Evelyn Birkby Kitchen Klatter Show, December 31, 1985

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Evelyn Birkby: And greetings good friends everywhere. I'm the oldest one of the four people in this room, so I think I have the right to speak first. Hallie: And I shall go second. This is Hallie. Hello friends. Juliana: This is Juliana and I'm a mere baby but there's even a smaller baby person sitting next to me. Verline: I get to be the baby of the family. This is Verline. Juliana: You're the baby of the family. Evelyn Birkby: Well, I would say I was Lucile? Juliana: No! Evelyn Birkby: Oh. That seems to be the name. Okay. Well, we're gonna visit with you folks today. All kinds of things have gone just soaring through our heads, you might say. Where should we start? Now, there are four of us and we ought to be able to think of some reasonable place to start, if there is such a thing. Hallie: You said you had a good story to tell us about a dinner that you and Abigail had prepared. Evelyn Birkby: Yes, and the things that happened that night at that dinner haunted us for a long, long time. In fact, I'm given to being awake a great deal at night, and inevitably, sooner or later, that whole thing comes right back again. Well, I'll tell you what this dinner celebrated. Abigail and I jointly put on this big ... and really wonderful food, if I do say so ... a wonderful dinner in honor of Howard and Mae when they had returned from their wedding trip. Now, this sounds all sensible and reasonable doesn't it? It didn't turn out that way. The food was wonderful. Now, there was nothing wrong with the food and many years have passed since this happened and I can't tell you what we had to eat, but Abigail was a very good cook and I wasn't exactly a slouch in the kitchen in those days, you know. I could turn out some pretty edible food, too. But it was what happened aside from the food that proved to be such a disaster. Abigail had inherited from her mother's family a beautiful, a magnificent great silver platter, and we had planned to serve the meat on this platter with ... Oh, I remember what it was going to be, too. It was going to be a turkey. It was not turkey season, but by now we'd moved along in time where you can get turkey not just during the holiday season. It was to be a turkey and the tray was big enough to accommodate this big old turkey, and some beautiful candied apples around for decoration and for color. Well, what happened that proved to be such a terrible disaster was this. I didn't realize... I had a stove, gas stove, and incidentally I prefer cooking with gas, but it had a pilot light and I never had had occasion really to discover that over a period of time the heat from the pilot light could wreak damage. We wanted the tray to be hot, you see, and I thought, "Well, I'll put it down here," you see, "on the pilot light so it'll be good and warm when the feast's all ready." All right. When I went out to bustle around and get busy on that turkey proposition, I found instead of the platter being so beautiful, in the whole center was a pile of melted silver. Hallie: Oh my. Evelyn Birkby: Oh my. Oh my! Juliana: Mother, I do remember that. I think you let out a shriek that was probably heard all the way to Florida. Evelyn Birkby: Probably and even beyond Florida. I've never been more horrified in my life. Even Abigail, who had a great deal of composure, even Abigail made some strange noises. The upshot of the whole thing was that the tray just had to go out on the back porch and we just grabbed an old china tray. We were in such a state of shock, you know, that it's a miracle that we could even have the wits enough to get a regular old china platter down. But that was just the beginning and it seems to me that ... I can't remember now. The tray made such a profound impression upon me because we had to send it into Chicago to get it repaired. I'm telling you times were hard and it was a pretty expensive thing to get that thing restored. Juliana: Well you know, Mother, excuse me Hallie. I didn't want to interrupt you, but you know that tray is still just functioning beautifully. Evelyn Birkby: It is? I'm glad to hear it. Verline: Well, it is, and I had the opportunity to see it this fall when Cousin Clark was married to Marty [Delzell 00:04:43]. Aunt Abigail really outdid herself. Honestly, she had prepared food. We had buffets for breakfast, lunch, and dinner, and I remember distinctly seeing the big silver tray in use at that buffet. Evelyn Birkby: You saw it again. I've never seen it since the fatal night. Well, I saw it when it came back, you understand, but after that, no. Verline: Well, it's still going strong. Evelyn Birkby: Well, I'm glad to hear that. Juliana: Not near a pilot light, huh? Verline: No. No. In fact, I'm trying to think. I think Aunt Abigail has an electric stove and so I don't think it even has a possibility of melting again now. Let's hope not anyway. Evelyn Birkby: Well, this is