Dear Kitchen Saints,
Jill wanted me to write about how I make bread. I thought I had written about it enough that you all would be tired of me writing about it. But I guess for the newcomers I could write it.
My friends get a kick out of how I make bread. One time Aunt Toot was here visiting and drinking Pepsi and I took the can and threw some in my bread, proving you can make bread out of anything.
Last evening Christine, John's wife, and Romeo, my grandson age 3, came to visit for the evening. John and Jim were at work. I had fixed a big batch of homemade tomato soup. I have a lot left and today I will make tomato bread.
Happy New Year. John, his wife Christine, and Romeo came over last night for supper. We had a ball! Well, anywhere this family is, you can't help but laugh and have a dandy time. They had to go to Missouri for Christmas so they brought our Christmas presents over last night. They gave me a lovely sweater and Jim a billfold and bedroom slippers. We had given them a crockpot. That's what they wanted. Also, we got Tiff one, and Tiff and David got us one. Susie, Dan's wife, cooks in hers every day. We all love our crockpots. I had one but it was wearing out.
Yesterday, I was cleanin' out the fridge and makin' soup and bread. I made a lovely multicolored chili. I usually just make it with beans and tomatoes and hamburger. But this time, I added a can of drained corn and some cut up cubed pumpkin. Then I had a couple big slices of green pepper in it. Jim doesn't eat green peppers, so I just slice them big and lay them on top. He likes the taste but doesn't want to eat one ... same with onion.
I have had a craft idea I dreamed up and I want to try here soon. Ya know, right now the pumpkins in our area are dirt cheap. Jim got me two the other day for a buck apiece. So I just want to have fun with them and let my imagination run wild. I love the smell of pumpkin and I haven't been able to buy any reasonably priced pumpkin scented candles, so this is what I may do today or at least I will, for sure, tomorrow.
It's early in the morning and I am starting some potato soup. I have the kerosene burner on in the living room and want to have the kitchen stove going, too. So I will peel the potatoes and put them in my pot and let them cook in the oven. I had the butcher crack some ham hocks in the middle, so I have two pieces about the size of a baking potato. I put one in my soup. I put in salt and pepper and an onion slice, to be discarded. I put in some cut up carrots, just a little for color. I like my potato soup to look mellow and sort of yellow. I put in celery seed, as I had no celery.
I am up early, makin' coffee and writing. Today Mary is coming for lunch, and maybe Tiffany and Baby Rose. (David is at work.) So I am up thinking of what to have for lunch. I may have chili and fresh vegetable salads.
We went to the grocery store yesterday early, and there were many marked down vegetables like for 29
Chicken Soup
Here is how I cook chicken soup from scratch, making the homemade broth. I just take a whole chicken, clean it up, and put it in a big pot on the stove with water to cover it. You could use just chicken parts. I cook it until I can take the meat off the bones. Then take the chicken out of the pan, let it cool, and take the chicken apart. Throw all of the fat and bones away, and then cut the meat up into bitesize pieces. Then put the clean meat back into your broth (the water it came out of).
Yesterday for dinner, I fixed a baked chicken. I took the whole chicken and cooked it in a big pan of water for a while. Then I took the chicken out of the pan and browned it in the oven. The big pan of water I cooked it in made a broth. I added cream of chicken soup to this. I made dumplings, just like you make biscuits, and I dropped them into the boiling broth on the stove. As the dumplings floated to the top, I put them in the oven and browned them on top. I mixed carrots and celery with the broth, and cooked them all together. Jim really liked the dumplings, and Mary, too.
It is 6:30 a.m. and I am frying hamburger to make vegetable soup for lunch at noon. I am frying about three pounds of hamburger and will make the soup in my big turkey roaster that can hold a 25 pound turkey. It covers two burners on top of the stove, so it's big.
Last week, I was visiting with our David, age 22, on the phone. He said, "Mom, Steve wants to talk to you." Steve is David's friend and they share the apartment.
