Author Archives: kzmclain

Kitchen Update

Posted in Main Course, Meat Dishes, Recipes, Side Dishes by

Some friends of ours are selling their beautiful loft/condominium in the Golden Triangle area in downtown Denver. It’s interesting that some of the feedback they are getting is that the kitchen is supposedly in DIRE need of updating. The condo is 15 years old or so, and really lovely. The countertops are granite, the floors are hardwood. Apparently the fact that it has an electric stove and the appliances aren’t stainless steel makes it a no-go, my friends.

Bill and I recently talked about people’s varying needs to update their kitchens as we were discussing his mother’s cooking. Wilma, who is an amazing 96 years old, now lives in an independent apartment in a retirement community. Prior to that, she lived in their family home in a beautiful old neighborhood on the south side of Chicago. They moved into that home somewhere around 1952 or 1953. Envision the appliances in a kitchen circa 1952. Fast forward to the year 2000, and imagine that those very same appliances are in that house. And they all work perfectly. We were at a museum recently that featured a 1950s kitchen and Bill said, “Look, it’s Mom’s kitchen appliances!” And it really was.

This is not particularly a commentary on how in 2013 we all need the best and coolest kitchens available. It’s really more of a testament on how well things were built years ago compared to today. For example, Bill’s parents received a toaster as a wedding gift when they were married in 1939 or 1940. Until eight or nine years ago, Wilma used that very same toaster. It would break; Rex would fix it. Can you imagine taking the time to fix a toaster today? It was with great consternation that Wilma finally agreed to buy a new toaster. I remember Bill saying to her, “Well, Mom, you could call the manufacturer and see if they have the parts for a GE toaster, Series ONE.” She, as I recall, was not amused.

Bill’s father Rex loved nothing more than to fix things. Wilma has told me that when Rex would come home from work and she would tell him that her washing machine was making funny noises, he could hardly contain himself through dinner in his eagerness to get downstairs and start taking the washer apart. I can understand because the apple doesn’t fall far from the tree, and Bill is a fixer himself.

Occasionally I will look at my quite dated kitchen and start thinking about updating it. Bill will listen to me, and then he will say, “WWWD?” That’s our code for “What would Wilma do.” My appliances work, the marks on my hardwood floor show it’s been well used, my kitchen table has knicks in it and stains on it because kids and grandkids have colored, played with play dough, pounded their baby spoons, and otherwise been comfortable sitting there. I guess I don’t mind the weathered look of the table.

No updates to my kitchen for a while.

This week I’m not really following a cooking theme; I’m just cooking what sounds good to me. And today Beef Stew sounded good. I saw Ree Drummond make a stew with root vegetables recently, and that’s the recipe I used. It was every bit as good as it looked.

Beef Stew with Root Vegetables, courtesy Ree Drummond

Ingredients
3 T. olive oil
1 T. butter
2 lbs. beef stew meat
3 cloves garlic, minced
1 medium onion, diced
1 can or bottle beer
4 c. beef broth, more as needed
1 T. Worcestershire sauce
2-3 T. tomato paste
1-1/2 t. sugar
½ t. paprika
½ t. kosher salt
Freshly ground black pepper
2 carrots, roughly sliced
2 parsnips, roughly sliced
1 small turnip, roughly sliced 2 T. flour, optional
Minced fresh parsley, for garnish

Process
Heat the oil and butter in a pan and brown the beef. Remove the beef from the pan, throw in the garlic and onions and cook until softened, about 3 min. Pour in beer, beef broth, Worcestershire sauce, tomato paste, sugar, paprika, salt and pepper. Then return the beef to the pan, cover and simmer on a low heat until the meat is very tender, 1-1/2 to 2 hours. If the liquid level gets too low, add more broth as needed.

Add the carrots, parsnips and turnips and continue to simmer until the vegetables are tender and liquid is reduced, about 30 min.

If the stew is still too liquidy, remove a cup of cooking liquid from the pan and stir in the flour, Add flour mixture back into the pan and stir. Simmer for 10 minutes until the stew is thick. The meat should be very tender; if it’s tough, let it continue to cook.

To finish, add the parsley and stir through the stew.

I also made a batch of Kentucky Biscuits, from a recipe I found on Pinterest.

Kentucky Biscuits

Ingredients
2 c. flour
1-1/2 t. baking powder
½ t. baking soda
2 T. sugar
Dash of salt
½ c. butter
¾ c. buttermilk (Don’t have buttermilk? No problem, just add 1 or 2 T. vinegar to milk)

Process
Mix dry ingredients. Cut in butter, add milk and knead into soft dough. Do not over knead! Pat into an ungreased 6 X 6 pan. I use a pie pan. Cut into serving size portions before you cook. Bake at 400 degrees for 15-20 min. or until done and golden brown.

Nana’s Notes: I halved the beef stew recipe for Bill and me, and it worked great. Enough for two large bowls of stew. As for the Kentucky Biscuits, they were delicious; however, I’ve never made them before so I have no idea if they were the right consistency. Mine were sort of like corn bread. Also, next time I would grease the pie pan. Very good drizzled with honey.

