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Family Recipe Friday: Edith Roberts Luck’s Pineapple Cookies

Grandma Edie's Pineapple Drop Cookies- front. (Click to enlarge.)
Grandma Edie’s Pineapple Drop Cookies- front. (Click to enlarge and see below before making.)
Grandma Edie's Pineapple Drop Cookies- back. (Click to enlarge.)
Grandma Edie’s Pineapple Drop Cookies- back. (Click to enlarge.)

Roberts Family, Daniel Family (Click for Family Tree)

Cooking was an integral part of the life of a farm wife. Edith Roberts McMurray Luck inherited the cooking gene from her mother, Ella V. Daniel Roberts. Edith wrote in her family stories:

Mama was an excellent cook. Nothing fancy, but just good country cooking. There was always room for another pair of legs under our table. Always enough for another mouth. I still feel I should do the same thing. Funny how these teachings stay [w]ith us. 

One of the most special stories that Edith wrote to her grandchildren was entitled, “A Winter Afternoon 1904.” Edith was just five years old, and it was amazing how she was able to so clearly remember incidents from her very early years. She reminisced:

Mother and I had had a nap and I was playing in the kitchen, while Mama was taking out of the oven huge loaves of bread and a pan of six inch high biscuits.

There must have been a dozen in this particular pan she always used for these biscuits. The fragrance from the freshly baked bread was delightful. The golden-browned tops were well greased, making them even more delicious to eat. Mother used a potato water starter. I don’t know just how she did it. I do know that sister was always warned not to upset the cup of starter on the table in the pantry. She baked once a week.

Of course, during harvest season Ellie Roberts would have been baking probably every day, as there were a lot of hired hands to feed. She would have had help though, with neighboring women coming to the Roberts farm to assist in the kitchen, and then Ellie Roberts would go to one of their farms when the threshers moved on. Add in the extra women, young girls who helped, and little children, and there were a lot of mouths to feed!

Edith continued her story:

It was about time for the kids to come home from school. If I timed it right I could stand on a chair and watch for them to leave the school grounds. We were just a quarter of a mile from the school-house. This afternoon I was standing on a chair jugging from one foot to the other with a carpet ball in my hands. A big basket of them was under the resevoir [sic]. Also near the stove was a tall can of thick cream. It was being warmed to churn the next morning. Mother had warned me to be careful. Finally, while I was shouting; “They are coming, they are coming.” she said sharply; “Edith Mae Roberts, if you drop one of those carpet balls in that cream you will get a hard spanking.” Under my breath I said; “I wish my name was not Edith Mae Roberts.” I was teased about this for years. “So you don’t want to be called Edith May Roberts huh?”

The kids came in all hot and breathless and covered with snow. All hungry as little bears. I knew mother would fix them one of those fresh biscuits and I would get half of one too, with either plum butter or apple butter on it. Delicious! I can almost taste them now.

**********************

The above recipe was a family favorite. We don’t know if it was passed down from her mother or if Edith found it elsewhere. These cookies are unique and totally delicious, especially when frozen and ‘liberated’ from the deep freeze in the midst of a hot Iowa summer without air conditioning.

Like most family recipes, it was told to the writer as Edie was cooking, and she had made the recipe so many times that she didn’t think about things like whether or not to drain the pineapple, which is likely the way to go- it will depend on the moisture in the air when you are baking, and you may need a bit of the juice. These are excellent without the nuts, too, although pecans are very good in them. If the kitchen is warm, pop the dough in the refrigerator for a bit to firm up before baking, or the cookies will spread out too much. The bottoms of these cookies brown quickly, as do the pineapple bits, so do not use a dark pan- an insulated sheet might work better, though of course such things were not available to Edith or her mother as they baked in a wood-fired stove and later Edith’s prized electric oven.  Edie always added a buttercream icing after cooling that was delicious plain or with additional crushed pineapple mixed in. The yield of 3-4 dozen was for farmhands and threshers, it seems- they are very large. Smaller cookies puff up taller and have a better icing:cooky ratio per results of many taste tests over the years.

 

 

Notes, Sources, and References: 

1) Family recipe.

2) “The kids” coming home from school would have been Edith’s brother George A. Roberts, Jr. and their sister, Ethel Gay Roberts.

3) The above is not Edith’s handwriting- that was challenging to read. She typed most of her recipes but this one was written as she told it, probably sometime in the 1960s or early 70s.

