RECIPES

I’ve loved to cook since I was a little girl learning from my mother. I don’t like washing the dirty dishes it creates but that goes with it.

I use directions for nearly everything I make and carefully measure ingredients so a dish tastes the same each time I stir it up. I don’t remember recipes, just where to find them. Many of our meals come from one of my two favorite, well-worn cook books–Betty Crocker’s or Better Homes and Gardens.

Most gatherings I’ve attended through the years included eating whether a full meal or just coffee and dessert. It’s always a compliment to the hostess to have guests ask for a recipe. I keep these in a card file and a notebook. When I see the friend’s or relative’s name, I recall the good times we spent together.

I hope my cooking makes memories for my family, especially the German Chocolate Cake I prepare for my grandson’s birthday plus the Thanksgiving and Christmas dinners. The menu for the holiday meals never varies from the fresh turkey Grandpa cooks on the Weber grill plus dressing, cranberry relish, mashed potatoes and gravy. I think in this day and age, it may be the only time some members of our family eat mashed potatoes and gravy, a staple of my daily dinners when I was a farmer’s wife feeding three little kids.

Thanksgiving dessert is two pies–pumpkin and country apple. For Christmas dessert, I make bratzelies, a thin, wafer-like cookie made on a special iron similar to a waffle iron, which my folks and Dad’s Swiss family always made at holiday time. I add the rosettes that my mother-in-law made by dipping a hot iron into batter then a pot of melted lard to remind our children and grandchildren of our parents who always made the goodies as part of our celebrations when we were young.

Most of my meals consist of things we’ve eaten for years, but to break the routine, I still collect recipes. We don’t do much socializing so the new recipe is often from a Face Book friend.

Do you like to cook?