuel bill. The fuel deposits carried an extra annual cost for the wife: Spring-cleaning. Smoke from wood or coal settled ash onto every surface, even walls, curtains, and ceiling. Humid breezes from spring’s open windows melded with this deposit, forming mold. It was clean or die, and they knew it. Hence the motivation to have some energy.

I recently heard from some beautiful elderly women who remember their grandmothers’ Spring-cleaning. Drafting every member of the family and any neighbors who wanted to trade services, they ordered every piece of furniture outdoors. I know why. Every piece needed cleaning, fore and aft, inside and out, yes.

However, the carpet, itself, also had to make that trip outdoors for a good scrubbing and sunning, and to grant that sub-floor its own turn with the soap and scrub brush.

Everything, everything, in the house was clean as new, only one week later.

Usually they worked together, neighbors helping each other by turns, just as the men often did the harvest. Spring-cleaning and the harvest were equally essential to life, and they knew it. God had told them in Leviticus 14, and, of course, lately we’ve learned He was right, that a moldy house is bad, but back then they didn’t have any better sense than to believe God.

Well, of course, that was the right thing to do, but to believe Him so much that they would act on it by actually removing mold or even the potential for mold, was their only recourse, lacking today’s science.

Well, of course, today’s science isn’t so advanced if they actually already knew these things back in our great-great-great-grandmothers’ days, but it just proves that those verses actually were right.

I mean, to invest an entire week of hard work into believing that a few Bible verses might be right, was the best they could do. They had no way of knowing the dangers of mold or the importance of washing things

Oh.

I think I’ll go dust for a while. ‘Bye, now.

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Katharine is a retired home educating mom who writes about all things “woman”, from a Godly viewpoint, here on this site, and at The Conquering Mom. Her writing appeared in several magazines for 15 years, and she is currently working on several books. She loves to write, speak, teach, cook, garden, spoil her hennies, and watch old movies with popcorn.