a word of warning to anyone with a pilot light, and if you have a family heirloom made of silver, don't let it stand in that area to get nice and warm. Juliana: But you know, Mother, really. We should have figured that out, because I remember using the pilot light for that old cast iron tea kettle, and you know how dry houses get in the winter, and the tea kettle was always kept full and sitting on top of the pilot light, and it kind of gave out ... well, it must have been steam, which would have told anybody that it was hot. But [crosstalk 00:05:58]- Evelyn Birkby: Have you ever heard of two people who weren't exactly too bright? Hallie: Well, how many people were you feeding that night? Evelyn Birkby: Oh, we had a crowd. Hallie: Did you? Evelyn Birkby: Oh, yes we had a crowd. Hallie: And that helped us. Evelyn Birkby: Oh, we put up card tables. We had a big crowd here. As you've said, I'm sure they could hear us beyond Florida. Juliana: Probably. You know, I did want to mention just a couple of things about this wedding in Denver this fall. We were able to go up to attend a wedding, and it turned into just one of the biggest family reunions that the Driftmier clan's been able to pull off in a long time, and also the Morrison family, because Aunt Abigail, of course, her maiden name was Morrison, and she has two brothers, and they were there with their families. Then of course Clark's bride's family was all there. And so it was really quite an undertaking for Aunt Abigail to keep fixing all these buffets. She made the best egg sausage strata-type casserole with like layers of bread and egg and then it had all this other stuff in it. Oh, it was just ... That's the one that stuck in my mind as the really spectacular breakfast thing. Mother: How long do you suppose she'd cook before all of this big shindig? Juliana: Well, I don't know, but she kept pulling things out of the freezer, so I think she was definitely planning ahead. She had a huge plate of chocolate chip cookies, and I remember Uncle Howard going in there and saying, "There's only one cookie left, and I'm getting it." Aunt Abigail said, "Oh, are the cookies out?" and went back to the freezer and pulled out another whole big container of them, so I think she really must have been working a long time. Mother: Well, you know when Abigail came here as a young bride, she did not come here as a young bride. Her father died. She had planned to be married in her own hometown in Onawa, Iowa. The Morrisons had lived there for years. Her mother died when Abigail was only eight or nine years old, and from that time on they had a series of housekeepers in the house. Her father was advanced in age and in poor health, and all of the plans had been for her marriage to our brother Wayne to take place at the Morrison home in Onawa. But then circumstances ... Her father died very suddenly of a heart attack and so the whole thing turned around that she came to Shenandoah to be married down here, you see. She had never, you see, with this series of housekeepers in the house and going away to college, she was in New York for a while. She graduated from the University of Iowa, got a Masters Degree at the University of Iowa, and she didn't have any contact with the kitchen. So, when she arrived in this town she didn't know nuttin' about cooking. Isn't that what she told you? Juliana: Yes. That's what she told me at that weekend in Denver, and I'm going to finish the rest of what she told me, and I think Hallie and Verline will appreciate this, and that is Aunt Abigail pulled me aside and she said, "You know, when I was first learning how to cook, your mother said something to me that made an undying impression on me." She said, "I've been following this ever since." She said, "Your mother said, 'Enough is all right. Too much is better.'" I really think our whole family is kind of geared the same way. If we don't have leftovers then we didn't fix enough. Verline: That's right. Evelyn Birkby: Well, I tell you. When you grow up in a big family, and on only rare occasions did simply nine of us sit down to our table. There were always other people at the table, and this calls for a great quantity of food, but at the same time, Juliana, I've been alone for a good many years now, you know, just Betty and I here together, and I have learned to adjust to the fact that you don't want too much. Juliana: Well, fortunately I have a family that enjoys leftovers. In fact Jed says "Well, I can count on three different meals a week and then one night to eat the rest of all those three meals." Do you ever do that, Hallie? Hallie: Yes ma'am I do. Evelyn Birkby: Well, do you cook a great deal at one crack and then just keep dipping into it or what? How do you manage? Hallie: Yes I do, Det, and I think I do it on purpose, too, because I'm like you. When I get ready to fix a meal for company, I want enough, and I want it half to be left over. I don't want a bowl left empty that there has not been