Grandes Dames: Grandma Blanche

Circa 1930s, in front of the perennial border.

This is the first in a new series of entries about the ladies and men who have played a formative role in shaping my thoughts on domestic activities.  There is no greater influence in my life in this regard than my maternal grandmother, Blanche.

Born in 1904, she grew up on a farm near Lynden, Ontario, where one of her designated chores was to hold the chicken still while her brother chopped off its head. Her father's farm was typical old-fashioned mixed use farm.  My great grandfather Frank grew a variety of vegetables and other crops, raised animals, made his own sausage and sauerkraut, and grew his own fruit.  He was also an amateur photographer and he processed his own film and photographs.  (More on him later).

Images of early life:  the old farm house, Blanche's brothers, Leo and Frank, and a favourite photo of mine, my grandmother and her sister Winnie, peeling potatoes - at work from an early age.

Blanche and Winnie on the beach at Port Dover.  'MBM' is how my grandmother referred to herself:  Mabel Blanche Mannen.

I love these old photographs of family and leisure life.  The family at the beach. The photo on the bottom left shows Blanche and Winnie again.

Blanche was the third of four children spaced four years apart, two boys and two girls.  My grandmother had only a ninth grade education because her parents could only afford to board her at Brantford to attend high school for one year. She spent much of her life working hard, in ways that I can only imagine, as a domestic servant, maid, store clerk, housekeeper, waitress.  She worked upstairs and downstairs in grand houses.  She worked in the dining room at Ridley College in St. Catherines.  She worked at Eaton's department store.  She worked at the Majestic Restaurant in downtown Hamilton.  She worked hard, and she was pragmatic and sensible.

She was the sort whose hands must always be busy, never sitting down.  When she did, she liked to watch tennis on television.  She read murder mysteries and crime fiction. But she was usually busy - cooking, cleaning, gardening, tending to hundreds of houseplants (African violets were a particular favourite), sewing, baking, canning, pickling. She was happiest when she was busy.

Perhaps typical of her generation, she saved everything.  Scraps of cloth.  Lengths of string.  Thread.  Yarn.  Bits of paper.  Buttons. Postcards.  Hardware.  Nails.  Screws. All of these things carefully organised into envelopes, tins, jars, and boxes, all carefully repurposed.  Much of which, I have inherited.

She baked mean pie crust, and made amazing lemon meringue pie. She was also a clotheshorse. More to follow on Blanche, her collections and her pie crust, in the weeks to come.

Spring Forward.

Eggplants with their seed leaves.

In winter, I hibernate. Hence the long silence from yours truly.  In spring, my energy returns, and so does my enthusiasm for things domestic. Last week, it snowed.  Nevertheless, now is the time when I begin to plan for outdoor activities later in the spring.  Namely, beginning the garden, which starts with seeds.

Back in February, I made a trip to Tregunno Seed Co. on Catherine Street North to pick up potting soil and pots. I ordered my tomato and eggplant seeds online, from The Cottage Gardener and The Cook's Garden.  The Cottage Gardener is a family owned nursery near Port Hope, Ontario, that specialises in rare heirloom varieties of tomato.  They have a vast selection of tomatoes, but also grow many other heritage and unusual varieties of other vegetables. The Cook's Garden is an American seed company.  They have a few varieties of tomato and eggplant that I like and have not found anywhere else.

Seed Packets.

Every year, I like to try a few new varieties of tomato, along with my favourites.  I love tomatoes, and in summer time, I eat several tomatoes everyday.  I also like to can whole and stewed tomatoes to eat plain and to cook with - San Marzano.  Last year I also grew a variety called Principe Borghese, an Italian variety grown for sun-drying.  These are repeat for this year. My ultimate standby is the powerhouse tomato Brandywine, a huge, beautiful, flavourful red fruit. Wonderful for eating fresh, cooking and preserving.

This year, I may have slightly lost my mind as I decided to grow 11 different varieties.  2 varieties will be for preserving - canning and drying.  The rest will be for eating fresh, and canning as well.

This season's other players are a multi-hued cast ranging from white (White Queen)  to yellow-orange (Jaune Flammee, Nebraska Wedding and Valencia), to multi-coloured (Big Rainbow), to red (Rose de Berne and Bloody Butcher) to purple (Black Krim).

Seeds are amazing.  An enormous tomato plant will grow from each of these dry little seeds!

 Once I have the seeds planted (3-5 seeds per pot), I water them, and place them inside these plastic domes in a sunny window until they have germinated.  Once the plants start coming up, I will begin rotating the trays - the plants seek sunlight, so will lean toward the light -  unless rotated daily, you will have spindly, crooked plants! Once the plants are about 1-2 cm tall I remove the domes.  If the weather is warm, I will put the dome-covered trays outside.  In the sun, the trays become like mini greenhouses.

Tomatoes toasty and warm in their little greenhouses.

Three weeks ago, I planted 5 varieties of eggplants, and I now have little seedlings.  Soon, they will need thinning, but I am waiting until they start to get their second leaves. As soon as the snow melts, I will begin putting them outside in the cold frame during the day.

My darling eggplants. Are they not adorable?

