Intergenerational Cookbook Collection A Creative Collaboration between ASU students & Osher Lifelong Learning Institute members

CREAM CHEESE AND JELLY SANDWICH

By Alice Schultze

Every school day Monday through Friday, every week of the school calendar year, my mom made me a cream cheese and jelly sandwich for lunch. Sometimes the jelly was jam and sometimes the jelly was preserves but, no matter the distinction, the sandwich was cream cheese and jelly.

Along with the sandwich came a glass of whole milk out of a bottle*. Dessert was two Oreo cookies.

This was back in 1947 until probably 1953.

The sandwich was on a plate and to the left of the sandwich was a paper napkin folded politely in two (the conventional way and not in a triangle) and the glass of milk was to the right of and slightly behind the plate with the cream cheese and jelly sandwich (also cut in the conventional way and not on the angle) and the 2 cookies were to the right of the glass of the whole milk from a bottle*. There was no silverware, it wasn’t needed.

This is the back story:

I lived in The Bronx, New York and went to P.S. 28 which was up a long block and across the Grand Concourse and down another long block. P.S. 28 was an old forbiddingly austere looking school back then, even back then, and is still in existence today. There was no cafeteria in the school and there were no school buses and the very few kids whose mothers worked went to a nearby luncheonette to eat but the rest of everybody, which was most everyone including me, had lunch at home.

We were given 50 minutes for lunch. In that 50 minutes I had to walk home up the long block, stop for the traffic light and traffic on the Grand Concourse, walk down the long block, go into my apartment house, take the elevator up to where I lived on the 5th floor, pee, wash hands, eat lunch, pee and wash hands again, take the elevator down to the lobby, walk up the long block, across the Grand Concourse, and down the long block back to school. It was about a half mile walk and any student who was late was immediately sent to the principal’s office, no exceptions and no excuses.

Since all this action took place within 50 minutes I had to have something that could be eaten quickly. Bite chew sip bite chew sip. Cream cheese and jelly sandwich on white … Oreos dunked in milk.

As a digression I tell you that the white bread was never Wonder Bread and the cream cheese was always Philadelphia brand in the original silver and blue package.

As far as jelly, my favorite was and has always been strawberry jam or preserves. Cherry can be dangerous because it has an occasional pit and, if one is eating fast, swallowing the pit could have consequences. Grape jelly reminds me of blood and apricot jelly reminds me of cats so I don’t like either of those. Likewise, raspberry jam makes me think of ants. I don’t know why. Perhaps because of the little black seeds.

HOW TO MAKE A CREAM CHEESE AND JELLY SANDWICH

When I started this story I thought cream cheese and jelly was a universal sandwich and everyone made it the exact same way! My way! Take two slices of bread, place them next to each other, spread cream cheese on the left slice, move over to the right slice, cover with a generous helping of jam, cover the piece with the cream cheese with the piece that has jam, cut in two (lengthwise or diagonally) eat and enjoy!

As a right-handed person it made sense to me to start with the slice on the left and work toward the right, in other words, to move along the way I read. But then I wondered – what do left-handed people do?

In fact, I wondered how people make multi cream cheese and jelly sandwiches? Do they make them one at a time or assembly line fashion?

So I sent out a survey, as follows:

1. When making the sandwich do you start with the cream cheese or the jelly?
2. Assuming you have two slices of bread do you smear the cream cheese on the piece of bread on the left side or on the right? Are you left or right handed?
3. If you are making more than one sandwich at a time do you go cream cheese jelly cream cheese jelly or cream cheese cream cheese jelly jelly, etc.?
4. What is your favorite kind of jelly or jam?

I sent the survey out to twenty people and received thirteen replies. It is here that I found out some people have not only never made a cream cheese and jelly sandwich – but they never even heard of it! This just about blew my mind! Is this sandwich a New York cultural food?! I ask you!

The following are the results of the survey (with peanut butter in some cases imaginatively substituted for cream cheese):

• 6 people do cream cheese on the left slice and jelly on the right slice of bread.
• 4 do cream cheese on the right slice and jelly on the left (handedness did not seem to affect the result)
• 1 put cream cheese on a lower slice of bread and jelly on a slice above it
• 2 put cream cheese and jelly on the same slice and covered with a slice that was dry.