enough of a particular thing. And genius like Jed, I know what I'm going to have to eat for quite a long time. He's pretty good about it if I do the leftovers the next day, but you better put the rest of 'em away and hold it til the next week and sort of camouflage it a little bit. Evelyn Birkby: How 'bout your family, Verline? Verline: We are one of the families that do not care for leftovers. Not coming from a large family, why, we are very cautious about that, I guess, because we don't like the leftover. A lot of times if we cook a roast, particularly now that our appetites have changed and my father's retired, if we cook a roast we're like the rest of you. We know what we're going to have the rest of the week and eventually we will freeze it if we can because you get tired of it. We've not had the big families like you had. Evelyn Birkby: Well, I'm telling you it's quite an experience to grow up in a big family and always some other people, too. Do you know, Juliana, what became of that big dining room table that was pulled its length all of the time and seated so many? Juliana: No. What happened? Evelyn Birkby: Well, I can tell what happened to that dining room table. One of Frederick's very best friends was Sam Brown and they lived at that time that Frederick was growing up ... the Browns lived right across the street in that brick house. And so Sam was one of the many people who at various times sat down at that table, too, and he had very warm associations with that table. So, when both of our parents were gone and the family home was up for sale and the furniture that those of us ... we were all established in our own homes by this time, Sam made a special trip down here to find out if he could buy that table. Juliana: Oh my goodness. Evelyn Birkby: Uh-huh. And he did buy the table, so I know where the table lays, that table that had so many associations with it. Hallie: You know, I think this really tells us something, because I can remember when we had my mother's table left to be sold because all of us, as you say, were established with those things in our homes, and I think in the days of your mother and my mother, they must have all had very large families. Not only their own children, but the brothers and sisters who brought home families and you always had to have a big table. Evelyn Birkby: That's right. Hallie: Her table was the same way. It had those beautiful round legs on it and underneath was the extra two legs that when you put the leaves all in, like five or six of them, ... Evelyn Birkby: Supported them. Hallie: ...it supported all those extra leaves. Juliana: Well, I know that table of Grannie's was just huge and you were talking about the carved legs, and I still remember ... Mother, maybe you can tell me where that came from originally. There was a table, I believe it was an oak table, and it had been treated with white lead. Now, I don't know if they still do that to stuff now, but the wood grain had been rubbed with white lead and it had penetrated into the grain, so it was a very unusual finish and just lovely. Well, as I said, I don't remember what happened to the table, but when the table finally disintegrated, my father kept those legs and turned them into the most beautiful candlesticks. They weren't something you'd put on the table to use as a candlestick, but well, with holiday season the way it is now, people would either put them out in front or they'd put big, red pillar candles on them and things like that, and you could use them on the floor. Now, where did that table come from, do you remember that? Mother: Yes. You bet I remember that. That we bought the very year that we arrived here. You see, I've lived in this one patch of ground now ... and so has Juliana for that matter, her basic roots are right here in this patch of ground ... for forty years. We did not have ... we did not ship with us furniture. Well, two pieces yes, but by and large no, and he found this old solid oak table at a ... well, at maybe some sale or auction, somewhere, and picked it up for virtually nothing because it was in bad shape. He is the one who refinished it. Juliana: Oh, really? Evelyn Birkby: Oh yes. Juliana: Aha. Evelyn Birkby: He refinished the table and he was the one who used the white lead and it was a very unusual and very beautiful table. Verline: Well, I wonder if anyone does that today, Evelyn Birkby: I don't know. Verline: And I always had the sneaking feeling that maybe when that table was purchased it was purchased with the legs in mind and not necessarily as a whole table. Evelyn Birkby: I don't know. I wouldn't be able to answer. I just know that we ate off of it for a long, long time. Hallie: You know, you talked about using the legs for candle holders. There was a time when those old legs were very, very popular and people used them for table lamps. Juliana: Oh, really? Hallie: Drill a hole down through the leg and put the cord and made them electrified. So they made