Wednesday the 20th

The forecast does not look good for anyone planning on driving great distances next week.  That might be due to the fact that every day the forecast changes.  Dennis and I will be tucked safe and sound on Stauffer Avenue.

I thought about my mom Lena this morning.  A huge part of who I am today is what I learned at her elbow.  It was not only while I was at home during high school.  During my days as a homemaker and a new mother, Lena was only a phone call away to check on baking, sewing and cooking in general.

If a cookie or cake recipe listed ingredients, you followed it to a “T”.  The baking soda and baking powder reacted in a totally different outcome for success dependent on the recipe.

When it came to making dishes for a meal . . . whatever was handy and available . . . it worked.  In Lena’s kitchen, meal time dishes were very creative.  The basics of meat and potatoes and you had a meal.  The advent of the various soups allowed for as many different oven meals as you could imagine.  If the ingredients would work in a blue speckled roaster, in an oven of 350 degrees for an hour and a half, the crockpot would do just as well.  Toss ingredients in and you have a meal in four to six hours.

Where was the internet when I needed it years ago.

I use a digital thermometer when raw meat has been used in a crockpot.  Anything in a range of 155 to 165, I call it good.  If a dish comes out of the crockpot a bit on the soupy side, I call it soup and put it in a bowl.

I really enjoy the “Better than Bullion” that I find in the specialty department of Hy-Vee.  It enhances any flavor of what you are working with.  It keeps in the refrigerator . . . within reason.  When last I Googled it, I think there were at least eight different flavors.  The directions of how much to use of the paste compared to the little cubes of yesterdays is on each jar.

Having jellied cranberries on hand or apple sauce can round out any meal.  

The wind today is nasty and it bites.  The little bit of snow we got is swirling.

We are having left0vers of our oven dish of yesterday.  If Dennis likes it, it is a keeper so I had best write down what I used. Tee-hee.

With that I will take my leave.  ♥