COOKING

COOKING: I like cooking but I absolutely love and truly appreciate is being cooked for, especially with family or at a nice restaurant for a special meal. I my attempt at cooking was at Parkview Junior High in a Home Economics class. My other option was Latin. I rather think I should have taken Latin as I have a propensity for language...who knew? The one and only thing we ever cooked was Milk Toast. Ugh. This is a food made for invalids, it consists of heating milk in a pan and adding pieces of white bread then adding sugar and taking it off the heat immediately before any one can escape the room. Ugh! I never cooked anything until I was on my own, living in a house with my first roommate. My Uncle Carl was giving me free flying lessons to me and my roommate. One day I left a pot of eggs in water boiling away on top of the stove. We got home about three hours later. There was smoke coming out of the door. The water for the eggs had boiled away and the eggs were black and had exploded. Stinky! It took a few days to air out the house. Yeesh. The next food adventure was during the time Charlie and I lived at Grandma LaVann's ranch. I decided to make a german dish using venison rather than beef. The recipe called for marinating the meat in vinegar for two days. It looked truly disgusting, all gray and falling apart. Had to throw it out and anytime I mentioned using vinegar in any recipe was met with derisive laughter. Grandma LaVann gave me a pie crust recipe that called for a tablespoon of vinegar, which makes a very sturdy pie crust that can be handled for a fairly long time. Unless you roll it out for about 30 minutes, then it makes an excellent inedible Frisbee. Careful of rocks. User name will not be mentioned. My favorite seafood is Abalone. Delish Slice it thin, pound it until thinner. Fry lightly in butter. Yeesh it is good. My first attept at pumpkin pie was when I was staying at Grandma Horn's trailer at the farm. She had taken a train to go visit Aunt Wilma in Colorado. I had access to a small pumpkin which is cleaned, cut up and boiled in a pot of water until tender. Mashed that up. I then decided to combine two recipes for pumpkin pie. I doubled the amount of spices and it was gruesomely spiced. I did not know how to make pie crust so I simply poured the pumpkin into a pie plate and baked it until done. It was powerful strong but I ate it anyway. I have followed recipes for the most part ever since Once when Charlie and I were living in Monte Vista Trailer Park, I decided to make banana bread. I did not any flour. So I rumbled through the cupboard and decided to use Cream of Wheat. There was actually a recipe for banana something. The cookies came out rather strange. The were solid but rubbery. They actually bounced when dropped on the counter. We ate them anyway. Happy accident: When we lived on the ranch, I wanted to make a sandwich for Charlie. I had no bread. So I decided to make a bacon, tomato, lettuce taco. I fried the bacon, fried the flour torilla in the bacon grease. Put Mayo on the taco, put on the sliced tomato and added the lettuce. It was delicious and I have made it several times since then. Very handy. Lastly, the year after Charlie was born, I begged my parents to let me have the girls for the summer. We had a good time, the girls watched Charlie for me when I worked. We ran around like crazy whenever I had time off. We went everywhere. My favorite place was Golden Gate Park. One time I decided to cook rice with chicken gizzards and cream. That was not well received. I should have boiled the gizzards in Coca Cola which would have softened them nicely. I was teased mercilessly from then on any time chicken gizzards were mentioned. That is about it, I don't remember any other cooking disasters, I am sure someone will remind me.