beautiful, beautiful lamps. Evelyn Birkby: Oh, my. Verline: [crosstalk 00:15:24]. Evelyn Birkby: Well, I'd never even thought of that. Hallie: Yes. Evelyn Birkby: That's right. Verline: Well, I think just about everything in the world's been turned into lamps at one time or another. Would you agree with that statement? Hallie: Just about. Yes. Verline: Have you seen the milk can lamps? Hallie: Yes I've seen those. Juliana: Oh yes, the milk can lamps. Evelyn Birkby: No, I haven't heard of that. Hallie: Yes. Evelyn Birkby: Where are they, all over? Hallie: [crosstalk 00:15:40] Have you heard about the milk cans ... Evelyn Birkby: Well, sure. Hallie: ... that used to hold five or ten gallons [crosstalk 00:15:46]- Evelyn Birkby: Well, of course, I remember those. Hallie: [crosstalk 00:15:45] very popular, yes, and those I've seen into mailboxes, into lamps, yes. Another lady had one as a ... used it for a floral arrangement and had it so that the plants were down there too. So these are very popular, too. In fact, when you go sometime, I think, to craft shows, you see so many things that are old like we were talking about that are made into something very useful. Very pretty. Juliana: Well, I think we're beginning to appreciate some of these old things more and more. Well, how about the old barns back in this neck of the woods? Hallie: Barn boards? Juliana: Barn boards. People are paying premium prices for that old weathered wood now, and golly, even ten years ago I bet they were just tearin' 'em down wondering what to do with it. Evelyn Birkby: Well, every community had a brick factory, and they turned out what they called clay core brick. Did you know that a number of people in other sections of the Midwest have used big nasty trucks and they have made a small fortune hauling this stuff down to Texas. The Texans, you know, they had money going for the real McCoy. Juliana: Well, the Mexicans too, Mother. Evelyn Birkby: All right. Juliana: I'm not a among them in my mind. Evelyn Birkby: No, but you know these clay core bricks, they don't manufacture anything like that today, the clay core bricks. That's proved to be a very, very popular thing with the wealthy Texans. The kind who send their Learjets up to Omaha to pick up steaks. That kind of a deal. Hallie: You know, Kent was hauling furniture one time, and he took a complete semi-load of old rickety broken down and some good chairs from a home in someplace in the East. I think it was out of Pennsylvania. He said when he went to pick up these chairs, it was a lane or a street that was very hard to get to and this home, these people in this home had collected all of these chairs and they were taking them back to Texas, as you say, and refinishing all those chairs and then would resell them. He said, "I just couldn't believe it when there were that many of them in that many pieces, but they knew how to reproduce the parts and refinish the chairs and match whatever somebody would want to buy. Evelyn Birkby: You know, I'm wondering how many ... I wonder if people, if we have a generation today that will be able to duplicate the kind of craftsmanship that the generations before us ... I'm thinking about my brother Howard. He could fix the most intricate, complicated piece of machinery. They never had to send to the factory and have someone come out and work on that thing, and you know, that beautiful candlestick, well we all, all of us have examples of Howard's beautiful craftsmanship. Hallie: I'm sure there must be, I think you have to be in a community or the place where that person is that does that kind of work. I know that in our family, the boys have reproduced machinery, pieces of equipment, now not from the wood, but from metal and can be used as a part that needs to be or redone. Modern art seems to be all the junk they can collect and put it together or paint it, but there's something there that yes, I think we're going into a generation of young people that are beginning to realize what they thought wasn't valuable really is. Evelyn Birkby: That's right. Juliana: Well, I hope you're absolutely right. I know there's some talents that are still around and one of them, cooking talents, I think are becoming more important. People are enjoying to cook more. You know, Verline has been cooking up a storm and I was fortunate enough to get in on some of the things that she had leftover from Christmas. Evelyn Birkby: Oh, really? Juliana: Oh, yes. And mother, we'll have to share some of them with you. [crosstalk 00:19:51] But Verline has just made the most wonderful holiday treats. I asked Verline when in the world she's had time to do all of this. Evelyn Birkby: When? And just when was it? Middle of the night? Verline: Middle of the night. Over the weekend. Right. I did these things for my mother that took down to where she works as a party, because I like to cook and I love to do those things. So there was a wide variety. Some of them you missed out on, though. Juliana: