Old-time Yeast from Alice Hafen's Recipe collection

Cook a medium-sized potato in 1 quart of water.

Mash fine and add enough water to make 3 pints. 

Put into a quart jar.

Dissolve 2 packages of any quick yeast in 1/2 cup of lukewarm water.

Add to the jar with 2 tsp sugar and 1/4 tsp salt.

Soon it will start to work and foam.

Use two cups of this starter and follow your favorite recipe, deducting 2 cups of water from the recipe for the water used in the starter.

The remaining starter in the jar should be covered and put in a cool place or refrigerated to be used the next time.

Next baking, add warm potato water, sugar and salt and proceed as before. Always keep the jar in a pan of good warm water while it is working.

A half package of yeast may be added every month or so, but it may be used for many months without.

Pioneer Candy Recipes

Quick Danish Soup

double click to enlarge

Carrot Cookies - - - Alice Hafen

Alice frosts these with cream cheese frosting

HONEY CANDY RECIPE

2 cups of honey
1 cup of sugar
1 cup of cream

Cook to hard ball. Pour on a buttered platter.
Cool. Cut into 1 inch pieces.

Note: Do not make candy in stormy weather,
as it may not set up like it should.

Alice Peel Hafen

One Peach Pie Filling - - - Alice Hafen

MINCE MEAT

Pioneer Home Remedies - - - Canker Medicine, Corn Medicine

Cure for Goiter - - - Burdock Root

This was found at the Relic Home. We are not sure of the age - the year - or the effectiveness of the so-called cure. And so we kindly ask that you do not hold us responsible or liable for any adverse effects.

FINNANHADDIE WITH TOMATOES

DOUBLE CLICK TO ENLARGE

Leonard Frandsen's Meat Cure

Ammonia Cookies

There are many who remember these cookies as being a lot like the ones you can buy at Christmastime - the Danish Sugar Cookies sold in the big tin. There is a little problem in acquiring the ammonia however. If you go to the druggist to get the ammonia, it will cost you a pretty penny. We went to the local baker and he ordered a tin of it about the same size of the danish cookie tin above. It cost us about $15. That's enough to last a lifetime.

PIONEER COTTAGE CHEESE AND KANAPOOST

PIONEER RECIPES

These recipes are Danish, from the Ericksens. Grandma used to make the cottage cheese from milk that had been skimmed of cream. Mother used to make the cottage cheese and feed the dry curds mixed with cracked grain to her chickens.

It is important to use raw milk for these two recipes. I tried using pasteurized milk and it left a bitter taste in the cottage cheese. Using commercial cottage cheese for the kanapoost also left a bitter taste.........Alice Hafen

Cottage Cheese

4 cups raw skimmed milk

Set milk aside and skim cream from the top. Let sour and when it is clabbered, put it on the back of the stove to cook. (this was the back of an old coal stove where there was very little heat.) When the milk separates, pour into a colander to drain. Do not squeeze the drying curds.

To serve, mix dry curds with Miracle Whip and salt and pepper to taste.

Kanapoost

One recipe of cottage cheese (above)

Salt

Pepper

Caraway seeds

Put cottage cheese in small crock or glass jar and set for a few days with cheese cloth on top. Stir once a day until it gets ripe and then stir in salt, pepper and caraway seeds to taste. Form into a roll about 2 and on half inches long and 2 inches around. It is ready to eat. If it gets hard after a few days, you can grate it.

GROUND CHERRY PRESERVES

2 lbs of groundcherries
1 qt of sugar
Water (just enough to dissolve the sugar)

add the juice and rind of 1 lemon (or to your own taste)

Grandma Peel's Bran Beer

5 gallons of warm water
1 quart bran
1 handful hops
1 quart honey
1 package of dry yeast

Brown bran in oven. Put the browned bran and hops in a cloth sack large enough to allow for swelling, and put in warm water. When the strength is all out of the bran and hops, lift them out of the water and add the honey. This mixture should be hot. When cool enough, add the dissolved yeast. When this mixture is cool, skim and bottle. Set away at room temperature.