COOKING ADVENTURES

COOKING ADVENTURES:

Let me try to do this chronologically  The first word I remember saying was breakfast Food and I have had love love relationship ever since.

Mom had a recipe for the 1963 Pilsbury bake off winner called Hungry Boys casserole.  The mixture was beef fried with garbanzo, red bean and lisma beans, tomatoe sauce, onion, etc. The recipe called for bisquits filled with the meat mixture, green olives and sliced olives. She only made the biscuits once.  I adapted the recipe to use peel and stick bisquits which worked very well. Still a good dish.

Every once in a while Dad would buy a steer at the auction and have it butchered.  They loved fried calf brains.  Have some! Uh, no it tastes like nothing I ever wanted to taste again.  
 
The first dish my grandma Horn made was pumpkin pie.e  She had a gooseberry bush growing on her property.  I would beg her to make me a pie.  I picked the berries and she shuddea red to make the very sour pie.  I was a grown woman before I ever had a ripe gooseberry pie, it was stunning.

Her green tomato pickles were my favorite, I have made several batches.  Best way to eat them is on a grilled bun, a patty, Mayo and pickles.  Yummy! 

One time I was staying at her trailer, she was visiting with Aunt Wilma in Colorado.  I had a recipe for two diffeent pumpkin pies.  I cut up the pumpkin and boiled it.  Then mixed in sugar, eggs, and for some demented reason used both recipes for the spices.  I could not make a crust so I baked it as a pudding.  The spices were  VERY  strong.  Did not attempt to do that again. 

When I was in the Brownie Scouts I got a recipe for chocolate mayonnaise cake.  It does not use eggs.  Do not keep it in the fridge, get very tough, does not need icing. The summer my sisters spent with us, I made chicken hearts and rice. That did not go over well. Probably went into their childhood torture food list.  

When Charlie and I were living at the ranch I wanted to make lunch and I had ingredients for BLT, except I had no bread.  I did have tortilla shells.   So I fried the bacon, dragged the shells through the bacon grease, put on bacon, tomatoe, lettuce and mayo.  It was delicious and I have made it occasionally since. One time, Uncle Tony gave me several duck eggs.  I looked for recipes in the White House cook book and found a recipe for custard.  It was the silkiest smoothest duck egg custard I ever had.  

I decided to try Saurbraten using venison. The recipe called for marinating the venison in a vinegar mix for three days.  The results were a disgusting gray  fish like mess. Any mention of a recipe containing vinegar usuall brought on gagging.

There was an old apple tree growing on one of the Italian farms, cooked into the best apple sauce, I hope someone had preserved this heritage apple.
 

A few years after Charlie and I moved back to Emmett, I wanted to make banana bread. I did not have flour, so I used Malt-O-Meal. The results were flat rubbery bits, called them banana slabs. Tasted ok but were very weird. Did not try that again. I have made mincemeat using venison, that turned out well if you like mincemeat. I am a nontaster, I should like liver. Mom's recipe was liver and onions. The onions were wonderful but the liver was tougher than whang leather, what ever that is. One time we had fresh buck chops and venison liver for breakfast. The liver was fried in bacon grease and it was a bit pink in the middle was delicious. Cannot remember any other disasters, do let me know if I forgot. R