Did I really? Oh, no. Well, it's probably a good thing, folks, because I'm on one of my usual, perpetual diets and I don't talk about it because it's just an ongoing thing, but anyone who presents me with something that looks like two layers of fudge with white, wonderful, gooey-looking stuff in the middle and the whole thing with nuts and oh, it was just terrific, really terrific. Hallie: That sinful layer? Juliana: Well, I wasn't going to say it, but you're absolutely right. That's what it was. Evelyn Birkby: You know, we have some small napkins that have printed on them, "I have just eaten my willpower." That's one of my very favorite napkins. That's enough to spoil anyone from lunging for something, isn't it? Hallie: It certainly is. Verline: Well, around the holiday season, I think it's very difficult to diet. You should diet before and after. Evelyn Birkby: That's right. That's right. Juliana: Well, since some of us are on perpetual diets and sometimes they're seriously undertaken and other times you just think about it as you're eating more of Verline's candy, right? Evelyn Birkby: Well, you're going to have to do some cooking this year, aren't you? Don't you have family coming for the holidays? Verline: Yes, so we will be doing the cooking this year. So that's going ... and we always try to make up ... I have a package that I'm going to be sending away this year of candy and things to a relative, so that took some extra doing and figuring out what I could mail and what I could not mail. We've not usually had to do that. But we're going to be having it at our house, so that meant extra cooking for us and doing lots of things. Evelyn Birkby: Well, you know, I'll tell you I can well remember the older people. My goodness, when I think about it, I'm much older than the people I thought of as older people, but at any rate, it seems that it took so long to learn how to cook, because this was before the days of standard measurements. A level cup today is a level cup. But they would say a teacup of something. Well, you know how a teacup can vary. A cup of something, you know. A coffee cup you mean? What do you mean? And so by the time Kitchen Klatter really got underway, standard measurements were accepted, I mean taken for granted, and I was always very proud of the fact that we never gave a recipe that had not been tested. Hallie: Right. And I think this is one of the things that Verline's learned, you know. She was one of these kind of people that had to measure everything. You couldn't use a little of this and a little of that and now I think she's beginning to cook that way. Verline: I am, because I now have a niece who is liking to cook and I'm saying "Well, it's just a little bit of this, a little bit of that," and I think I remember when I started to cook and my grandmother would say that to me. I thought, "Why doesn't she say a teaspoon or a cup or whatever?" So I find myself doing this. Juliana: You know the one that irritates me the most was recipes showing, and I don't think we've ever been guilty of doing this to our friends, the one that says cook until done. Or bake until done. You know, it doesn't give you the slightest idea and, of course, if you've cooked a long time, you can kind of guesstimate when you start thinking when it might be done, but if you're a brand new cook, that's really hard. Cook until done. Evelyn Birkby: Julianna, I always thought one of your craziest escapades as far as food is concerned was the time when you made that trek and turned those pickles in a jar. How many ... Juliana: Oh, when I pickle-sat. Evelyn Birkby: When you pickle-sat. Yeah. That's right. Juliana: Right. They were either 12-day pickles or 14-day pickles and each day I had to change the stuff on them and add sugar and stir and it was really a process. But they really were wonderful pickles and the lady was nice enough to give me a jar of them after I pickle-sat for her. Evelyn Birkby: You know, I was just going to ask you if you ever got a jar of those. Juliana: Yes, I did, and I will have to admit that they were worth all the effort even though I only got one jar. Hallie: And there is no way you could have the recipe. Juliana: No. No. Hallie: No way. Evelyn Birkby: I remember those that [inaudible 00:24:19] them. I think you'd saved some of the jars so that I'd have a chance to see what the pickle-sitting had to come to. Hallie: Well, I know nowadays, I think we have plant sitting or cat or pet sitters that come in and feed your pets while you're gone or come in and water your plants while you're gone or one of the things that they do whenever you're gone away from home. And I think these are nice things for young people to learn to do. Juliana: Neighborhood kids are supposed to do this stuff, aren't they? Hallie: Responsibility, right. Juliana: You know Hallie, you had a poem there that you were talking about and I would kind of like to hear that. Hallie: This is New Year's Eve whether you believe it