 

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Family history is meant to be shared, but the original content of this site may NOT be used for any commercial purposes unless explicit written permission is received from both the blog owner and author. Blogs or websites with ads and/or any income-generating components are included under “commercial purposes,” as are the large genealogy database websites. Sites that republish original HeritageRamblings.net content as their own are in violation of copyright as well, and use of full content is not permitted.
 
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Workday Wednesday: Ella V. Daniel- A Day in the Life of a Farm Wife, Part 2

This entry is part 2 of 3 in the series Ella V. Daniel Roberts- A Day in the Life of a Farm Wife
"Farmer's wives are the people to be pitied this hot weather." Marion Daily Star , 30 Jul 1885, Vol. 8, Number 232, Page 4.
“Farmer’s wives are the people to be pitied this hot weather.” Marion Daily Star, 30 Jul 1885, Vol. 8, Number 232, Page 4. Posted with kind permission. (Click to enlarge.)

 

Daniel Family, Roberts Family (Click for Family Tree)

Some seasons were more labor intense for everyone on the farm, and especially for a farm wife like Ella V. Daniel Roberts. Her daughter, Edith Roberts Luck detailed this in stories and letters about her family:

Mother worked all summer canning and pickling and being like a squirrel getting in winter supplies. Dad (George Anthony Roberts, Sr.) was pretty smart. We had enough strawberries and cherries and other small fruit so that someone in the neighborhood came in and picked on the shares. Even then I can still those [?] cans of berries that had to be stemmed or cherries pitted. Sometimes we used a cherry pitter but mother was a bit skeptical of that as some of the cherries might have a worm in them.

Dad also fixed up a place in the old house… where mother could use a gasoline engine for washing and churning and Dad could use it for cleaning seeds. It was a shaft with belts going over the pulleys and out a window where the engine was housed. He was very ingenious. He made a cistern next to the house and water could be pumped into the house and then into the sink. It was on the east side of the kitchen. Next to the stove. If you wanted hot water, rather warm, you got it out of the reservoir attached to the range or stove on the south wall.

Oh yes, Dad sharpened knives and scissors on this set up in the old house. He could not stand a dull tool.

Although they had an inventive setup, making life a bit easier than in other farmhouses, life was still full of tasks. Processing the farm’s produce, canning, and cooking were hot and time-consuming tasks. When a home was being built, as in the excerpt below, or if it was planting, harvest, or threshing season, there would be many more mouths to feed.

Can you imagine mother cooking for all those workmen, a dozen or so in all that mess. I would have to stand and shoo the flies off the table with a branch from one of the trees. Hot, oh it was so hot. Not small wonder that she died at 52 years of age. The men slept in the old house and when she churned she would call to them when she had gathered butter and they would come from all directions to get the fresh buttermilk. The men cleaned up out side at a bench with towels and soap ready. Just imagine the work she had to do.

This meal for the workmen would be a meat and potato meal. Vegetables two or three of them and pickles and jam and relishes. Pie and cake and bread that she baked herself with coffee and tea and milk. Sister at that time was a teenager and did help but mother never did have hired help unless she was sick. Come to think of it, I cannot remember her ever having help. Now the neighbor women came in at threshing time or other times when there were men to cook for but never paid help.

Edith reported that her mother was a kind and loving soul, and very hardworking, but,

There were two chores that irked mother…

[One] thing that mother had a hang up about was having supper before the chores were finished. You see in the fall and winter and spring too, everything was done by the men before they came in to supper. In the summer mother wanted to have a little daylight for her to work out in her garden after supper. I can see both sides and always it was a bit of a thing.

“Dinner” was the noontime meal, and was the biggest meal of the day since everyone had been up working at dawn (or before) and still had many hours of chores left. “Supper” was a lighter, evening meal, so a little less work for Ellie Roberts.  They did sometimes have company though, such as the man that George Roberts bought his first car (a Rambler) from, in the big city of Des Moines, Iowa:

The dealer and his family came to see us often. Mostly at the evening meal. I know he just came for a good country meal. Suppers were mostly leftovers and with company it was pretty scarce for us kids. Mr. Miles would say ”he could not make his bread and jam come out even” so he would eat on. I don’t blame him as mother’s apple and plum butter and homemade biscuits were delicious.

George Sr. and Jr. plus their hired hand would have gotten their usual portions of food, since they worked hard on the farm. The women and children would share the leftover leftovers.

