Making Do

Image Gallery ILLUSTRATIONS: STEPHANIE SHIELDHOUSE

Country Lore

When times are thin, try these no-frills Canadian homestead recipes..

Almost sixty years ago, in the homestead country of northern Canada, the housewife had to make do or do without. There was no comer store in the day when supplies were ordered a few weeks in advance. There was only money for the necessities of life. No money for frills, as the men were fond of saying.

Recently, I found a dog-eared well-wom cookbook from this time, in my late mother-in-law's cupboard. It seems that a number of church ladies had gotten together, written out their recipes, and sent them to a printer, with the businessmen of the nearest town picking up the tab. The ladies sold the book and donated the money to their favorite charity.

The recipes, the cookbook guarantees, were "proven and tested," and some of them seem to have come over with a bride or two from the old country.

Those ladies must have assumed that anyone opening the book and intending to use the recipes was already an accomplished cook. Some did not even include any quantities required or baking instructions.

Those were tough times, but these ladies were nothing if not inventive. For instance, if they ran out of coffee, they could follow this resourceful recipe...

Homemade Coffee

2 cups bran
1/3 cup molasses
2/3 cup cornmeal
1/2 cup hot water

Mix thoroughly. Roast evenly in hot oven until very dark. Keep mixing while roasting. The above recipe from her cookbook says nothing about what should be done after the mixture cools. One presumes—and only presumes, mind you—that it would be put through a hand-cranked food chopper.

The following recipe for marmalade might confuse a modern cook, but it is assumed the cook of the '30s or '40s put the ingredients through her food chopper before cooking her marmalade.

Vegetable Marrow Marmalade

1 vegetable marrow
8 lemons
10 oranges

Cook until thick. Add 6 cups sugar. Cover and simmer one hour.

Another recipe contributor was very clever when she made her version of a sandwich spread. "Take some baloney," she wrote, "Put through mincer. To this mince, add a small bit of onion or any kind of pickle. Add enough salad dressing for right consistency to spread easily.

Salt and pepper to taste. Is very economical and tasty."

Olives were certainly not on everyone's shopping list, nor would the average log cabin back in the Canadian bush ever have had them in its pantry. But that did not stop women from hankering for the nicer things in life to serve their friends when they got together. And hence follows the recipe for...

Cucumber Olives

1 pint water
1 cup sugar
1/4 cup salt
1 ounce mustard seed
1 pint white vinegar