Country CousinIssue Date: October 6, 2021 Share the Keepsake Insert...
What an incredibly beautiful Autumn we've been enjoying here in TIMESLand! Have lived a lot of years, but every year, am amazed at how many colors He finds to decorate our countryside.
Sadly, weather forecasters tell us this wonderful sunny weather is coming to an end, and just at the peak of the Fall color season. Rain, drizzle and clouds are supposed to move in on Thursday, and stay until everybody goes back to work and school next week Monday. What a bummer! Hope the beautiful leaves don"t all get discouraged and fall off before then!
HALLOWEEN DECOR
Halloween decorations are breaking out all over. Had an e-mail picture of a house with life-size skeletons clinging to various parts of the walls and roof. One of the commenters asked if they were remodeling with a skeleton crew.
Good shot!
150TH FIRE ANNIVERSARY
The City of Peshtigo's big Historical Day commemoration of the tragic fire of 1871 is over, but there will also be many special observances on the actual 150th anniversary date of the fire - the night of October 7 and morning of October 8 a century and a half ago.
On the anniversary day, say a prayer for those who lost their lives or loved ones on that awful day of holocaust and destruction. And let's all say a prayer of thanks that today we have dedicated firefighters and modern equipment to limit the spread of wildfires, at least in this area.
To help reduce fire danger, keep grass mowed around buildings, wood piles, etc.
FIRE STORIES
Today's Peshtigo Times includes some very special and information-filled fire history sections that are worth saving to pass along to grandchildren, or sending to friends and family members who now live far away.
TIMESLand residents all know that the Peshtigo Fire burned the countryside and brought death and destruction for miles around, including the part of Marinette known as Menekaunee, and even jumped the Bay to burn parts of the Door Peninsula. But most of the world does not know, because the Chicago Fire burned that same day, and got most of the attention.
Even food and clothing desperately needed by the few cold and hungry survivors of the Peshtigo Fire was held up because the tragedy at Peshtigo was overshadowed by the destruction in Chicago. Lack of communications complicated the problem for Peshtigo. There were no telephones, and telegraph wires had been destroyed by the fire, so personal contact was the only way to get information about Peshtigo out to the rest of the world.
In an article written for the Chicago Tribune Press Service for publication on Oct. 8, 1975 a reporter named Robert Davis wrote:
"For Chicagoans who smart under the "Second City" label, consider the case of Peshtigo, Wis., ungloriously obscured for the last 104 years by the shadow of a city 250 miles south.
"It was on Oct. 8, 1871, that a bizarre combination of a lengthy drought, hot temperatures, surrounding forests, and an evening tornado united to bring down upon little Peshtigo the worst forest fire in the country's history.
"The fire killed an estimated 1,200 people (in a town with a population of 1,700), burned more than 1,280,000 acres of forest land, and resulted in damage estimated at more than $2 million.
"And to this day, the (Peshtigo) holocaust remains a footnote in history....Because on Oct. 8, 1871, another, smaller, but more famous fire swept through the city of Chicago, killing 250 people- a tragedy, to be sure, but much smaller than the fire in northern Wisconsin.
"Peshtigo today isn't much larger than it was on that Sunday 104 years ago (150 years ago now). And with 2,836 residents it typifies Small Town, America. It's a place that holds sidewalk sales in the summer, Fourth of July picnics, and drum and bugle corps concerts. ," Roberts article went on. He added that people rarely use addresses when they give instructions, preferring to direct a visitor to "the place behind the firehouse" or "just across the river and turn left." None of that has changed in the 46 years since Roberts wrote that article.
Roberts was also right when he wrote that "Peshtigo also is a place that remembers its great fire, whether anybody else in the world does or not. Children raised here or in nearby town hear of the fire from their earliest school days, and often are surprised when they leave the area to find others around the country ignorant of it."
He said driving along Highway 41 from the south, one of the first indications that Peshtigo is near is a large sign inviting motorists to the Peshtigo Fire Museum, which was the brainchild of Bill Hammes, who had been a hardware and electrical supply dealer in Peshtigo at the time.
"We're not resentful of Chicago," Hammes had told Roberts. adding, "As a matter of fact, we get a lot of people from Chicago in the museum every year, just to see if it's true-that there was an even bigger fire up here the day of their fire," he said.
Hammes was a Polish immigrant who had heard about the Peshtigo Fire from the day he and his family moved there in 1912. In 1960 he decided that the town needed a memorial. He put an advertisement in the Peshtigo Times and 15 people responded with offers of help. Within a year, the number willing to help had grown to 200, and the Peshtigo Historical Society, Inc., was formed.
Under Hammes' leadership, the society acquired the church building that now houses the museum from the city for a $1 a year rent, and artifacts for the museum kept coming in.
There will be a special commemoration of the fire in front of the museum from 7:30 to 8 p.m. on Friday, Oct. 8, put on by the Peshtigo Historical Society The Forest History Association of Wisconsin, which is holding its annual Fall conference in Peshtigo this year in honor of the fire anniversary, will also be there.
