Less is more: Blueberries for me, for the winter

We had an end-of-school party for Eliyah and his Mother. He picked out the menu: BLTs, baked pork and beans, corn on the cob and canned peaches and oyster crackers for dessert. BLTs because he likes bacon. He accompanied me to the Butcher's Block to get the bacon too. He set the beans to soak the night before I cooked them. He liked corn on the cob. And canned peaches because we had just read in Silver Lake by Laura Ingalls Wilder that the family's first night staying in the Surveyers' house they ate canned peaches as a special treat. The oyster crackers came from the previous book in the series, Plum Creek, when Pa, trapped in a snow storm, ate all the oyster crackers he was bringing home for Christmas dinner. After school we went to the grocery store to see if we could find some peaches like Laura's. We were in luck! We found Margaret Holmes O'sage peaches, since 1838! They did not disappoint either. Because Eliyah's Mother was coming, I made mayonnaise, as well as the yeast bread Eliyah likes. Eliyah laid out the bacon on a rimmed cookie sheet to bake. He mixed up the Navy beans cooked with ham bone and the molasses and barbeque sauce and poured them in the casserole. He set the table.
We were all very merry over this meal!

I got the recipe out of a 1948 Boston Cooking School Cook Book which I was forced to buy to replace the 1936 one I've used since I was 17 which finally became too ratty to use. I really think it has no parallel as an all-purpose cookbook, though I have some favorite recipes in Lulu Silvernail's 1926 One Thousand Successful Recipes. I went strictly by the recipe but I added two slivers of lemon zest and one tiny clove of garlic, of the size you usually throw away as being not worth peeling. I like this recipe because it uses only the egg yolk, not the whole egg. Adding 3/4 cup of oil, along with a little mustard and the lemon juice, you end up with about one cup of light and delicious mayo, which you have a chance of using up before it spoils. I put it in an etched glass container that had belonged to my Grandmother, well, my not-Grandmother, as we call her because she married my Grandfather late in life, just three years before he died in fact. She was very much a part of our family though, and lived with us for several years and it is an honor to the mayo that I put it in her container!

Last time I went to the grocery I only spent $180. So this week, when blueberries went on sale, I had some money left to buy some. Blueberries for Sal was always one of our favorite books when my children were young. But these blueberries are for me! First I made a pie using all the blueberries left-over from last year. Then I washed the fresh berries and laid them all out on cookie sheets to freeze. Then they are loosened with a spatula and poured into plastic bags with zippers to put in the freezer and dip out a cupful to put in muffins and fruit salads. mmmmmmmm