or not. We've been sitting here talking about all this food and I'm sure all of us are getting ready for a New Year's Eve party or a New Year's Day something or other. Evelyn Birkby: Getting ready to eat. Hallie: Getting ready to eat. Here we go again. Getting ready to eat again. This is called New Year's Eve Reverie. "Tonight I would be quiet for awhile, no raucous horns, no screeching jubilee, only by firelight now review the file of hoarded treasures held in memory, all the rich year's golden store, the brief bright moments and the deeper tones of pain. Stand that against the embers in relief. Hold close the year that will not come again. "Then on the living ashes still aglow, another log, a heaping tongue of flame and all the unknown way that we must go is warmed and lighted as the way we came. "Builders of dreams we hold these moments dear. Magic? Enchanting? This might be the year." Evelyn Birkby: Repeat that last line, the last two lines there. I like that. Hallie: "Builders of dreams we hold these moments dear. Magic? Enchanting? This might be the year." Evelyn Birkby: Well, I like that. I think that's a very good way to say goodbye to the old year and greet the new one. Hallie: Right. I think we're looking for something that puts an end to a year and get ready to be strong. I'm not one that makes New Year's resolutions, so I'm thinking about the things that I've already done in the past year. Evelyn Birkby: Well, I'm not one that makes many New Year's resolutions. I know myself so well. Hallie: That's right. Juliana: Well, I find myself making New Year's resolutions, but at least I've gotten selective now because I just resolve to do things that I have a chance of actually getting done. It used to be I was going to change the world or I was going to dig up the whole half acre next to the driveway and I mean, realistically, I would probably never do either one of those things. So now I just go after desk drawers and closets and cleaning the top of the desk off and things like that. It's a little bit more practical. Hallie: Right. I'd like to say since we're saying Happy New Year to all of the people at the Kitchen ... at the radio stations that have been having something to do with our Kitchen Klatter radio program for all of these 60 years, we sort of take them for granted, I think. We've met them as we've gone through these years. We've talked to them and visited with them and they've become a part of our Kitchen Klatter family, too. So I'd like to say Happy New Year to them. Juliana: Well, and also I'd like to thank all of the radio stations who have been having Kitchen Klatter aired on their stations all these years and the time is unfortunately here that I'm afraid that when we say goodbye today, that that is going to be goodbye to Kitchen Klatter. Evelyn Birkby: Yes. Verline: Right. This will be our last program and we have warm feeling for all of you friends. We've grown to think of all of you as part of the Kitchen Klatter family. In fact, it's very hard to separate those friends and we've had the opportunity over the last few years, particularly those of us who could go out and actually meet those friends, and I think we've even brought back to you, Lucille and to the people who could not go, that warm friendship that we have felt from all of you ... Evelyn Birkby: Definitely. Verline: ... all of you out there and we do appreciate all of the letters that you've sent to us, the years that you have been with us and we've truly appreciated that friendship and we're hoping that in this new year, someway our paths are going to cross again. Evelyn Birkby: Perhaps they will. Verline: I think they will. We have to look forward to that and we hope that you friends are looking forward to a new year. The associations that we have had from all of us here at Kitchen Klatter has been tremendous and I think that all of us echo the thought that we have appreciated the business and we have appreciated the years that you have continued to be with us. Evelyn Birkby: Exactly. In fact, there really are no words to describe adequately how we feel about it. Verline: Right. In fact, it's very difficult to put into words on this particular last day and, of course, many of you who have the magazine also realize that that's the last issue of the Kitchen Klatter Magazine. It's a tradition as Hallie had said earlier that's gone on for 60 years. Hallie: It's difficult to say goodbye to traditions and things of that nature, but unfortunately that's exactly what we must do today and I send my very special New Year's greetings to each and every one of you. Evelyn Birkby: Yes. Without any exceptions, to each and every one who have been with us through so many, many years. Verline: We're hoping that the new year is going to be a good year and from all of us at Kitchen Klatter, this is Verline saying, "Goodbye." Hallie: Goodbye. Juliana: Goodbye. Evelyn Birkby: And goodbye.

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