The Peshtigo Fire is said by some to be the spark that grew into modern techniques for preventing and fighting forest fires.
ON THE SOAP BOX
Continue to be mystified. How can the same people you insist that abortion is okay - after all, it's their body, so it's okay to kill the unborn baby living there - but when it comes to vaccines, it is perfectly all right for employers and government dictators to insist that you allow yourself to be injected with a vaccine that you distrust.
The real issue here isn't whether or not you have reason to distrust the vaccines, it's whether you do or do not have the right to decide what you will and will not allow to be injected into your body.
By the way, at the same time President Joe Biden and his liberal friends and getting more and more adamant over their vaccine mandates, he has reportedly restored funding for Planned Parenthood and once again is allowing them to use your tax dollars and mine to finance and encourage abortions in the guise of "family planning."
Always will wonder at what point will our obscene laws allow a parent - or the doctors they hire - to kill their child if they decide it's more trouble than they thought and having it was a mistake?
COOKIN' TIME
Autumn calls for heartier foods, and cooler temperatures make cooking indoors more fun.
BREAKFAST GRAVY
My grandmother, who came to Wisconsin from the hills of West Virginia, used to make this wonderful gravy often for breakfast, especially when fresh tomatoes were in season. Homegrown were the only kind she knew. Sounds strange, but the fresh tomatoes are a wonderful counterpart to the rich gravy. Grandma also would frequently make this cream gravy without sausage, just butter (1/3 to 1/2 cup, flour, milk, salt and pepper, and serve that atop her fresh biscuits. Good any time, but best when there were fresh tomatoes to go with it.
2 tablespoons butter
1 pound breakfast sausage, hot or mild
1/3 cup all-purpose flour
3 to 4 cups whole milk, more to taste
1/2 teaspoon seasoned salt
2 teaspoons freshly ground black pepper, more to taste
Biscuits, warmed, for serving
Diced fresh tomatoes, for serving
Melt the butter over low heat in a large heavy frying pan. Put in the bulk sausage meat, and with a fork squish it into a single layer and break it into bite-size bits. Brown the sausage over medium-high heat until no longer pink. Reduce the heat to medium-low. Sprinkle on half the flour and stir so that the sausage soaks it all up, then add more little by little. Stir it around and cook it for another minute or so, then pour in the milk, stirring constantly. Cook the gravy, stirring frequently, until it thickens. (This may take a good 10 to 12 minutes.) Sprinkle in the seasoned salt and pepper and continue cooking until very thick and luscious. If it gets too thick too soon, just splash in another 1/2 cup of milk or more if needed. Taste and adjust the seasoning. Spoon the sausage gravy over warm biscuits and serve immediately!
CREAM GRAVY
This gravy is great served over biscuits; over toast, plain or with sliced hard boiled eggs on top, or over the Crescent Ring in the recipe below. The first recipe we were taught in my 7th grade Home Ec class more than half a century ago was for Goldenrod Eggs, which is basically this cream gravy and boiled eggs, but you fancied it up by slicing the boiled eggs to look like flower petals on top of a slice of buttered toast, putting gravy over the top, and then crumbling the egg yolks in the center of the "flower" on the toast. To be really fancy, you could add sprigs of parsley as leaves on the flower.
3 tablespoons pan drippings or butter
3 tablespoons flour
2 1/2 cups milk
1/2 cup heavy cream
Dashes of kosher salt, or to taste
1/4 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper, or to taste
Melt the butter or pan drippings. Stir in the flour, salt and pepper, but don't let it brown. Stir in the milk and bring to a boil, stirring constantly. Let it boil about five minutes, and add more milk if it gets too thick. When it's just about done, stir in the heavy cream and stir u until it simmers again.
CRESCENT BREAKFAST RING
When you're making sausage for breakfast, cook some extra and save them for this. Ditto, when you're frying bacon anyway. Then this turns into a relatively quick and easy breakfast. Well"¦not quite, but it is worth the effort. Suggestion: skip the tater tots and use broccoli florets instead, even leftover ones.
22-24 tater tots, warmed
16 ounces (2 cans) crescent rolls (each can should have 8 rolls in
each can - totaling 16)
6 large eggs, scrambled
½ pound breakfast sausage, cooked and crumbled
4 slices cooked bacon sliced ¼ inch pieces
1 cup shredded Colby jack cheese
2 Tablespoons salted butter melted
1 Tablespoon poppy seeds optional
Breakfast gravy, for dipping
Preheat the oven to 375 degrees. Spray a baking pan with cooking spray, put the tater tots on it and put them into the oven to heat. Line another cookie sheet with parchment paper and spray with non-stick spray. Place a small bowl in the center of the paper. Open cans of crescent rolls and separate them. Lay one down with the wide side near the base of the bowl. Place a second one slightly overlapping the first one. Continue around the bowl with rest of the crescent rolls, forming a sun shape. Take the warmed tater tots out of the oven. Place a circle of tater tots next to each other around the wide edge of the rolls and near the bowl. Next, evenly spoon scrambled eggs around the circle of tater tots. Spread sausage and bacon evenly over the tots and eggs. Sprinkle the cheese evenly over the meat. Pull the pointed outside corner of each roll over the eggs and meat and tuck under the inside. Make sure to tuck well so when it bakes it will stay in place. Continue pulling the rolls over and tucking them under until all the rolls are finished and a ring has formed. Remove the bowl from the center. Brush melted butter over the rolls. (Optional: sprinkle with poppy seeds.) Place in the middle rack of the oven and bake for 20 minutes. Check rolls, they may need an additional 5 minutes. Remove from the oven and slice. Serve with gravy.
