Tag: north country

Tuesday was Grandma Day - every Tuesday - No Exceptions - unless Grandma had something better to do - which was at least twice a month. I never had anything better to do. With school closed for the summer, my phone was my social life. I was a waitress in the Main Street Diner, but … Continue reading The Kiss of the Meatball by Lorraine Caramanna

Assemble ingredients: South-Central PA Grandma in flowered apron, a farmer’s kitchen with red linoleum and knotty pine cabinets, a radio broadcasting farm market reports in the next room, Pyrex dishes, wooden rolling pin, spoons and spatulas, pie ingredients (flour, shortening, molasses, brown sugar, baking soda, egg, boiling water, cinnamon, nutmeg) a dog-eared recipe in an … Continue reading Baking a Shoo Fly Pie in Grandma’s 50s Kitchen by Diane Kendall Stevens

Take one traumatized toddler.Let her grow physically but not emotionally.Take one farm boy who expects to marry a wife as competent as his mother who fed and clothed her family with produce from the garden and the sale of eggs.Put the two together on a rocky farm with a decrepit house and no financial resources.Bring … Continue reading Recipe for Disastrous Family Life by Duane L. Herrmann

I turned my stubbornness trait around and called it tenacity. I turned my inability to ask questions around and called it curiosity. And, I learned to cook, because I am tenacious and curious… and always hungry! Cooking was not a skill I learned as a child, or even as a young adult. Eating, though, eating … Continue reading Rice pudding taught me how to cook and how to live by Kathy Barlow

And one by one they found themselves at the end of the laden tablewhere there was breadmade with a hint of cardamomand a trace of sugar.Just enough to bring them together.No secret, this:spice and sweetness in good measureis found where bread is shared.

She was a good cook. She cooked with what she had on hand, quickly and easily, turning out a meal for 9, often with some help from one or another daughter. My mother often made scalloped potatoes - sometimes with ham; sometimes without. Just potatoes, butter, cream, a little onion, salt and pepper. Maybe a … Continue reading Scalloped Potatoes by MaryKate Owens

“Jam excels at preserving the tastes and smells of the season, but why should berries have all the fun? Adding tomato jam to your summer preserving bounty is just the thing to make you feel like a savory cook and leave you with a taste of summer into the fall.” Most of us gardeners have … Continue reading Tomato Jam by Mary Perrin Scott