Family Meals

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 Sisters of the Kitchen,

Ya know, when I was a young mom with six children, I didn't have that much food to cook with. Yet I always made sure that I had plenty of potatoes. I made a lot of potato soup and lots of mashed potatoes. If I ran out of cereal for breakfast, I would just make up a pan of fried potatoes in my big cast iron skillet.

Dear Kitchen Saints,

Yesterday I made homemade chicken noodle soup. It's really easy to make the noodles, and you can use whole wheat flour to make them, too, if ya wanna. I would do half whole wheat and half white. I usually just use the white all purpose flour.

For a couple batches of noodles, get out a big pan to put salted water in, and let this water start to boil as you make your noodles. You could add onion slices or green pepper slices. So let the water start to boil as you make your noodles.

Kelly was asking what to make with an uncut-up whole chicken. They are 49¢ a pound in her local store. Well, that is such a good price, I would buy at least two if you can afford it.

Good Morning! I wanted to write down some more meal ideas. You got the ones yesterday, right? The ones about cooking ideas for large families?

I was talkin' to Jim yesterday about some of the big meals we used to have when all the children were home. Jim said he still loves hamburger gravy. I would fix this gravy and have peas and mashed potatoes. Mary, our youngest, tells me that my ground beef tastes better than any she has ever had. She says that's my specialty ... fried hamburger. I will have to have that put on my gravestone if I get rich enough to buy one.

All day yesterday, I was thinking of all the meals I used to make for Jim and my children. I was thinking of some of you trying to feed big families. So here is my beef roast recipe. It was a hoot!

I know some of my homestead writings to some of you lately are over the top. And yet I feel a real calling to write this stuff. I feel such a calling to leave something behind ... my footprints in the sand, I guess.

Today is wash day for Mother. I don't do all my wash on Monday, but I do a good share of it.

The old time Mothers planned for Mondays. She started her bread on Sunday night and finished it early Monday morning. Mother made wash day soup. They could keep this soup in the oven all day and forget about it. They needed the top of the stove to heat wash water.

Jim had to work today and won't get off until about 7:00 this evening or, hopefully, earlier. I made him some sausage links and made gravy from the drippings. I made home made baking powder biscuits, too. And I have the coffee on.

I was going to tell you about an old time recipe I read today in a cookbook I had gotten at a book sale this summer. It was put together in the 1970s. I had seen this recipe in some of the really old recipe books before this, too.

Yesterday, as Papa and me were out shopping, I told Jim I needed to send in the simple recipe I had for chicken soup. I used to make it for the children and they loved it. It's very quick and easy. Just take a can of chicken noodle soup and a can of cream of chicken and a can of mixed vegetables. Just dilute each can of soup with water and throw it all together. If you have leftover chicken, you could put that in. Or cook up some onions to put in it. Put in parsley and some other herbs. It's a quick soup, and my children always loved it. It's not homemade but would do in a pinch.