Tawdry quirk curators
// May 20th, 2013 // 2 Comments » // food, video
Everything that I love and hate about our kitchen in 45 seconds. Bonus points if you can identify two East Tennessee iconic businesses whose products are visible in the video. Double bonus if you know which child flashes a peace sign near the beginning of the video.
// December 18th, 2012 // No Comments » // food, kid quotes
“Our Christmas grapefruit is here!”
“How do you know that it’s grapefruit? It could be oranges or pears.”
“Oranges and pears come from the grocery. Grapefruit comes in a box from UPS.”
Maybe we should buy grapefruit more often.
// November 23rd, 2012 // No Comments » // children, food
“I’m putting the leftovers out for dinner. Where are the green olives?”
“I ate them.”
“Where are the shrimp?”
“I ate them.”
“Where are the black olives?”
“I ate them.”
“Do you want me to fix you a plate of meat and vegetables?”
“No. I’m not hungry.”
// November 21st, 2012 // 3 Comments » // food, holidays
The plan was simple. We would cook the meats and dessert. Granny would bring the sides.
After spending Tuesday shopping for and purchasing our assigned groceries, we returned home in the evening to discover that Granny had purchased ham and turkey. Now, we have lots of meat and zero side dishes.
What kind of lazy bones person waits until Thanksgiving eve to buy groceries for side dishes?
This person.
// November 21st, 2012 // 1 Comment » // food
When I was about 11 or 12, my grandmother took me to Miss Daisy’s Tea Room in Jackson, TN. I was less than pleased with the absence of burgers and fries on the menu, so my grandmother was thrilled when I finally found something on the menu that I enjoyed. I enjoyed it so much that my grandmother asked the waitress, who then asked the restaurant owner, if I could have the recipe. It was so simple that it became a family tradition for me to prepare this dish every Christmas. Regretfully, Sarah doesn’t like it but I have my fingers crossed that Amy will take over the family tradition.
Frozen Cherry Salad
1 can cherry pie filling
1 can crushed pineapple (drained)
1 large container of Cool Whip
1 can Eagle Brand sweetened condensed milk
Mix and freeze. Thaw to serve.
The restaurant served it like a scoop of ice cream on a piece of lettuce, but we just skip the formalities.
// November 21st, 2012 // No Comments » // food
1 cup white sugar
1 cup brown sugar
3 eggs, beaten
1 tablespoon cornmeal
1 tablespoon flour
1/2 cup milk
1/4 cup butter
1 teaspoon vanilla
1/2 cup chopped nuts
pastry for single pie crust
Mix sugars, corn meal and flour. Add eggs, milk, vanilla, nuts and butter (sliced thin or melted). Mix and beat well. Pour in 9 inch, unbaked crust. Bake at 350F for 45-50 minutes. Serve with vanilla ice cream on top.
*This was a recipe for beginning Home Ec students.
**I leave out the nuts.
// November 20th, 2012 // No Comments » // food
3 cups mashed sweet potatoes – Peel and cut 4-5 raw sweet potatoes. Cook in water until fork tender. Mash.
1 cup sugar
1/2 cup butter (melted)
1 Tablespoon vanilla
2 eggs
Mix together and pour into oven safe bakeware.
1 cup packed brown sugar
1 cup chopped pecans
1/3 cup flour
1/3 cup butter (Do not melt. Soften on counter.)
Mix with fork and sprinkle over sweet potato mixture.
Bake 20 minutes at 350F.
// November 19th, 2012 // No Comments » // Family, food
In an attempt to create a grocery list for Thursday, I have been looking through cookbooks and my pile of hand written family recipes. In an even greater attempt to procrastinate from actually making progress on Thanksgiving plans, I have been geezing. Remembering. Pondering.
While she was a woman of many talents, cooking was my grandmother’s art. Something in her kitchen was always baking, frying, marinating or cooling. Until retirement, she taught high school home economics. She taught pregnant teenagers about nutrition and cooking. She grew food. She cooked the food my grandfather hunted. My grandmother could seriously cook.
Because I wasn’t allowed in my mother’s kitchen and my high school didn’t believe in home economics, I never learned to cook with the skill of someone who grew up cooking. Despite that, I have my grandmother’s recipes. I’ve seen the notes that my grandmother made in cookbooks as she changed recipes over the years. What I don’t have, is a single recipe from my grandmother’s mother.
I know that when my grandmother’s mother moved to TN sometime around 1917, she married a Protestant and the fact that she was Jewish somehow ceased to exist. It’s logistically impossible to understand why my great-grandmother made that choice. I remain puzzled how, even if it was something that was deliberately hidden, she could avoid teaching family recipes to her daughter. Even more puzzling is the fact that my grandmother was twelve when her mother died and her Aunt, who also ceased to be Jewish when she moved to TN with her sister, married my grandmother’s father and parented her dead sister’s children. Two Jewish sisters raised my grandmother to love cooking and yet managed not to hand down a single family recipe. None.
How does that happen?
// November 8th, 2012 // No Comments » // food, kid quotes
Sawyer: “Why did he say cooked goose?”
Supertween: “It’s an idiom. He’s saying he’s in trouble and doesn’t want to get eaten. Did you know that some people eat geese?”
Sawyer: “Oh, I know. I only eat pig. Sometimes I eat cow, but mostly I eat pig.”
// April 11th, 2012 // No Comments » // food
In the magical world of my imagination, grocery stores update their websites with daily banana status reports.
This morning, our bananas are:
__ greener than grass
__ almost ripe
__ ready to eat
__ ready for cooking
__ bruised by wandering jugglers
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