Mud Pies

My mother told me when she was a child, she made mud pies. Mud pies? Yes, pies made from dirt.  She was born in the red clay hills of Mississippi. No, they didn't eat the pies, it was part of playing a childhood game called,"house".One of the things the children did  was to emulate their mothers by making and baking mud pies. They would take old pie tins and add mud and water and put them out in the sun, and allow the sun to bake them. Some girls were creative and used grass of leaves as icing or color. It was a part of the processes by which they learned to be young ladies, perhaps making themselves ready for marriage in the future.

My grandmother would get up early in the morning to cook breakfast for her husband and send him off to work with clean clothes a full stomach and a smile. Back in the 1930's and the 1940's the wives viewed it to be their responsibility to do so.

The next thing on the agenda  for all the people in the house, was doing the chores of the house such as making beds, cleaning rooms, washing  and ironing clothes, feeding domestic animals, and all the things that pertain to the daily upkeep of the house.  Everybody had to take part, in the chores. It was not to drown the kids in work, it was a pattern of preparing them for things to come. The pattern of learning while doing ,was the the way that taught them to be hard workers. Then preparing for the husband to come home. So a hearty dinner was to finish the day. For them, it was a full day of work.
My mother sent my father off to work also with a full stomach and a smile. Eventually my father told he would cook his own breakfast so that she would  not be rest broken.

My mother told me everything about doing housework was about timing. If you studied the things you do while doing them,you learn the time it to do it fast, slow, good, better and best. If you know the timing of every chore you can put them in order. She believed in having everything out of the way when my father got home. That time was for him, her and then the rest of the family. She made time for catering to his needs.
All of this came from the practice of making mud pies.

To much of my surprise many of my cousins, now in their late 40's or early 50's had the same practice growing up as little girls. Of course in the 1960's and 1970's Hasbro sold "The Easy Bake Oven". This was a real hot lamp oven the actually baked cakes.
I wonder, what are the young girls of this day and age doing?