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Old July 1st 19, 06:03 AM posted to rec.bicycles.misc
jOHN b.
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Posts: 2,421
Default AG: My first batch of switchel

On Mon, 01 Jul 2019 00:20:45 -0400, Joy Beeson
wrote:

On Sun, 30 Jun 2019 13:35:58 +0700, John B.
wrote:

When I was a little kid my maternal grandmother used to make a drink
from vinegar, honey and water. I can't for the life of me remember
what she called it but any time any of the grand kids showed up she'd
make up a batch, put it in the "ice box", and we could drink all we
wanted :-)


My maternal grandmother had a real ice box in her summer cabin. She
had a fridge in the main house, and a pump on the back porch. I don't
know what cooler she had in the trailer, but it had a water tank for
when you weren't hooked up.


Just the opposite for me as my mother's mother had a "Frigidaire"
refrigerator with the cooling coils mounted on the top of the box,
while my paternal grandmother had an "icebox" It set on the side porch
and the Iceman came around every few days with a new block of ice.

When I was growing up most people referred to a refrigerator as an
"ice box" probably because there were so many actual ice boxes in use.
The "Ice Man" was still delivering ice when I was in grade school.

Both of my grandmothers had a wood stove for cooking and I can
remember them using wood for fuel, both in the cook stove and in the
stove in the "Front Room". In later years my father's mother had her
wood stove converted to burn kerosene, but my mother's mother cooked
on wood until she died.

I remember my mother and her three sisters once trying to tell
"Mother" that she ought to get a gas stove, it must have been
thanksgiving as the whole clan was at "Grampa's" house, and I
remember my grandmother telling her daughters that "she'd been cooking
on that stove since she was married and it still worked just fine".
But I also remember that in later years she had a kerosene stove on
the back porch for summer.

Our trailer had a refrigerator that could be operated as an ice box
when you couldn't plug in. (You could still buy a fifty-pound block
of ice almost anywhere back then.) There was no provision for water
on the road. The fridge was easy to defrost: just turn it off until
the frost fell onto the ice shelf, then clean it and turn it back on.
When we were plugged in (which was all of the school year) we kept a
gallon of milk in the ice compartment.

I don't recall any special beverage at Grandma's except the water in
the bucket. My mother diluted and sweetened rhubarb juice in hot
weather.

I like a bit of raw rhubarb ground up in a glass of ice water.

--
cheers,

John B.

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