After danger of frost, I will plant my babies out in the garden -by my Grandma Blanche's rule of thumb - after the May 24th holiday, or when the black walnut trees begin to leaf.

The Fruit Cellar of Miss H...

Today, more photographs of my installation, The Fruit Cellar of Miss H...  in the Project Window at Harbourfront Centre. The exhibition continues until Sunday November 7, 2010.

I was an artist-in-residence in the textile studio at Harbourfront Centre from 2006-2009.  I always enjoy installing pieces at Harbourfront because their wonderful installation crew is immensely talented, and because the Visual Arts and Crafts curators, Patrick Macauley and Melanie Egan are a such pleasure to work with.  You just want to please them.

Below, I have included my artist statement from the didactic panel at Harbourfront Centre. Not included in the panel information was the materials I work with - a lot of cotton organdie (I love the pliant nature of it, how it responds to being shaped so obediently) and all sorts of wools, some silk, some linen.  Much of the fabric I dyed using natural dyes - Queen Anne's lace, goldenrod, Lady's Bedstraw, madder, logwood, black walnut, pomegranate, cochineal - and some of it I screen-printed using discharge paste, earth pigments and gold leaf.  All of the screen printed imagery is taken from old recipes, photographs and ladies' magazines from the 1930s. All the fruits and vegetables are hand-stitched sculptures. The majority of mason jars (the Crown jars) were my grandmother's, the rest have been acquired at flea markets and antique markets, especially Aberfoyle.

The work is difficult to photograph as it is behind glass, and directly across from a brightly lit window.

Artist Statement

Preserving. Formerly, this household task occupied much of summer and autumn, in order to conserve fresh food for consumption during winter, when it was a scarce. The filled shelves of a cold cellar afforded a sense of accomplishment, virtue and security. This pursuit, so representative of ‘old fashioned values’, is lately experiencing resurgence as we place more importance on the provenance of our food.

Each year, I can fruits, pickles and jellies. This is an inherited habit. A few jars put down by my grandmother still remain after a quarter century.  In particular, one treasured jar of her pickles has become like a votive from her to me. This seemingly mundane object acts as a time capsule of seasons and places past, preserving her memory.

This body of work imagines the fruit cellar as a storehouse of memories. From season to season, the contents of each jar are imbued with vestiges of the past, triumphs and regrets, joys and sorrows. The vessels are an investment in the future as much as they are reliquaries of the past.  The fruit cellar acts as a hope chest of both realised and unrequited aspiration.

Home Economics (2009)

Home Economics  is an installation piece that I showed at Harbourfront Centre in summer of 2009 as part of the Building for the Economy exhibition in the Architecture Space.  Home Economics considers the earliest origins of the term which suggests the importance of the home as the centre of human life. It offers a cautionary tale that recalls eras such as during the Great Depression where recycling was second nature and maintaining the essentials of life was the cornerstone of every home.

installation view

For several years, I have been collecting monogrammed household linens.  I have always been obsessed with language and etymology and the preoccupation we have with labeling our possessions. When the wealthy did not always have their linens laundered at home, monograms served a practical purpose of proclaiming to whom the article of cloth belonged.  It also, of course, denoted status.  I have used the individual letters here on these hand towels to  spell out commands associated with good management of household resources.  I used what letters I had, and where they were missing I embroidered the monograms on blank towels to spell out 'scrimp' and 'save', etc. I plan on rearranging the pieces various other compositions exploring household language.

I love the dictionary, and consult it first when researching new ideas in the studio. You can read the 6 individual words below; each is a colloquialism of the word 'economize'. Read below for an excerpt from my artist statement on the piece.

HOME ECONOMICS

home economics, plural noun [often treated as sing. ] cooking and other aspects of household management, esp. as taught at school.

The word ‘economy’ alludes to thrift, prudence, restraint, and frugality. Its origin is French (économie), via Latin from Greek (oikonomia), meaning ‘household management’.[1]

Home Economics recalls a time when housekeeping, which included preserving and canning, laundry, sewing and mending, was achieved without the conveniences of modern appliances and supermarkets. The homemaker was tasked with creating a comfortable and attractive home while living within one’s means, making do with resources at hand, and planning for the future. This was often accomplished with do-it-yourself spirit, and personalized embellishments were done by hand, reusing and repurposing old goods. This installation suggests imperatives that urge us all to consider the necessities and excesses in our own lives.  

 

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[1] economy |iˈkänəmē|

noun ( pl. -mies)

1 the wealth and resources of a country or region, esp. in terms of the production and consumption of goods and services.

• a particular system or stage of an economy : a free-market economy | the less-developed economies.

2 careful management of available resources : even heat distribution and fuel economy.

• sparing or careful use of something : economy of words.

• (usu. economies) a financial saving : there were many economies to be made by giving up our offices in Manhattan.

• (also economy class) the cheapest class of air or rail travel : we flew economy.

adjective [ attrib. ]

(of a product) offering the best value for the money : [in comb. ] an economy pack.

• designed to be economical to use : an economy car.

PHRASES

economy of scale a proportionate saving in costs gained by an increased level of production.

economy of scope a proportionate saving gained by producing two or more distinct goods, when the cost of doing so is less than that of producing each separately.

