I belonged to the Cloverly Girl 4-H Club for years. My mom was the leader and Nora Libsack was her assistant. All the girls from our Pleasant Valley School and other neighboring country schools joined 4-H. We learned to cook, sew and decorate. Mom was the chief of sewing and making garments with perfect stitches and fit. I still have the little micro black and white checked cotton apron I made for my first project. It was hand sewn and the stitches had to be exactly spaced within the checks. These were small checks. I’m sure mom had me count the checks before I made the stitch. In the fall we entered our summer’s work at the county fair at Island Grove Park. If we made a Grand or Reserve Champion on our projects we could enter them in the State Fair in Pueblo. I was a blue ribbon sometimes red ribbon winner. Some times Mom had a Grand Champion winner that made her and Nora so proud of their accomplishments.
Mostly Nora taught the cooking. I learned to make sugar cookies that came off the cookie sheet perfectly with the smallest amount of distortion. Jellies had to be clear with no bubbles and a perfect seal of the paraffin. I think I made mostly apple jelly probably from apple juice. I like to make jams better now so you have some flavor and little pieces of fruit to spread on a piece of bread. No more messy paraffin anymore to seal the jars. The lids fit tight and a quick turn upside down for a few minutes and the jars are sealed perfectly.
I made bread on summer. White bread, white flour. There is nothing tastier then a piece of warm bread spread with a little real butter. I was reminded of that today. We had a few bananas that were speckling up on the counter from last weeks Christmas fest. From the bottom drawer I pulled out my favorite banana bread recipe tucked in an old cookbook from a collaborative effort of some people from Stan’s engineering job that he had some 35 years ago. I just love that recipe as it has no fat and always bakes up perfectly. I sliced off a few pieces and gave one to my bus driver. He was trilled to receive a piece of homemade bread. He said when he grew up his Mom would always make bake goods from scratch. Not so much today as his wife usually buys whatever the grocery store sells that is already boxed up. I wonder if his mom was in 4-H.
Before we advanced to bread we learned to make muffins. The recipe in the 4-H manual told us not to beat the dough, but barely spoon it together for under twenty strokes. I can still make pretty good muffins keeping to that minimal mixing routine. My friend Lois Goldsmith was in the same muffin group. There was some centennial celebration in the community. Colorado had its centennial in 1976 as it became the 38th state in 1876. I know it wasn’t in 1976 as I was about 10 which would have been 1956. Whatever the celebration, centennial was theme. Lois and I teamed up to give a demonstration at a contest in Greeley. Lois was the presenter and I was the person putting together the ingredients while she talked. We made Centennial Golden Muffins. These were the same muffins are in the second year 4-H cookbook with added golden butterscotch chips. These chips were new to the market as only chocolate chips had been available. This made a delicious change to the standard muffin. Lois and I practiced each day at her house or mine. We made muffins galore to the delight of both families. We were ready for our demonstration at the contest. Lois became sick with mono or some other sort of illness, became hospitalized and wasn’t well enough for the demo we had planned together. There went our big opportunities to be young Martha Stewarts. There was no replacement for Lois, so the show didn’t go on. Thinking back to this time, I probably could have completed the demo on my own, but just didn’t have enough confidence to do it or there were rules about entering specific names for the demo. I still make muffins today skipping the butterscotch chips to add blueberries, cranberries, peach instead.