She set the table

How often when I'm cooking or doing something in the kitchen I seem to have memories about one of my grandmothers or my mother doing something in the kitchen. Today, I was listening to the radio in the kitchen, hm, that reminds of the doing that years ago, one of those old time radios. Well, anyway, back to my original thought, something that was said on the radio reminded me of one of my grandmothers. She set the table for us when we were going to be coming for a visit.

We lived several days drive away. I remember her saying that she set the table the day before we got there. I didn't understand that at all at the time. But I do now.

It seems like one of my stronger memories about her. I wished I remembered more things about her. But I haven't remembered a lot. When she died we were talking about her with my aunt and uncle and cousins. They had so many stories. But my family didn't seem to tell stories so much as their side of the family. It seems that remembering things later is aided by the stories you tell now. And then retell.

But it doesn't seem to be a bad thing to remember about my grandmother if I can't recall anything else to tell the next generation about her. She set the table.

Sometimes you make a flop

Sometimes I make the exact same thing and it doesn't turn out the same way. I wonder why that it is? I guess I overcooked the macaroni, but I wasn't worried about that because I was just throwing everything into a pot, macaroni and all. That worked the last several times I did it. Somewhat to my surprise, actually.

I've been eating my disappointment all the same because I hate to throw things out if they are at all edible. I've been eating a big pot of macaroni, tomatoes and beef and some other vegetables and trying to fix it by various methods, seasoning, nothing really worked.

"Dog Food"

I've been experimenting with a recipe for dog food that I found on a blog called down--to--earth. It has minced (ground) beef, lentils, pasta, rice, vegetables, water, I'm not sure what else. No onions, she says.

I've tried making several variations on her recipe now. And I keep tasting my experiments myself and find that this "dog food" is good!

My first recipe was rice, chopped up chuck roast (because it was actually cheaper that day), green beens and a few tomatoes. Both of my dogs ate it willingly. I liked it too.

Second recipe lentils, rice and green beans. I liked that pretty well. One dog wouldn't eat it. I suspect he only eats veggies if they taste like meat!

Third recipe, surprising to me, a combinations of about 1 lb. macaroni noodles, a package of lentils and a can of chopped tomatoes. I loved it. This was the first surprise. And then I discovered that when I offered it to my veggie eating doggie she loved it and ate it before eating the dried dogfood I usually feed my dogs, my second surprise!

I read up on it a bit and found out that dogs shouldn't eat onions, mushrooms, chocolate (I knew that already), and several other things. There are some differences of opinion on certain things like broccoli, garlic and avocados.

Home prepared dog food, you and your dog can eat!

Chicken Spaghetti

The chicken spaghetti recipe I followed today came from a cookbook of Georgia Recipes. It was rather bland. And there was a lot, so decided to try freezing some. But first I stirred in a package of the seasoning mix that I usually use to make regular spaghetti sauce (Lawry's).

I'm interest to see how it freezes. I mixed the sauce and noodles together.

Jello Molds

I love the way jello looks. Those beautiful colors with the light shining through it.

Eating Plain jello, not so much.

But I do like jello with stuff in it. I was looking at one of my cookbooks that I'm not sure I have ever made a recipe from it, and I thought "I'll make the first recipe that I come to that I have the ingredients for." The cookbooks is called Salads. I love salads, so that's probably why I bought it. From a yard sale or thrift shop.

So the recipe I found was a jello recipe that calls for lime or lemon gelatin, pineapple, pimiento cheese, celery, nuts, carrots and mayonnaise. I didn't have lime or lemon, but I figured that orange would do, and I didn't have pimiento cheese, but I did have some pimientos in a small jar and some cheddar cheese (same thing). I liked it. I took some to my brothers house and they liked it. It did have a curious appearance however. I thought perhaps it was the orange jello so I tried the green (lime). It also had an unappealing color. Today I tried a layer of orange and lime. It looks better. I have yet to taste it.

When I was young and I was somewhere that had jello with any kind of vegetables in it, I tended to turn my nose up at it. I thought only fruit went well with jello. Jello seems to have been a very popular dish for potlucks when I was young. And it was often made in pretty molds which are so attractive. But I don't bother with that.

My grandmother who often brought several dishes to dinners that were at our house. And several times one of them would be a jello in a fancy mold. For some reason my mom and my grandmother would always argue about who was going to unmold the jello. I can't think why. It seems like a silly thing to argue about. Eventually my grandmother quit bringing jello to our house.

