“That takes the cake”
My jubilant thoughts of spring have had to be modified just a bit. Yesterday it snowed. The flakes started as tiny aren’t they cute (facetiously said) then became thick wet flakes which left the grass with a white covering which quickly disappeared. It was cold. Today the sky has a glimmer of blue, and the sun is fighting its way out of the clouds. The paper says the 40’s for today and much the same the rest of the week.
My car is getting a new tire so I am housebound. It seems we both, the tire and I, picked up some screws. I got a chuckle out of that.
The house is just so quiet. The animals are having their morning naps, no cars have driven down the street and the wind of the last few days has finally stopped.
My sister went grocery shopping for me before she left. I had her buy Rice Krispies which I haven’t bought in years. All of a sudden I had a craving for cereal and snap, crackle and pop is my favorite. I also had her buy whole milk. The watery stuff just wouldn’t do. I remember the top of the milk under the cardboard tab always had a layer of cream when I was a kid. Licking the tab was almost as tasty as licking the beaters after my mother had made a cake and then whipped the frosting. Her mixer was one of those Sunbeam stand alone ones, and she kept it on the counter. When we cleaned out her house, we found it in the cellar cabinets. It hadn’t worked in years, but she didn’t part with it.
My father had bought it with some bonus points from work, and I remember the first time my mother used it. We all leaned on the counter over the bowl and watched as the beaters turned and mixed the ingredients. Even to my mother it seemed like a miracle. When the batter was ready for the cake pan, she emptied the bowl and gave us the beaters. Our tongues got the outside then reached into the middle to get the rest of the batter. We didn’t care that our faces were covered in batter. We had found a brand new treat we could fight over-four kids into two beaters!
Explore posts in the same categories: MusingsTags: Rice Krispie, Snow, Sunbeam
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keepthecoffeecoming.blog 
March 22, 2011 at 2:40 pm
We actually reached 54F here today and then it wasn´t that a sunny day at all. But I think we´ve gotten Your winds here instead. My little car jumped around on the road every time it got hit in the side 🙂 🙂
For a reason I never might understand my mother never believed in mixers 🙂 🙂 I remember buying her one for christmas and she used it one time and then went back to doing like she always had. So I brought it home and used it myself 🙂 I think it was an Electrolux.
The one I have now is singing on its last verse and I really have to buy a new one, but I doubt I´ll keep the old one 🙂
Have a great day now!
Christer.
March 22, 2011 at 10:47 pm
Christer,
The wind came up and it got cold, not even chilly. Bring spring back!
My mother preferred her hand mixer later on, mostly for the easier recipes. I have both: stand alone and hand.
March 22, 2011 at 4:16 pm
snow here tonight. enuf already! i think our mixer came from s & h green stamps, pale pink and rarely used. no fighting between siblings.
glad you are back!
March 22, 2011 at 10:48 pm
Greg,
More snow coming later this week. I give up-NO MORE!!
I am so glad to be back, snow or no snow!!
March 22, 2011 at 5:52 pm
I would love to re live those childhood days again. We talk about them and they were wonderful times but a real good stare into the eyes of humanity or mans in humanity against man and the world takes on a whole new look.
March 22, 2011 at 10:59 pm
Z&Me,
The worst thing was being teased when I was a kid. That was harmful enough, and my mind would never have conjured the viciousness of the world. I never knew much beyond my street and town and they were gentle places.
I like to think that there are pieces in all of us of those benign days.
March 22, 2011 at 6:26 pm
Hi Kat,
I still shake milk cartons because of the milk with the cream in it. If my father or one of us kids got to it first, we would shake it up and mix the cream into the milk before we drank it. If my mother got to it first, she would pour the cream off the top and save it for coffee.
My mother’s stand beater was a Westinghouse, I think. It was a big, dangerous-looking thing, cream colored with black knobs and a cord that was covered in the fabric stuff. We found it in the cellar a few years ago when my brothers and I did a full sweep. It hadn’t worked in years but my mother wouldn’t let it go. The only reason it went this time was because we forbade her to come down into the cellar and see what we were doing. 🙂
Snow up this way was tiny (aren’t they cute – NO!) stinging needles. Then it was big flakes. Then it went back to stinging needles. It’s melted away now except for a few shaded spots but it’s cold and damp and cloudy.
Enjoy the evening!
March 22, 2011 at 10:51 pm
Hi Caryn,
I don’t shake up the milk anymore, and I find it purely disappointing not to find cream.
