Home Cooking

Dear Mothers,

Well, it is snowing like crazy here in Iowa. Wanted to share also a recipe idea.

Dear Mothers,

It is still pretty cold here in Iowa. It is warming up, though, today and it is about 5 above. PTL.

Dear Kitchen Saints,

A few years ago, my kitchen stove about blew up. Well, the thermostat went out about a year earlier. So everything I baked I had to really watch as the oven temp went to 500 degrees in about 15 minutes. So to bake bread, I had to turn the oven on and off to keep a lower temp. Well, one day my dog died and I wasn't watching the oven and it caught on fire. That was my second fire! What a deal it was as the house was so thick with smoke. I thought for sure I had finally burned the whole dang house down. Thank God I didn't. Anyway, I was without a stove for about a month until we got another one. Sooo I cooked and baked in my crock pot. It was fun.

Dear Kitchen Saints,

Ya know in the old days the Mothers of the Home did all of their own baking. A few times a week they made yeast bread. Many of them had large families and would make a dozen loaves a week or more. When they ran out of yeast bread for the week, they made a few batches of baking powder biscuits or cornbread. This was weekly baking.

Dear Mothers of the Kitchen,

I have written some cooking ideas before but I will write them again for the newcomers.

Dear Mothers of the Kitchen,

Today I am writing about making steak dinners when you have no steak.

This is how I made SALISBURY STEAK. You just fry up hamburgers and then drain them and put brown gravy mix on the top. Serve this with candlelight and mashed potatoes and a green vegetable. Hogwash the children by commenting on how tender your steak is.

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.

Dear Mothers,

Ya know when Dan worked in NYC before moving to Oregon last week, he worked in a neighborhood restaurant close to Christian Joy's apartment. Their specialty food was comfort foods. Stuff like biscuits and gravy and cornbread and greens. Down home hillbilly food like bean soups and potato soups. And the New Yorkers love this restaurant. It's a very popular place to go. Dan told everyone there, "This is food I grew up on."

Dear Mothers,

Good Morning! Ya know when my children were little, sometimes if I was low on eggs, I would fix eggs in a frame for their breakfast. It takes a lot less eggs than scrambled.

Dear Kitchen Saints,

I have little four-year-old Olivia Jean this morning to take care of. But she is such a good little girl. I don't know who is taking care of who. Her sister Isobel, 8 years old, is in school but she comes here after school for a few hours. She is a lovely child, too, and sings like a bird. She goes to a Catholic school and Olivia will go to preschool there in a few weeks. Their folks pay me well and are beautiful Christians.