Winter comes early in Iowa, and keeping the fruits of the year’s labors protected was important, as was heat for the house. We are so lucky to be able to flip a switch from ‘cool’ to ‘heat’ or our programable thermostats do it automagically. Not so in the early 1900s and before, as Edith describes the second chore that irked her dear mother:

She would have to talk and talk to get Dad to put up the stoves in the two front rooms. She would polish them with black stove polish, her hands would not be free of it for days. Then the stove pipes would have to be fitted. The piece of metal that covered the opening during the summer would have to come out with a lot of soot and a big metal piece put down for the stove to set on. Well it all added up to stress for sure. The stove in the parlor had to be put up because of the fruit and vegetables in the cellar under this room. Much of mothers summer work had to be protected from the freezing weather. It was a much nicer stove than the one in the sitting room. It had [isinglass] or mica you could see thru and we burned anthracite coal. That is what is called hard coal. The embers burn a long time seemingly with out flames or smoke. It was fun to sit on the floor and just watch the burning coals thru this glass. The ashes had to be taken out each morning in the other stove and I am not sure how often in the parlor stove as it was much cleaner and needed less attention.

Illnesses, of course, clustered into preferred seasons, and a farm wife had to be prepared to treat everything from poison ivy to assisting with childbirth:

In the neighborhood mother had the reputation of being very good at helping the doctors when emergencies came up. In this same house where Ruby was born mother helped deliver a child that was a real hard case. When there was illness in the neighborhood they would call for mother. Just being around her would instill confidence and trust.

 

 

To be continued…

 

Notes, Sources, and References: 

1) Excerpts in green are from letters and stories written by Edith Roberts Luck. They are protected under copyright law since she wrote them in the 1970s and 80s, so may not be published or posted elsewhere. Family members may request permission to republish for non-profit use; please use our contact form.

2) Ruby Robinson DeMoss was the child of Ethel Gay Roberts Robinson, Edith’s sister.

 

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We would love to read your thoughts and comments about this post (see form below), and thank you for your time! All comments are moderated, however, due to the high intelligence and persistence of spammers/hackers who really should be putting their smarts to use for the public good instead of spamming our little blog.
 

Original content copyright 2013-2015 by Heritage Ramblings Blog and pmm.

Family history is meant to be shared, but the original content of this site may NOT be used for any commercial purposes unless explicit written permission is received from both the blog owner and author. Blogs or websites with ads and/or any income-generating components are included under “commercial purposes,” as are the large genealogy database websites. Sites that republish original HeritageRamblings.net content as their own are in violation of copyright as well, and use of full content is not permitted.
 
Descendants and researchers MAY download images and posts to share with their families, and use the information on their family trees or in family history books with a small number of reprints. Please make sure to credit and cite the information properly.
 
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Ella V. Daniel Roberts- A Day in the Life of a Farm Wife, Part 1

This entry is part 1 of 3 in the series Ella V. Daniel Roberts- A Day in the Life of a Farm Wife
Ella V. DANIEL ROBERTS, circa 1904. Cropped from a family portrait.
Ella V. DANIEL ROBERTS, circa 1904. Cropped from a family portrait.

 

Roberts Family , Daniel Family (Click for Family Tree)

A farm wife’s life revolved around the simple rhythms of the seasons, the crops, the animals, and her family. Her youngest daughter, Edith Roberts Luck, later wrote stories and letters to her family, detailing the people she loved. She particularly loved her mother, Ella V. Daniel Roberts:

I know she lived the life she loved and she was happy… She worked so hard with Dad [George Anthony Roberts] to pay for these acres. I am sure she enjoyed it all. I never did think she enjoyed the new house as she did the home place. It was just too fancy. 

Although a large woman and short, that did not slow her down with her farm work.  Edith wrote:

I have heard women say; “No one can move as fast as Ellie Roberts.” “She can get more done in less time than any of us.”

Milking was a constant chore on the farm- it HAD to be done twice daily. Ellie Roberts used a small three-legged stool- Edith wished she still had it, and never could believe that her large mother was able to use such a small stool for milking.

Mother milked too. I can see her coming up the grade from the barn carrying two big buckets of milk. The cats following along behind ready to lap up the foam if she had to get her second wind to continue on to the milk house which was just east of the kitchen porch. Imagine two hundred pounds and working like that.

An old, well-used milking stool. Via WikiMedia Commons.
An old, well-used milking stool. Via WikiMedia Commons.

Writing about the horses and cows, Edith remembered:

The barn was warm and noisy with their movement and eating. We would go up in the hay mow and throw [hay] to put in their mangers. Brother helped mama milk, and I would have to go Protesting to the house, because I couldn’t be in the cow-barn where they were milking. 