As for multiple sandwiches:

• 5 people do cream cheese cream cheese jelly jelly, assembly line fashion
• 2 people do cream cheese jam cream cheese jam
• 4 people make a single sandwich at a time
• 1 person stacks the bread in an upward line with cream cheese on the left and jam on the right and doing all the cream cheese first

Furthermore, several people volunteered their routine for cleaning the knife between or after making sandwiches, including one person who said he licked the knife clean. (Editor’s note: hopefully after he was done.)

Moving along to favorite jelly or jam, some participants offered more than one choice but the clear winner was raspberry with 5 votes. Strawberry and apricot garnered 3 votes each and grape also received 3 votes (2 for jam and 1 for jelly). Marmalade, cherry, blueberry and blackberry each received a single vote. Brand names were never mentioned but one voter reminisced about jam that was home-made.

And, with that, the story concludes…

*Back in the day, bottles of milk were placed in a little crate outside the front door. The delivery man gathered up the “empties” and replaced them with fresh bottles of milk. In the Bronx, in the apartment buildings, we knew recycling before it ever was a fashion!

END

Mrs. Blatz’s Fruitcake

By Allison Rigby

According to the U.S. Census, over sixteen million men served during World War II. In response to the labor market shortage created by this mass male exodus, women were called upon to fill the traditionally male jobs that needed to be done to keep our country running. My Grandma June’s contribution toward this effort was managing a Chevron station in Los Angeles where my family is from. Grandma June was one of the friendliest and outgoing people I’ve ever known and had many happy and loyal customers. One of them was Mrs. Blatz, who came in regularly to get gas, have her car serviced, and chat with Grandma June. As luck would have it, Mrs. Blatz’s son and my Grandpa Joe served in the same unit in the army and fought alongside one another in Italy and Northern Africa. During Christmas one year, Mrs. Blatz gave Grandma June a fruitcake to thank her for her kindness and friendship during an otherwise dark time in her life. Recipes are perhaps sweetest when shared between friends. This one ended up becoming a family favorite and a staple at holiday gatherings. The Chevron station, which is still there today on the corner of Barrington and Sunset, was declared a cultural historic monument in 1988.

RECIPE

Ingredients

• 1 ¼ C. granulated sugar
• ½ C. vegetable oil
• 2 eggs, beaten
• 1 C. milk
• 1 tsp. apple cider vinegar
• 2 C. all-purpose flour
• 2 T. cocoa
• 1 tsp. ground cinnamon
• 1 tsp. Baking soda
• 1 tsp. vanilla extract
• ½ walnut pieces
• ½ C. raisins
• ½ dates, halved
• ½ C. maraschino cherries, halved

DIRECTIONS

Add oil to sugar and mix well. Add beaten eggs. In a separate bowl, mix milk and vinegar and set aside. Mix dry ingredients (flour, cocoa, cinnamon, and baking soda). Add half of the dry ingredients to the oil, sugar, and egg mixture and mix well. Add remaining dry ingredients with milk and vinegar mixture and mix well. Combine both mixtures and blend on high speed in an electric mixer for three minutes. After combining ingredients, fold in vanilla, walnuts, dates, and cherries. Pour into greased and floured Bundt pan and bake at 350 degrees for one hour. If using a loaf pan, increase cooking time by 15 minutes. Cool on wire rack before slicing.

END

Hot Milk Cake

By Marianne Barry Moriarty

My grandmother, Anne McDevitt Gaffney (1884 -1974), was born in Middleton, England, and immigrated to the U.S. in the first decade of the twentieth century. She settled in Ipswich, Massachusetts, and she and her husband, Joseph, raised 3 children there. She was my Nana, and she was a master baker. Fortunately, those skills and recipes have been passed down to her children, grandchildren, great-grandchildren, and great-great grandchildren. A family favorite is her Hot Milk Cake.

Recipe

My granddaughter, Nina, was attending ASU Prep Digital for 4th grade, and she was a member of her class’s Broadcast Club. One week she presented a video to her peers wherein she demonstrated how to make her great-great grandmothers hot milk cake. Nina was so proud to show off her baking skills and to present something she doubted anyone had ever tasted. Nina is MY Nana's great-great-granddaughter, and she's continuing the family tradition of baking the all-purpose hot milk cake. And Nina chose ASU Prep Digital to share her family recipe with.

