Finding Argo Starch

The chorus of Big Yellow Taxi starts: Don't it always seem to go, that you don't know what you've got till it's gone...

My Aunt Fanny Howard was perpetually ill. I know she had a cardiac condition, but since I was a child, I was never told the exact nature of her condition. She was taught to crochet as part of her rehabilitation after a long hospital stay. Aunt Fanny lived with her mother from the mid-to-late 1930's until her death in 1972. I lived with my Aunt Fanny and my Grandmother for a year when I was ten. We only watched television on Sunday evening and only Ed Sullivan. Our evenings after dinner and before bed were spent with my Grandmother reading and my Aunt Fanny crocheting and teaching me to crochet. She taught me in the way that people were probably taught craft skills for millenia. No books, no written instructions, I was taught the stitches and patterns by verbal instructions, by doing with Aunt Fanny correcting and re-instructing. I'm left with a repetoire of recipies for anti-macassars, dresser scarves, and doilies.

But more importantly, after the death of my Grandmother, I have inherited Aunt Fanny's crochet pieces that decorated the apartment she and my Grandmother shared. I am also left with the skills to care for these items. I can't recall how often we took them up and washed them, but I do remember the process.

For years, I washed the items and kept them tucked away, but in the past few years I've been using them. But what they need to preserve them and also to make the fluted edges on some of the pieces stand up is starch. Not the spray starch so ubiquitous in the stores these days. But the old-fashioned boiled starch. I searched stores to no avail. Online the choices were to buy enough starch for a lifetime or pay more than the cost of a box for shipping. I finally went to a small neighborhood market. This is one of my favorite places to shop. They carry a lot of products that have been pushed out of the major supermarkets by flashier, more expensive items. The women who own the market, have told me how excited customers are to find they carry my favorite cleaner: Breath o' Pine. So as a last resort in my search for Argo Gloss Laundry Starch, I stopped by this week. Lo and behold, they had it. I was also in search that evening for some spices to make Lebanese string beans. I found those as well at a fifth of the price they cost at the Safeway across the street.

Now I am set this weekend to wash, starch and dry the pieces. I will post pictures when I'm done.

And the Lebanese string beans are heavenly!

1 Onion, chop into small bits
Cloves of garlic, chopped into bits
1 scallion, chop into bits
Olive oil
Allspice, either ground or whole or both
White and black pepper
Cinnamon
Margoram
1 can of French cut string beans
1 can of chopped tomatoes or fresh tomatoes chopped
Now the string beans in this dish are supposed to be mushy, not al dente. So to cut cooking time, use either canned or frozen beans
Heat the skillet or wok on high until hot
Add the whole allspice, margoram, and grind pepper to taste
Let them heat until you can smell them
Reduce the heat
Add two tbsp of olive oil
Add the onions, garlic, and scallions
Cook until clear
Add the chopped tomatoes, stir
Add the string beans, stir
Add cinnamon to taste (little more than pinch)
Stir and let the contents simmer until the green beans are mushy
This dish can be served hot or room temp.

Some have been fascinated by my rosemary bacon:

Heat the skillet on high until hot
Add dried rosemary to skillet
Cook until you can smell the rosemary
Reduce the heat
Add the bacon
Cook until ready
Now I eat rosemary bacon with fried tomatoes. What I do is remove the bacon when it has finished cooking and add sliced tomato to the skillet flipping the tomatoes once. You basically want the tomatoes to get a hot and a little mushy but not too mushy.