Brother (George Anthony Roberts, Jr.) … did the separating too. Before we had the separator mother skimmed the cream off the top of the tall cans. In the winter we sold butter and in the summer cream.

Chickens were usually the responsibility of the wife and sometimes children as they got older. Feeding them and gathering eggs was a chore done every day as well.

There were eggs to gather and mother always raised her chickens from eggs out under setting hens. She never had an incubator. I don’t know [w]hy.

I was scared of those old hens. They could really peck you. I can see those little chickens breaking out of the shells and Mother going along and helping some if they were having a hard time. That was why she was so mad at the two snakes that were twined around each other when she was carrying water to the hogs that were so hot on a summer day. She discovered these snakes on the way to the hogs and she set down the water buckets and took a hoe and killed the snakes. Nowadays we know bull snakes are good to catch rats etc. But all mother could think of was them getting in her hens nests and eating her eggs that were about ready to hatch or had hatched. You cannot blame her. She was rather a timid person and I was so scared for her.

Roberts Family Farm- small barn circa 1970s.
Roberts Family Farm- small barn circa 1970s.

The animals on the farm required constant attention, and it was all a part of being a farm wife. For Ellie Roberts, even her vacations had to do with farm work:

When she was forty years old and I was ten we had the first vacation I can remember. I can see her now on the scales at the packinghouse we visited. Packing house you say. Yes that was it. Mother said, “She had seen so much stock driven or hauled off the yard she wanted to see what happened to them.” This was in Council Bluffs. We visited an Aunt Net. Well your grandmother couldn’t take it. I saw those squealing hogs being dipped into hot water and I was sick, so Aunt Net took me away. But mother, she stayed thru the whole procedure. Where they took care of the cattle was not so bad I guess.

To be continued…

 

Notes, Sources, and References: 

1) Milking stool- Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license via http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Tabouret_pour_traire.JPG

2) Excerpts in green are from letters and stories written by Edith Roberts Luck. They are protected under copyright law since she wrote them in the 1970s and 80s, so may not be published or posted elsewhere. Family members may request permission to republish for non-profit use; please use our contact form.

 

Please contact us if you would like higher resolution images. Click to enlarge images.

We would love to read your thoughts and comments about this post (see form below), and thank you for your time! All comments are moderated, however, due to the high intelligence and persistence of spammers/hackers who really should be putting their smarts to use for the public good instead of spamming our little blog.
 

Original content copyright 2013-2015 by Heritage Ramblings Blog and pmm.

Family history is meant to be shared, but the original content of this site may NOT be used for any commercial purposes unless explicit written permission is received from both the blog owner and author. Blogs or websites with ads and/or any income-generating components are included under “commercial purposes,” as are the large genealogy database websites. Sites that republish original HeritageRamblings.net content as their own are in violation of copyright as well, and use of full content is not permitted.
 
Descendants and researchers MAY download images and posts to share with their families, and use the information on their family trees or in family history books with a small number of reprints. Please make sure to credit and cite the information properly.
 
Please contact us if you have any questions about copyright of our blog material.

Shopping Saturday: Ella V. Daniel- A Farm Wife

"The Square," Newton, Iowa, 1915. Postcard.
“The Square,” Newton, Iowa, 1915. Postcard.

Roberts Family, Daniel Family

Farmer’s wives had a hard life, as did their husbands. When Ella V. Daniel (1866-1922) married George A. Roberts (1861-1939), she was just 18, George 23. They lived on their farm in Mound Prairie Township, Jasper County, Iowa, with three of the four children born to them, as their first child had died in infancy. George Anthony Roberts, Jr., worked hard on the farm his whole life, and his sister Ethel Gay Roberts worked hard as well (although she apparently was more fond of reading than chores). Their baby, Edith Roberts (McMurray) (Luck), who was mentioned as a wonderful gardener earlier this week, wrote stories for her grandchildren about her years growing up on the farm. She detailed the personalities and events of family, and these are such precious stories to have today, and to tell our own children. (We have our own family version of Little House on the Prairie!)

Shopping was a big thing when one lived on a farm, way out in the rural parts of the county. Usually the whole family traveled together in the horse-drawn buggy for the big outing to town. Edith wrote about a shopping incident that happened probably around 1901-2:

My first recollection of mother was very early. She carried me into the store called Carriers and set me on the counter while she did her shopping. We called it trading. As she went out she evidently heard a clerk say, “They will never raise that baby.”