My mother’s was similar: black and white with a cloth cord. I felt sad to see it go but it hadn’t worked in years-it had become sentimental.
More of the damn white stuff coming. This better mean our fall will last nearly for ever!
March 22, 2011 at 9:01 pm
Daffodils are blooming in the front yard …
… tulips are next …
Cheers
March 22, 2011 at 10:52 pm
Minicap,
I’ll give on the tulips, but I have daffodil bulbs with yellow showing through!
March 22, 2011 at 9:19 pm
Today the temperature here in North Texas reached 85 degrees F with clear skies. The lack of rain and high winds are creating a grass fire hazard.
I don’t remember ever drinking non homogenized milk. However, I do remember licking the beaters after my mother whipped up some chocolate fudge frosting. She was not into baking and she only had the Sunbeam hand mixer. One of my best memories was of my mother squeezing oranges with her Sunbeam electric juicer. I still have it in our kitchen today. I think it was a wedding present that my parents received in June of 1941 when they were wed. It’s too much trouble to clean the thing after juicing so we don’t use it, but I never could stand the taste of frozen concentrated OJ after drinking my mother’s fresh squeezed OJ.
March 22, 2011 at 10:55 pm
Bob,
85°would put us in the dog days of August. The days have been snowy, wet and damp.
We never had a juicer. My mother had a wooden reamer which she pressed into the middle of each half. Squirts of juice flew all over. Mostly she just bought the already made juice.
Like you I love freshly squeezed juice and drank tons of it on my trip through South America. It really did spoil me.
March 23, 2011 at 1:29 am
My aunt gave me one of those stand mixers that she bought in about 1947 or so. I replaced the power cord a couple of times. When I use it, the faint ozone smell of the arcing from the electric motor brushes always takes me ‘way back in time.
This one had a tilt over top carrying handle. When you tilt it over, you can insert a power takeoff for one of those reamer style juicers with a flourish. This one is powered with a glass gathering bowl and a hole in the bottom with an angled stainless spout. You can put in a jar and catch the fresh juice.
Living in south Texas, near the Rio Grande valley, makes this a good thing. Wish I had it here with us. But it is stored away in Austin. My wife has tried several times to get rid of it, but I still keep it around for that juicer. Hard to beat that thing. Not much cleanup, unlike those screen juicers I’ve used before. Those things are a BEAR to clean.
The bluebonnets are out in force where the Texas Dept. of Transportation has planted them. The sloping sides of our town’s railroad underpass are completely covered in them.
Also out are the pink primroses in huge clouds.
March 23, 2011 at 5:22 am
Glad you are back and feeling well. That is the best welcome to spring you could ask for.
March 23, 2011 at 11:27 am
Cuidado,
Like the daffodils I am starting to flourish!
March 23, 2011 at 10:06 am
Yes, Kat, I remember that black and white mixer too. In fact, I have the white bowl that went with that mixer of Ma’s. I just used it yesterday to mix up a batch of brownies. Everything tastes better when made in that bowl. Must be all the wonderful memories blended in with the ingredients! Considering it’s around 50 years old, maybe I should pass it on as a family heirloom?? What do you think?
March 23, 2011 at 11:29 am
Sheila,
I think it definitely has the status of family heirloom. I can still see it sitting on the counter at 16 Washington Ave. I’m glad it is still around and getting some use. Ma would be pleased!!
March 23, 2011 at 11:53 am
Okay, Rick, no more on the heat and the flowers. You have me sitting here looking out my window and wistfully dreaming of sun and summer!
March 24, 2011 at 7:49 pm
I got a whole houseful of vintage Sunbeam mixers, all the way back to a 1932 Model M4K, which preceded the Model 1! That one still runs, too, and I went out on eBay and found a full set of jadeite-glass bowls for it.
I have two late-’40s Model 7s, one of which needs only a speed-control spring to run properly again, and a second one I keep around for parts. I also have my grandmother’s Model 11, which I dislike but which actually works at the moment, unlike the Model 7s, so I keep it on sufferance.
And I’m with RHMathis–those old Sunbeams smelled like ozone any time you ran ’em, and it’s so characteristic an odor that running one of them takes me straight to my childhood and using my mother’s Model 9 in the kitchen at home.
March 24, 2011 at 10:18 pm
Marchbanks,
I love kitchen collections and have some old pieces but none like your Sunbeam collection. Many of mine are the glass bowls you mention and several Fire King. One is a set of tulip bowls from when I was a kid.
I don’t remember the ozone smell-it probably seemed right to me when I was watching the beaters turn.