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My great-grandfather, Horace Currier, was born on September 24, 1895 in Newburyport, Massachusetts. Here's a picture when he was a tot.  He passed away in 1964 so I never met him. I have heard many stories about him. Horace worked at the Studebaker plant on Piquette Avenue in Detroit and raised his two daughters, Betty (my grandmother) and Dorothy, with my great-grandmother, Nelle. She was from Johnstown, Pennsylvania and came from Pennsylvania Dutch stock. Horace met Nelle while traveling west looking for work in the early 1920's. They were together in Pennsylvania long enough for my grandmother to be born in 1922 before eventually arriving in Detroit. Stories about Horace's early years in Massachusetts include getting caught playing a ragtime on the church piano one day while my great-great-grandmother, Agnes Currier, worked with the other ladies cleaning the church. The pastor forbid him from ever playing the piano in church again. My great-grandfather had no formal musical training. He played by ear and could go to a concert, listen to a piece of music and come home and play it exactly note for note. Another childhood memory of his was visiting Grandma Ives' house and going into the attic where boxes of unsold Currier and Ives prints were stored. The Currier family in Newburyport were bankers. Horace didn't want to be a banker, he wanted to be an engineer. His MIT transcripts unfortunately show he didn't want to be an engineer as much as he claimed, because he was dismissed from MIT on June 11, 1915 for failing grades. Here's another picture of Horace as a young adult.  The woman and baby in the picture are not my great-grandmother and grandmother. Here is where the story of my great grandfather gets interesting. The woman in the picture is named Ella, and the baby is a boy named Furman. My great-grandfather married this woman in Massachusetts sometime after he flunked out of MIT, but before he registered for the draft in June of 1917. The story according to Horace is he and his mother, Agnes, had an argument. He left Massachusetts and never returned or had any contact with his family. He completely forgot to mention that he had a wife and three children with him. Horace, Ella and their three children arrived in Johnstown, Pennsylvania and stayed there for a short while before Horace packed up Ella and the kids and sent them back to Massachusetts by train. They never heard from or saw him again either. Horace Currier died in 1964. His second wife, my great-grandmother Nelle, preceded him in death. We did not find out about the first wife or their children until 2006 when a cousin doing the genealogy of the family stumbled upon the Massachusetts marriage license of Horace Currier and his wife, Ella. A record of Horace and Nelle's marriage exists, but it's completely sealed according to the law in Michigan, which allows secret marriages. Here are pictures of Horace and Nelle toward the end of their lives.  With leaving a trail of wives, playing piano like a virtuoso and really horrible pranks (my grandmother was getting ready to go on a date, and she refused to leave until she found her hat. Great-grandpa didn't like the guy she was dating, (my future grandfather) hid the hat in the oven and watched my grandmother become frantic when she couldn't find it), my great grandfather made this stuffing every Thanksgiving. The origin of the recipe is unknown. I don't know if this is something he learned to make in Newburyport, he picked up from his Pennsylvania Dutch future inlaws, or perhaps it's from the Depression era and it was his favorite recipe so they kept making it even after they could afford something with more ingredients. I'm thinking possibly Depression era recipe because of the main ingredient being crackers. This is the stuffing my grandmother and my mother made every Thanksgiving because it was Horace Currier's recipe. I didn't know stuffing was made with cubed stale bread or cornbread until I was in my teens. My family has stuffed this into their faces for four generations and it wouldn't be family Thanksgiving without it. When I make it for people outside of my family, they stare at it and tell me it's the most bizarre thing they've ever seen, and couldn't I just buy a box of Stove Top instead? Anyway, here is the recipe. If anyone with background in recipe history could shed some light on the origin that would be wonderful. Horace Currier's Thanksgiving Stuffing I'm going to warn you right now. The way I learned how to make this stuffing was watch my mom make it. I never saw her measure anything. Literally dump the few ingredients into a bowl and add enough boiling water until it has the right consistency.  Ingredients Cracker Meal - about two cups Kosher salt - 1 teaspoon Black pepper - I gave the grinder about 5 good cranks One medium onion, diced Boiling water Method It's been a long times since anyone has seen a box of Nabisco cracker meal on a store shelf. That means get out your rolling pin and crush some saltine crackers in a big, sturdy plastic bag.  This yielded about 2 cups of cracker meal. When you're done you want nice, fine crumbs.  Peel the onion and put the peelings in the bag you keep in the freezer for trimmings to make stock. Dice your onion.  Get some water boiling. A tea kettle is the best for this but I broke mine and never bothered to replace it.  Dump your cracker meal into a bowl and add seasonings. Bell's is poultry seasoning and don't let anyone tell you different. Bell's is made in Massachusetts, and whether Bell's is poultry seasoning or not has been the source of heated discussion at Thanksgiving in my family in the past. Some members of my family are convinced Bell's is Bell's and poultry seasoning is close but not close enough. It tastes like poultry seasoning to me and good luck trying to find Bell's sold in Michigan.  Realize after you take this picture that you still need to add boiling water so get a bigger bowl and dump everything in before adding the water. What is measuring? I put about six of those large soup ladles in the bowl to get the consistency of almost cooked oatmeal. It should stir easily, but not be watery. Yes, obviously this is much more water than I needed. I asked Mom if she had any clue how much water she used to make stuffing and she said about 10 cups. There have been years great-grandpa's stuffing turned out like cracker meal soup.  Pour the seasoned wet cracker meal back into your casserole dish and dot with some butter before shoving it into a preheated to 325 degree oven. That last hour or so when you try to cram everything around the turkey into the oven to get it hot before serving is about how long it takes to bake.  When it comes out, it will look like this.  The stuffing should be able to mound up on a plate and hold some gravy. Add sprig of fresh sage to make it look artsy fartsy.  I know, it doesn't look like much but to me this is Thanksgiving stuffing. Pure comfort food. You can stuff it into the bird but keep in mind it will be wetter from soaking in more liquid as the bird cooks. Thanks for reading the story of my great-granddad and his stuffing recipe we look forward to every Thanksgiving.
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Nov 16, 2014 03:09
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| # ? Apr 25, 2024 12:13 |
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This posts makes me desperately want to see an entire ICSA devoted to depression era cooking. Maybe right after the one on gelatin meals from the '50s and '60s.
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Nov 16, 2014 03:41
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Ultimate Mango posted:This posts makes me desperately want to see an entire ICSA devoted to depression era cooking. I'd love to see that, honestly.
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Nov 16, 2014 13:30
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Your great grandpa was a pretty interesting guy and the stuffing recipe is in fact bizarre. I may have to make it for after-Thanksgiving leftover supplementation or something. Thanks for the entry! We did an Ancient Food ICSA years ago that went over pretty well, and I like the idea of more time-restricted ICSAs. If someone else doesn't get to it I'll make it the theme for my next one. Let's save the aspic monstrosities for quickfire challenges and the like, though.
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Nov 16, 2014 21:46
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Ultimate Mango posted:This posts makes me desperately want to see an entire ICSA devoted to depression era cooking. Maybe right after the one on gelatin meals from the '50s and '60s. I'd be down. I've got a horde of church cookbooks somewhere to reference. Also, that recipe looks bizarre but quite edible, and your great-grandad sounds like a hell of a character!
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Nov 16, 2014 22:25
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| # ? Apr 25, 2024 12:13 |
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Bizarre is the nicest word I think anyone has ever used to describe great-grandpa's stuffing. Once people try it though, they say it's good.
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Nov 18, 2014 03:42
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