You can fill this with whatever you like as long as you are able to make sure that the crescent rolls are able to close. Some add-in ideas for the filling include chopped ham, peppers, onions, mushrooms, fried potatoes, etc.
This Breakfast Crescent Ring can be made ahead and stored in an airtight container or ziptop bag in the refrigerator for up to 5 days. Just reheat in the oven or microwave before serving. You can even freeze it. Just take it out to thaw in the fridge the night before.
TOMATO BOUNTY SALSA
Save some of the harvest for colder months. You'll probably be glad you did. Inflation is driving prices of food and everything else higher every day. Be sure to use onions with a clean, sweet flavor. Have already ruined entire batches of good food by using mucky flavored onions.
9 pounds red or yellow tomatoes (25 to 30 medium)
4 medium onions, finely chopped
2 cans (6 ounces each) tomato paste
1 large sweet red pepper, finely chopped
3/4 cup white vinegar
4 jalapeño peppers, seeded and chopped
4 garlic cloves, minced
3 teaspoons salt
1/2 teaspoon pepper
In a large saucepan, bring 8 cups water to a boil. Add tomatoes; boil for 30 seconds. Drain; immediately place in ice water. Drain and pat dry; peel and finely chop. In a stockpot, combine remaining ingredients. Stir in tomatoes. Bring to a boil over medium-high heat. Reduce heat; simmer, uncovered, for 20 minutes or until desired thickness. Carefully ladle hot mixture into hot 1-pint jars, leaving 1/2-inch of headspace. Remove air bubbles; wipe rims and adjust lids. Process for 20 minutes in a boiling-water canner. Water should cover the jar tops by at least an inch, preferably two.
GERMAN APPLE KUCHEN
Makes four delicious cuteness, so have four pie plates ready to bake them in. Finding folks to eat them should be no problem at all. By the way, if you have a neighbor who lives alone, it's a nice gesture to share homemade goodies with them.
Crust:
1 1/8 teaspoons active dry yeast
1/2 cup warm water (110 to 115 degrees)
1/2 cup warm milk (110 to 115 degrees)
1/2 cup sugar
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/2 cup butter (or vegetable oil)
1 large egg, room temperature, lightly beaten
3-1/2 cups all-purpose flour, divided
Custard:
4 large eggs, lightly beaten
2 cups heavy whipping cream
1-1/2 cups sugar
1 teaspoon vanilla
1/4 teaspoon salt (optional)
8 to 10 cups sliced peeled tart apples or canned sliced
peaches, drained, or combination of fruits
Topping:
1/2 cup sugar
1/2 cup all-purpose flour
1 teaspoon ground cinnamon
1/4 cup cold butter
In a large bowl, dissolve yeast in warm water. Add the milk, sugar, salt, butter or oil, egg and 2-1/2 cups flour; beat until smooth. Stir in enough remaining flour to form a soft dough. Place in a greased bowl, turning once to grease top. Do not knead. Cover and refrigerate overnight. The next day make the custard by whisking together the eggs, cream, vanilla, salt and sugar in a large bowl until combined. Set that aside while you divide the chilled dough into 4 portions. On a lightly floured surface, roll each portion into a 10-inch circle. Press each circle onto the bottom and up the sides of an ungreased 9-inch pie plate. Arrange 2 to 2-1/2 cups of fruit in each crust. Pour 1 cup custard over fruit. For topping, combine the sugar, flour and cinnamon in a small bowl. Cut in butter until mixture resembles coarse crumbs. Sprinkle 1/3 cup over each coffee cake. Cover edges of dough with foil. Bake at 350 degrees for 35-40 minutes or until golden brown and custard reaches 160 degrees.
THOUGHT FOR THE WEEK: When you have problems that seem too large to handle, once you have done all you can to remedy the situation, relax and turn those troubles over to God. Worry only makes small problems cast large shadows and we've all been afraid of shadows at one time or another in our lives.
Country Cousin
(This column is written by Shirley Prudhomme of Crivitz. Views expressed are her own and are in no way intended to be an official statement of the opinions of Peshtigo Times editors and publishers. She may be contacted by phone at 715-291-9002 or by e-mail to shirleyprudhommechickadee@yahoo.com.)
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