Ingredients

• 2 eggs
• 1 cup of sugar
• 1 cup of flour
• 1 tsp baking powder
• 1 tsp vanilla

Add ½ cup hot milk with 1 tbs. butter melted in it

Mix all ingredients together and put in greased and floured pan. Bake at 350 degrees for 30 minutes. When cake is cooled, sprinkle confectioners’ sugar on top. This cake is NEVER frosted traditionally.

END

Cultured Butter and Gems

By Karolyn McCain

As a young child, Karolyn grew up in rural Iowa farm country, less than a mile from her grandparents’ farm. This was the original organic farm. Everything was organic; there were no chemicals because the farm animals provided fertilizer for the soil of a huge vegetable garden, berry vines, and multiple fruit trees. Purebred beef cattle, dairy cattle, hogs, and chickens were raised on the farm, so beef, pork, chicken, eggs, milk, and cream were readily available to use and eat. Through canning, and later freezing, they had plenty of food year-round. Hard work paired with the organic farm produced the basics for living and survival except for flour, sugar, salt, and pepper, which were purchased at the local grocery three miles away. Karolyn grew up surrounded by family, eating three homemade meals a day.

Time was often spent in the kitchen at Karolyn’s grandparents’ house helping prepare the food from a stool she needed to reach the countertop. After the cows were milked, the milk was separated into skim milk and heavy cream. The milk was for drinking and feeding animals; the cream was used for cooking and making butter. Karolyn would often turn the crank on the beater in the jar of cream, which resulted in butter. Since the little refrigeration that was available was in the form of an icebox, sometimes the cream was not fresh sweet cream butter like you would buy at the supermarket today. Instead, it was flavorful and had a tangy taste because it had begun to ferment.

Fast forward half a lifetime to retirement from accounting and software. Karolyn was encouraged by the James Beard award-winning chef and co-owner of the Scottsdale restaurant, FnB, Charleen Badman, to develop recipes for yogurt, ricotta cheese, and cultured butter from the knowledge she had gained from churning cream in her grandmother’s kitchen as a child. The recipes Karolyn developed had an emphasis on cooking from scratch and getting back to healthier eating. She then used these recipes as a prep chef in Charleen’s restaurant.

Cultured Butter Recipe

This is today’s version of Karolyn’s grandmother’s butter. Making cultured butter in today’s methods requires some experience to determine when the pure cream is ready to beat, based on the age of the cream, texture, taste, degree of fermentation, and an eye for both when the butter is ready to be separated from the buttermilk and for when it achieves the level of clean needed to preserve freshness. This takes practice and familiarity with how the cream performs in different environments, which are influenced by weather, indoor temperature, humidity, and time. The added crème fraîche, yogurt or buttermilk should be ‘clean’, with no added ingredients or thickeners and containing only diary and the live cultures listed on the ingredient label.

One quart of heavy cream yields approximately one pound of cultured butter and approximately one pint of live cultured buttermilk, which can be used in other recipes or to culture the next batch of cultured butter.

Ingredients

• One quart of heavy cream (not ultra-pasteurized)
• 1/3 cup crème fraîche OR live culture whole milk yogurt OR live culture buttermilk (with no added ingredients, see above)

Instructions

• Place ingredients in large bowl, stir to blend
• Cover with plastic wrap and leave at room temperature until it becomes thick and tastes tangy, which could take from 12 – 36 hours depending upon the environment discussed above
• Refrigerate until the internal temperature reaches 55 – 65 degrees fahrenheit, which makes the beating easier.
• With a mixer, beat until the butter fat separates from the butter milk, which happens in stages:
• The cream becomes fluffy and expands to a whipped cream texture
• The cream becomes grainy.
• The cream begins to separate into small clumps and liquid, which splatters easily
• Continue beating until the clumps adhere together into one big lump
• Press the large clump against the bowl side with a wooden spoon or spatula to extract additional liquid
• Pour liquid into another container using a sieve to retain any small pieces of butter
• Continue pressing the lump to extract as much liquid as possible, and pour off until you have a single large clump of butter
• Wash the butter with ice water 4 – 5 times and continue pressing the lump each time until the water runs clear
• Add a sprinkle of salt, if desired
• Pack in container or form into blocks
• Refrigerate or freeze

Karolyn also has fond memories of savoring warm bread that her grandmother called Gems, which was eaten with melting butter. Karolyn’s memory of the pan being taken out of the oven lingers, but there was no written recipe. They were baked with a handful of this, a pinch of that, a teacup of something else, all in an oven with a wood-burning stove. The oven temperature was regulated by stirring the coals or adding another log to the fire.

