Another awesome testimony from one of our readers:
My grandmother did well at baking bread. She was a new bride when
WWI broke out. Grandpa owned an electrical supply store with a
partner he had known his whole life. When he joined the Army he
left his thriving business in the hands of his partner, with instructions
his share should go to his young wife as a weekly stipend. A few
months later, the partner sold the business and left town with all the
money, leaving my grandmother alone - and to her surprise she was
also pregnant. She couldn't tell her husband this news. He was off
fighting in the Argonne.
She was a good cook, so she started selling bread to her neighbors.
During the Spanish Influenza outbreak no one wanted to leave their
homes, out of fear they would catch the dread disease. Grandma
collected the orders from their front doors in the evening, and in the
morning their hot loaves of bread and muffins would be waiting next to
the milkman's fresh delivery. Even though almost every pregnant woman
who caught the flu died, she went out every day. Grandpa's 15 year old
brother moved in with her to help, but was soon drafted to collect
bodies in NYC and bring them to the open air graves on Long Island. He
didn't get the flu. He caught Typhus from the corpses, and almost
died.
Grandma was 15 when she married. This young girl was alone, pregnant,
nursed the equally young child sent to help her back to health, and
still, Grandpa came home to enough money tucked under the mattress to
start his business up again - and a happy healthy baby boy.
I have her recipe book. She was so frugal, she wrote the PRICE rather
than the amount - 2 cents worth of flour, A penny's worth of potato,
use the potato water, one penny cake of yeast from Heckers divided in
four. I've worked out some of the recipes. They aren't bad but what
you can find online is usually better.
I have two suggestions - muffins, and sun ovens. Office workers LOVE
muffins, there are many good recipes for variety, and you can bake
ahead and freeze them for several months. Deliver a basket of
individually wrapped muffins, with a description, ingredient list, and
price attached to each. A woman in Clearwater has been doing this for
years and has a very nice home business going. Sun ovens can be made
at home, will take advantage of our hot summer sun, and will greatly
cut down on your fuel bill for all that baking.
Follow up to about email:
She raised four children, including my dad,
between wars and during the Great Depression, then died of cancer at
age 42. I never knew her, except from the wonderful stories told by
Grandpa and the children who loved her and missed her for the
remainder of their lives. When I was nineteen and about to get married
myself, I asked Grandpa why he had never remarried. He was so young
when his wife died, he was handsome, and successful. He certainly did
not lack for female attention. He said, "There was never anyone for me
but my Sweet Louise. In all my life my only regret is not marrying her
sooner." I laughed at that. She was fifteen and he was sixteen when
they walked down the aisle. Grandpa died when he was 84, and was
finally buried next to "his Sweet Louise".