I noticed that the publishing date for the Salad cookbook was from around the time when I was growing up. I'm not sure, but I think that there was a bit of a fad for jello back then.

One jello recipe remained a family favorite over the years, it was a strawberry jello, with stuff in it of course.

Chocolate Pudding, some like it hot

I have a fairly simple recipe for making chocolate pudding, only thing is it seems to take way too looonggg to cook. The other night, I was stirring and stirring and after an hour I finally gave up and had something in-between pudding and chocolate milk. It wasn't so bad. I like to eat it when it's hot. The next day what I hadn't already gobbled up was a bit more like pudding. I like to eat it when it's cold also.

I have made the recipe before and don't remember it taking so long. It wasn't ever an instant or even quick fix, it maybe took 1/2 an hour to pud (get thick). After all that preparation, sometimes I would eat the whole batch in one sitting.

I used to like the store-bought kind until I had homemade. My recipe is in a cookbook that a friend gave me years ago called Homemade Groceries (something like that). That and another book a friend gave me have turned out to be long-time favorites of mine. I can't remember anymore who gave them to me but thanks to you friends, God knows who you are, (who probably will never actually read this).

Red Food for Valentine's Day

I do enjoy eating certain foods with certain holidays.

But, I heard Nigella Lawson, on her cooking show, using the term "prinking" by which I think she meant being overly fussy about serving food. I would say I'm generally not fond of prinking. (I have come to use that word prinking to mean anything I feel that I am being over fussy about.) Well, so is it prinking (or prinkish) to be overly fussy about Valentine's Day food, or is it fun? I guess it depends on what is "fussy" and what isn't. It might depend on my mood how something strikes me. I once made a mouse out of a radish to decorate a veggie platter ... maybe prinking. The root of the radish just looked like a mouse tail to me. I guess one could cut beets into a heart shape, hmm....

Just in time--actually, a bit early--for Valentine's Day, I made some borscht. In case you didn't know, borscht is beet soup. The recipe I was using called for beets and tomato sauce which combination made a very red soup. I can't decide if I liked the color of it. Looking at a bowl of everything colored red, including the potatoes and cabbage, um well it was certainly red, but not so appetizing, I think. Sour cream is added to it to serve, so it ends up looking a smeared red and pink.

Honestly, I have yet to make a batch of borscht that I really was crazy about. But I have tasted some that I liked. I don't remember how it looked.

I had this craving for beets and after I had gotten some I wasn't sure what I wanted to do with them. I ended up fishing a good bit of the beets back out of the soup and putting them on some greens with an olive oil dressing. That I love. I finished off the remainder of the soup rather slowly.

Maybe better to stick with making a heart-shaped strawberry cake for your Valentine, if you have one. My brother's girl friend made one for a Valentine's celebration at their dance group. I've been enjoying eating the left-overs. And actually, it was attractive and yummy!

Chicken and Rice Soup: Just Add Chicken and Rice

Remember the children's story about Stone Soup? To make the soup the stranger said all he need was a stone. So the villagers brought the man a stone and he put it in the pot. Then he said he just needed a little onion to go with it. And then a few carrots would be good. And could someone come up with a few potatoes? Soon the stranger had prepared a delicious soup. Wasn't that clever!

So now it seems that's all you need to do to make a delicious soup out of a can. My brother's girlfriend was heating up some chicken and rice soup to go with grilled cheese sandwiches. She said that the chicken in it was pretty small and not much of it; they should get some of those cans of chicken to keep handy so they could add it to soups. And she mentioned that she had put some of the left-over rice that I had made the day before into the soup. Then she laughed, "It's getting pretty bad when you have to add chicken and rice to chicken and rice soup."

Pizza -- semi-homemade

I've been experimenting with using pizza dough mixes. Not the pizza kits, just a mix to make crust. I've tried 2 different brands and I liked them both just fine. For sauce I used a chopped up whole tomatoes once, and another time I mixed ketchup and salsa. Both of those were fine, also. They are quite reasonably priced.

For cheese I used mozzarella. For toppings I have tried canned sliced mushrooms and sliced black olives, ham, fresh onions, canned pineapple, and I can't remember what else. I liked all that mostly, but the onion was a little too raw in the time it took to cook the pizza. I guess I'll try pre-cooking the onion (or maybe cut finer?) next time. You can put anything that you want.

I've noticed other things available in the same area of the store also, such as pepperoni.