Old Fashioned on Purpose: Cultivating a Slower, More Joyful Life by Jill Winger.

Now that I've started buying raw milk again (and making her wonderful biscuits!) I feel more like my old self.  I grew  up doing a lot of the same things she's doing right now.  I wish I knew where to get cherries because there is a beautiful colored page in the middle of her book showing a shelf full of home canned cherries.  I used to do that kind of thing all the time but now, living in a bigger city than the one I grew up in, I don't have access to cherries and such.  I can get chokecherries and some sort of wild grape that grow in my yard but I have no idea if they're even really edible!  They could be poisonous for all I know.  I can get fresh apples from my neighbors they have told me they have so many they end up using them as fertilizer!!

But I wanted to share an excerpt from her book that totally describes the way many of us are feeling nowadays.  Unhinged, to say the least, and unable to sleep the say even more!

"Whenever we become so whipped into a frenzy by fear, panic, or turmoil that we lose our way, this still, small voice taps us on the shoulder and prompts us to pause.  To return to the things that matter.  To ground ourselves in the rhythms of the earth. To remember from whence we came. It appeared during the Great Depression as financial chaos pushed thousands to the country. It occurred in the 1970's when societal unrest and the Vietnam War spurred the back-to-the-land movement. And it's happening again at this very moment.

This appears whenever society threatens to lose its moorings. There's something rippling through humanity right now. It's not a trend, but a craving. A longing.  A remembering. A sense that we are more capable than we have been led to believe."

FOR SURE.  Our gubmint would like us to believe we simply cannot function without their guidance.  Luckily, DJT doesn't feel that way and he wants us to know he trusts us to do the right things all on our own, you know, put on  your big girl pants and get with the program!!!!  I agree with him that's why I'm voting for him.  COMMALA wants us to believe we need gubmint in order to survive.  What HOGWASH.

The author of the "old-fashioned" book I mentioned above is Jill Winger and she also has a cookbook out (I have both of her books) - they were much cheaper through books.com or one of those online joints, than it was anywhere else.  I had to wait 2 weeks to get them but so what?  I can wait.  Not everyone has to be like a kid in a candystore for the first time!!!  The actual cookbook is called The Prairie Homestead Cookbook.  Lots of good, down-to-earth, advice as well as great recipes in the 2nd book.

ANYBODY CAN BAKE A CAKE, right?  Just doing it from scratch is a whole lot different than many of the "quick" recipes you find online today.  I recently made a pineapple upside down cake and it was great to do it without a white cake mix.  I let it cool for about 10 minutes after taking it out of the oven, turned it upside down,  and then I put the maraschino cherries inside the holes of the pineapple rings.  I haven't had that cake since my grandma passed away, LONG time ago.  It must be stored in the fridge though or it gets a funky taste real fast.  Ditto for the Dutch Apple Bread I made.