ORIGIN late 15th cent.(in the sense [management of material resources] ): from French économie, or via Latin from Greek oikonomia ‘household management,’ based on oikos ‘house’ + nemein ‘manage.’ Current senses date from the 17th cent.

The Fruit Cellar of Miss H...

 Sweet Pickled Onions. Fruit Cellar detail, 2010, Cotton organdie, linen, Queen Anne's Lace dye, discharge and earth pigment screen print, stitch, vintage Crown Imperial Pint jars.

Our Domestic Scientist has been on hiatus the last few weeks.  The beginning of the school year is always a whirlwind, and this year is no exception.  I've been at work sewing and dyeing.  For the past six months I've been working on a large scale installation piece for the project window at  Harbourfront Centre in Toronto.  I just installed the piece, The Fruit Cellar of Miss H... on Friday.  Here are a few detail shots of the pieces.  Photos of the installation to follow soon.

Gherkins. Fruit Cellar detail, 2010, Cotton organdie, pomegranate dye, discharge screen print, stitch, vintage Crown Imperial Pint jar.

Good Books: The Joy of Cooking, 1953

I have a large collection of both new and old cook books, amongst them, two different editions of The Joy of Cooking by Irma S. Rombauer.  One (1936) belonged to my great-grandmother May, and the other (1953) to grandmother, Blanche.  I have two copies of the 1953 edition. Grandma's was falling apart, so when I saw a more pristine copy for $10 at an antique store, I scooped it up.

It  is a bit of an old chestnut, but this truly is a good cook book. It is a faithful, basic guide to all kinds of cooking, and I refer to it often.  The 1953 edition was a complete kitchen manual, advising the homemaker in all aspects of meal-preparation, menu-planning, nutrition, food-preservation, nutrition and the latest kitchen technology.  The Joy of Cooking gives precise and concise instructions on everything one could reasonably expect to want to know how to cook in 1953, and offered hints about how to run a kitchen, especially helpful to the uninitiated 1950's bride. It even tells you how to clean up!

The newest household appliances: the electric mixer,  the blender and the pressure cooker.

Mrs. Rombauer serves up all manner of charming (and timely) advice:

'Serve hot food hot from hot dishes. Serve cold food chilled from chilled dishes.  Keep calm even if your hair striggles and you drip unattractively. Brush up before serving. Your appearance and the appearance of the food are important, but eating in a quiet atmosphere is even more important to the family's morale and digestion.

A meal represents effort and money.  It is worthy of a dignified hour.'

This book emphasizes the true importance of the kitchen as the centre of the home. Some of the instructions, such as those for canning, are now outdated compared to today's standards, but this book also contains information not found anywhere else.

Canning instructions illustrate how to use different types of canning jars and lids.

I love the illustrations in this edition.

How to prepare artichokes and steam asparagus.

Almond Shortbread Raspberry Jam Sandwiches

When I was in university, I worked in an English tea room, and I had to make hundreds of tarts, cookies, and scones every week.  It was then that I became truly at ease with baking and making pastry.  We used to make several pounds of butter pastry at once (by hand, without an electric mixer!).  I learned lots of tricks and was introduced to many handy tools working in the tea room kitchen.

These cookies are a hybrid between Empire (or Belgian) cookies and shortbread. At the tea room, we always iced the Empire cookies with almond icing, and they had raspberry jam in the middle. When I make these at Christmastime, I cut them into star shapes or trees, or hearts for Valentine's day.  You can use any kind of jam, but I like raspberry best.

Shortbread is one of the simplest types of cookies to make.  The basic recipe of butter, sugar, salt and flour can be adapted with any flavour simply by adding various extracts, fruit, nuts, sugar or chocolate.

1/2 lb of soft butter (1 cup)
1/2 cup of white sugar
1 tsp vanilla extract
1 tsp + almond extract (I add extra sometimes)
1/2 cup ground almonds
1 tsp sea salt or kosher salt
2 cups flour

Cream butter and sugar together.  Add the remaining ingredients in order listed.  Mix together until dough is smooth.  This time, I used an electric mixer, but it is easy to do by hand. In fact,  the dough is easier to handle if you mix it by hand. Form dough into a ball, flatten it into a disc, and wrap in wax paper. Chill 1 hour.

Preheat oven to 325 degrees.

Roll out dough to 1/4 inch thickness.  Use flour as needed to prevent dough sticking.  I like to roll my pastry and dough directly on the counter.  This gives you lots of space to manoeuver.  My rolling pin belonged to my great-grandmother.  It is a great pin; it's heavy hardwood, and moves really smoothly. My favourite part of it is the scorch mark on one end where it was left too close to the woodstove.

Cut into desired shapes, and place on cookie sheet.  Chill in the freezer until cookies are stiff.  This will help them keep their shape while baking.  Bake cookies 15-20 minutes, or until edges are just golden. Cool on rack.

When cool, spread a generous layer of raspberry jam on the bottom of one cookie and top with a second cookie.  Gently press together. If you let them sit for a bit, the jam will set a little, and they will be less messy.

Enjoy with tea.