*1899 Photo of Katie Shepard Simpson

Arroz con Pollo de Costa Rica

By Michael D. Winans

When this project started, Mike was a newly-minted Doctor, having just earned his PhD from Arizona State University in Linguistics and Applied Linguistics, with a main area of focus in computer-assisted language learning. This seems off-topic, but Costa Rica was where the initial flame was ignited for his interest in studying the processes of teaching and learning English as an additional language. Along with this, Costa Rica was where he learned to cook many of the common dishes of the Tico diet, including Arroz con Pollo.

He arrived in Heredia, Costa Rica, in 2005 to study Spanish at the Universidad Nacional. After completing his year of study abroad, he decided to stay and live in Costa Rica, where the only jobs he knew he could get were as an English teacher. Grocery shopping was different from being state-side because fresh fruits and vegetables were plentiful while anything in a box, can, or jar that had been processed was quite expensive. The two major staples that make an appearance on most plates are black beans and rice, which are combined to make the Tico favorite Gallo Pinto for breakfast.

The meal that is often eaten at celebrations is Arroz con Pollo, which directly translates to Rice with Chicken. It is a simple and hearty dish that he learned to make during his time there. He would make this meal and often have it for lunch while grading papers or in between teaching English classes. This recipe is shared below.

Arroz con Pollo Recipe

Ingredients

• 1lb chicken, bone-in
• 1 cube/tablespoon chicken bouillon
• 1.5 cups rice
• 2.25 cups of chicken stock
• 3 cloves garlic, minced
• 1 cup fresh green beans, chopped to 1 inch
• .5 cups corn
• 1 cup diced onion
• 1 cup diced bell pepper
• 1 cup peeled, sliced carrots
• 1 bunch of cilantro, chopped
• 2 tablespoon olive oil
• 1 tablespoon achiote/spiced annatto paste (or powder if paste is not available)

A Legacy of Favorite Recipes

By Betsy Schneider

Historically in my family the favorite food recipe has been “Pasties” (pronunciation short “a”). Pasties have a history in many countries and a variation of recipes that all measure up to a meat and potato pie. My recipe tends to lean towards the English or Cornish version.

Pasties were a favorite for miners. Miners worked hard and needed solid nutrition to keep going. They would put the Pastie on top of machinery and let it warm up. It could be held in their hands to eat making it easy to eat and easy to carry in their lunchbox. My great grandfathers and my grandfathers worked in the mines.

My recipe consists of a pie crust type of pastry. The original recipe from my family consists of flour, lard, suet and salt. The suet helps to make it a strong crust so that it won’t fall apart when handled. Mine were filled with beef and pork, cut into bitesize pieces, potatoes, peeled and cut into bitesize slices do not use a food processer, and chopped onion. Options: add rutabagas, turnips, carrots… I preferred to keep it basic for those who don’t care for those veggies. I served a fresh lettuce salad as the side dish.

The bonus is, in our family, this is a special time that we spend together. Because these take some time to prepare, we make it a special family gathering. When the family gets wind of a “Pastie Making Day”, they all want some. I tell them if they want them they better be here to help. We’ve prepared 60 pasties in one setting. Everyone wants to eat one but they also want to take some home.

This is so scrumptious and the smell of them cooking is to die for. Once you eat one you are hooked. This generation, of fat free, carb free addicts, resists the idea of creating them because they can’t resist the temptation to eat them when available. Go for it. You won’t worry about the pounds when you are devouring the prize.

Pasties Recipe (4)

For Pastie Crust

Mix together:

• 2 cups flour
• 1 tsp salt
• ¾ cup lard
• ¼ cup beef suet (if not available use all lard)

After mixing well, add water and milk (measurements below) alternately until you have pie crust.

• ¼ cup water
• ¼ cup milk

Divide into 4 sections work with it kneading it with your hand.

Roll out to pie pan size

Add 2 cups of filling and fold in half. Place pat of butter on top of filling. Roll the edges in and press them to seal. Poke top of Pastie a couple of times to provide a vent.

For Filling

Mix the following together:

• 3 potatoes medium to large (peeled and sliced, do not use food processor)
• 1 medium onion (chopped)
• 1 lb of pastie meat (beef or pork or both, I like both) cut in bite size pieces
• Salt and pepper to taste

Bake at 375 degrees for 15 minutes. Then bake at 350 for an hour or until golden brown.

END