Lessons My Mother Taught Me! - In a Round-About Way

My mother lived to be 88 and worked hard all of her life.  She earned a high school diploma when others in the family did not.  She sold seed corn when only men were allowed to do so (she used her husband’s name).  She wanted me to be prepared for life, too.  She said I would need to know how to “dress” a chicken and would have to know how to pick strawberries without stepping on the just emerging berries on other plants.  Both jobs were ones that I detested.

HarperCollins, 1963

Even though I could fry up a chicken dinner by the age of nine, I avoided learning how to dress a chicken.  I could scald a chicken and pluck its feathers off and deliver the bird to my mother’s cutting board – but she had to handle the knife.  I was having none of that part of preparing the chicken for the table.  By the time I had my own household, grocery stores were routinely selling dressed and cut-up chickens ready for the fryer or oven.  I neither had to pluck the feathers or cut up the chicken (more like undressing than dressing in any case).  The knowledge did serve me well though when my teaching colleagues seemed to share Amelia Bedelia’s (Amelia Bedelia by Peggy Parrish, 1963) confusion about the meaning of the term “dress the chicken.”

Whenever Amelia Bedelia got into trouble – so to speak with Mr. and Mrs. Rogers she made a delicious pie or cake and softened the effect of her misdeeds.  She was well known for her Lemon Meringue Pie.  Now pies I could make without blinking an eye — when first married and beginning my own baking regiment however, I found out the recipe I had in my head was for 5-7 pies.  I soon figured out that I was not feeding threshers or hired men (or at that time a large family) so I quickly cut back on the quantities.  Check out a great Lemon Meringue Pie recipe and read someone Amelia Bedelia's book. 

Lesson #1:  Always let someone else "dress" your chicken, but bake your own pie.

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Listen and read along Amelia Bedelia by Peggy Parish, with illustrations by Fritz Siebel.  (HarperCollins, 1963; Revised 1992).  Amelia Bedelia | Kids Books Read Aloud

Read Along at https://youtu.be/bXoMD9Jw22Y

Find out more about Amelia Bedelia and the new books about her on Herman Parish's website at: 

https://www.ameliabedeliabooks.com/.