BENEATH THE SNOW- SPRING TREASURES CAN BE FOUND – News From The Hills

Bright sunshine glitters on a snowy landscape, and the sky is bright blue. It is a drastic change from yesterday’s gray, lowering clouds and snow that kept coming. It was a fluffy, soft snow that swiftly covered roads, rooftops and landscape. Birds flocked to the feeder, as if stocking up on victuals for worse to come, much like shoppers crowding the grocery stores for milk and bread.

Traffic almost came to a stop, except for a few hardy souls that crept along on ice and snow-covered roads. Dusk came, and still it snowed. We were luckier than a lot of folks, for we ended up with about eight inches of winter’s offering. It was enough to bring everyday business to a virtual standstill, with the school children getting another day of vacation.

Isolated in the house, there’s not much a person can do except make soup and wait it out. We received more recipes, and now it is a good time to try out some new ones. Continuing the “Brown Cake” series, Janice McCoy of Hillsboro sent in a very old recipe that her mother used to make. It is called “Brownstone Front Cake.”

BROWNSTONE FRONT CAKE
½ cup butter
3 cups sugar
4 egg yolks (beat whites separately)
2 teaspoons vanilla
4 cups flour (plain)
2 teaspoons soda
1 cup buttermilk
½ cake baking chocolate (or less, grated)
(My mother used 3 tablespoons cocoa powder)
Put chocolate and soda in measuring cup; pour ½ cup boiling water over it and stir. Let cool.
Cream butter, sugar, egg yolks, and vanilla together; add flour and buttermilk, beginning and ending with flour. Beat well. Stir in cooled chocolate mixture, and fold in beaten egg whites.

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Pour into three 9″ greased and floured cake pans. Bake at 350 degrees for about 30 minutes or until toothpick comes out clean. Her mom made a caramel icing for this cake and everyone raved about it. She baked this in an old Home Comfort wood cook stove and had to judge the temperature with her hand. It was delicious.

Don Norman of Elyria sent in a couple of new recipes which he can’t vouch for, but they sound interesting-and simple. One recipe calls for a box of angel food cake mix and a 20 oz. can of crushed pineapple. (Discard cake mix directions.) Mix together and bake at 350 degrees for 30 minutes. That’s it!

The other recipe uses a box of white cake mix (discard directions.) Stir in a 20 oz. can of peaches (sliced, I figure.) Melt a stick of butter and pour over. Bake at 350 for 30 minutes. Viola! Peach cobbler!

Don also submitted some mangled phrases (or malapropisms) which he also heard called “fumbled mouth.” This is not the same as “spoonerisms” which my father was prone to use. He recalled a prominent local person making a speech and he meant to use the phrase “capped the climax.” This was a term which local folks used to hint at the unfortunate outcome of a simple task. This hero rendered it as “climbed the clap axe.” Let’s hope he wasn’t a politician.

Cousin Bobby related a regional saying that his sister Betty heard when she was living in Texas. Her neighbor next door had a couple of misbehaving children fussing in her yard and she told them, “Keep that up and it’ll be too wet to plow!” (Figure that one out!) Mom used to tell us, “Straighten up, or your hide won’t hold corn shucks!”

My Cousin Phyllis (bless her heart; I love her) used to be bad at getting her metaphors mixed up. One time she said she felt like a “bird out of water,” and also that when she was young she would fight “at the drop of a bucket!” She told her daughters one time that “you can’t make a silk sow out of a purses’ ear.” Of course the saying was “make a silk purse out of a sow’s ear.” Some of the phrases we used have dropped plumb out of sight. When I was a kid and someone would ask, “What fer?” the answer was “Cat fur to make a pair of kitten britches-wanna buy a pair?” I haven’t heard that in years.

I love our picturesque talk and unique dialect. I hope it never gets homogenized into the language that everyone uses.

In spite of the snow and cold temperatures, spring is slowly creeping into our land. Whatever you think about “global warming” or “climate change,” we have God’s promise in Genesis 8-22, “While the earth remained, seedtime and harvest, and cold and heat, and summer and winter, and day and night shall not cease.” Although the snow is still drifting down, I know that spring is coming.

We look forward with longing to the many blessings that spring brings. Dayton Reynolds of Texas (and with roots in the hills) reminisces about wild greens and the ramp dinner he attended last year. Although he confesses, “I liked the food that went with it!” Gordon Parker dreams about the wild greens his mother used to pick (they called tender dandelion greens “meadow lettuce”) and he loved it mixed with green onions and wilted in bacon grease. She picked a variety of wild greens including creasy greens, violets, plantain, and even young nettle.

We look forward to the morel mushrooms that come up in early spring along with the spring beauties (flowers) whose roots are called “tangle foot” and make delicious greens. Ramps are a mountain delicacy, and we eagerly wait for them. There is so much to look for in the spring!

Bob Abston of Idaho writes that they formerly lived in Washington state and although he sold Grit newspapers and Rosebud salve, he never got to sell any blackberries. He picked the big, sweet “sheep nose” blackberries that grew there, but his mom canned them all! By the way, I want to thank my anonymous friends who sent me the Cloverine salve. It smells just like it did when I was a kid. I love it.

BURIED TREASURE
By Clay Harrison
Beneath the snows of Winter,
Spring treasures can be found
In seeds that lie there sleeping
Below the frozen ground.

While snow falls in the meadow,
The rose must get her rest.
Soon Spring will kiss his princess,
And she must look her best.

Sleeping beauty shall awaken,
And yawn without a sound.
As sprigs of buried treasure
Come bursting from the ground.

ll earth proclaims God’s glory,
When Spring is in the air.
Each bud fulfills a promise-
Each rose an answered prayer.

Spring is a resurrection-
Winter’s stone is rolled away,
To reveal God’s buried treasure
Each sun-kissed springtime day.