For farm wives, shopping days were not only picking out new calico for a dress, or staples they could not raise on the farm themselves, but they were truly trading days. Ella would bring in items she raised, gathered, or made, in trade for the items the family needed. Edith continues the story:

In the winter we sold butter and in the summer cream.

Mother was a very good butter maker. The secret was getting all the whey out and later the salt water. We came to Newton each Saturday and they say Mr. Hough had regular customers for mother’s butter and if it was to bad for us to get in the folks would rather scrimp along on what they had until mother came in. It was all shaped in rectangular pieces and she would put designs on top and wrap them in snow-white sugar sacks that she had bleached during the summer.

Ella also baked cakes and pies, skills she taught her youngest daughter well. Edith’s pies, cakes, and cookies were always the first to sell at church bake sales, and Ella’s bakery items were esteemed as well. Ella did sell to other grocers in town, including one named Will McMurray. Will and his wife Lynette Payne McMurray had two sons who probably helped out in the store. One of them, Edward A. McMurray, would eventually become Edith’s husband. Shopping was, obviously, a good way to meet and chat with family, friends, and neighbors- and even future sweethearts.

Edith’s story about her father included:

He dabbled in county politics. The time we spent sitting on the bench at Houghs grocery store waiting for Dad. He would be out on the street talking to some one about the county and township politics.

No doubt this was a frustration to Ella too. As a farmer’s wife, she knew there were lots of chores awaiting their return to the farm. But the wait for George who was deep in political discourse would have been a regular part of their shopping day, so the family learned to be patient.

More about those chores awaiting their return to the farm in our next post.

 

 

Notes, Sources, and References: 

1) Family treasure chest of stories by Edith Roberts Luck.

2) Workday Wednesday: Tilling the Soil, Part 1- http://heritageramblings.net/2015/05/06/workday-wednesday-tilling-the-soil-part-1/

3) Workday Wednesday Continued on Thursday: Tilling the Soil, Part 2- http://heritageramblings.net/2015/05/07/workday-wednesday-continued-on-thursday-tilling-the-soil-part-2/

 

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Copyright 2013-2014 by Heritage Ramblings Blog and pmm.

 
We would love to read your thoughts and comments about this post, and thank you for your time! All comments are moderated, however, due to the high intelligence and persistence of spammers/hackers who really should be putting their smarts to use for the public good instead of spamming our little blog.

Thankful Thursday- Edith Roberts Luck’s Christmas Cookies

Edith (Roberts) (McMurray) Luck, in the 1970s.
Edith (Roberts) (McMurray) Luck, Christmas in the 1970s.

Edith Roberts Luck visited her son and his family every year for Christmas (as well as many Easters, plus the birth of every baby to help out). She would take over the cooking and had quite often sent ahead, through the mail, a big box of cookies and sometimes gifts in with them. She would package the cookies tightly in the plastic tubs that you could get ice cream in, or sometimes they were just loose in the package. (That was dangerous- open the box and cookies for the grabbing and stuffing in the mouth were right there- no opening of tight lids to slow down a family hungry for Grandma’s cookies.) She would use popcorn to cushion the cookies- those were the days before styrofoam pellets, and besides, popcorn would be food-safe, right? Sometimes it would make the cookies smell/taste like popcorn, but hey, she was a farmer’s daughter, and grew the best corn in her garden that I ever tasted.

I always wonder if these recipes were from her mother, Ella V. Daniel Roberts. They cooked for tables full of farm workers at harvest time, and packed a lot of calories into those meals to keep the workers going. These sugar cookies would have helped with that.

Making these sugar cookies and using the cooky cutters passed down has always been very special, especially with our own children, niece, and nephews. It is a family tradition to be thankful for; having such an excellent grandmotherly-type grandma is something I am very grateful for too. One of the best compliments I ever got was from my brother who said that I would make a great grandmother. With Grandma Edie as a role model, I do hope that will be true.

Here is Edith Roberts Luck’s recipe, typed on her old, well used typewriter:

Sugar Cooky Recipe-Edith (Roberts) Luck
Sugar Cooky Recipe-Edith (Roberts) Luck

 

Notes, Sources, and References: 

1) Family treasure chest of pictures and recipes.

 

Please contact us if you would like higher resolution images.

Copyright 2013-2015 by Heritage Ramblings Blog and pmm.

 
We would love to read your thoughts and comments about this post, and thank you for your time! All comments are moderated, however, due to the high intelligence and persistence of spammers/hackers who really should be putting their smarts to use for the public good instead of spamming our little blog.