Recipe Memory Box

Posted in Desserts, Recipes by

As I was going through my mom’s recipe box last week, it occurred to me that today’s young cooks probably seldom use recipe cards and probably don’t own a recipe box. In this day and age of food blogs and cooking web sites and electronic cookbooks, recipe boxes probably went the way of the cookie jar.

I’m not judging. I have recipes stored on the websites of Food Network, Allrecipes, Weight Watchers, and probably others I don’t even remember. And don’t even get me started on Pinterest. But still, it was fun to see those recipe cards in familiar handwriting with notes written on the back and splotches of food all over the cards. I spent considerable time trying to figure out the various handwriting so that I could see from whom a recipe originated.

Many of my mother’s recipes are named after the contributor: Jen’s Party Pork Chops, Beckie’s Wonderful Pie Crust, Leona’s Refrigerator Pickles, Grammie’s Apple Pie. Many of the recipes were copied in one of her grandchildren’s handwriting.

It’s kind of sad that our grandchildren and great grandchildren won’t have the same opportunity to look at our recipes and try to read our handwriting and wonder if we ever actually made the Coquilles St. Jacques recipe that’s in our box. As for handwriting, do kids even learn cursive anymore?

After perusing Mom’s recipe box, I moved to mine, where I found a recipe card from my mother-in-law for “My Mother’s Cream Pie.” She gave me that recipe some 20 years ago, and I have never made the pie. I asked Bill if he remembered the pie. “Candy Pie!” he immediately said, which is what he and his siblings apparently called it. “I didn’t know you had that recipe. Can you make it?”

So I did. As it was baking, I went on the internet to see if anyone had ever heard of a Cream Pie. After some sleuthing, I found what others call Sugar Cream Pie (a sensible name since the recipe basically consists of sugar and cream). It originated in Indiana, which is where my mother-in-law, Wilma, was born and grew up. It all fell into place.

Bill took one bite of the pie, smiled, and said, “Wow, this takes me back to my childhood.”

That’s the way I felt all last week. Food memories.

Wilma’s Mother’s Cream Pie

Ingredients
1 c. sugar
4 T. flour
1 c. cream
1 T. butter

Process
Mix sugar and flour together; stir in cream. Pour into unbaked pie shell and dot with butter. Bake at 350 degrees for 40 to 50 minutes until you can insert a knife and it comes out clean.

Nana’s Notes: As I researched the pie, I noticed some people added vanilla and/or sprinkled nutmeg or cinnamon on top before baking. I wanted this to be just like Wilma’s pie, so I didn’t do that. Next time I might add vanilla and a little cinnamon. The pie was sweet and very good. And simple — four ingredients!

Do you have any food memories from your family? Did your mom have a recipe box? Do You?

Spanx for the Memories

Posted in Main Course, Meat Dishes, Recipes by

My sisters and I were all born before 1960. Dressing up in the 50s and 60s meant something a bit different than it does now. For example, outer garments often included a hat and gloves, at least if we were going to church (which was generally the reason we dressed up).

For women of the 50s and 60s, undergarments included nylons with garter belts (which, for my sisters and me, were not sexy, mostly twisted and beige with age as they were inevitably Mom’s hand-me-downs). And of course, the dreaded girdle. As young women (meaning puberty and beyond) we, too, wore these restrictive undergarments because that’s what “ladies” did.

Yesterday I attended the funeral of an acquaintance. I generally only dress up on Sundays, and mostly I wear a pair of black pants with some kind of a jacket, blouse, or sweater. So I put on a pair of black pants and a brand new lightweight knit shirt.

I took a glance in the mirror before I went downstairs. Yuck. Panty lines. I could hear my mother’s voice in my ear saying, “Nobody is looking at you, Kris,” and knew this to be true. Still, panty lines. Yuck.

So I went to my drawer and dug deep for a pair of long-unused Spanx. You know Spanx: Torture device of the old and unfit. Purportedly good for slimming your abdomen and bottom. “It takes off 10 pounds,” according to the advertisements. Yes, but those 10 pounds have to move somewhere….

Mostly I was just trying to get rid of those panty lines.

I pulled them on and had no more panty lines. But it made me think about my mother as a young woman, likely wearing a girdle much more often than I and never complaining. It really was quite horrendous when you think about it.

So, I guess I won’t. And it sure was nice when I could take it off.

I don’t usually post a recipe on Saturdays, but I wanted to be part of the family and let you know what recipe I would have my mother make if I got that last chance for her good cooking. Spareribs and sauerkraut. Yum.

I’ve mentioned before that Mom was not big on recipes, unfortunately. She wrote down a few of her specific dishes, such as her cole slaw dressing or her gazpacho. But as for her regular main dishes, not many recipes. Sometimes I try to recreate her meals from memory, but mostly I call one of my siblings, go on the Internet or look at my cookbooks and see what I can find.

That’s what I did when I decided to recreate her baked spareribs. And I found my recipe in a somewhat surprising place – one of my Lidia Bastianich cookbooks!

The recipe comes from Lidia’s Italian-American Kitchen, copyright 2002.

Spare Ribs Roasted with Vinegar and Red Pepper

6 servings

Ingredients
1 rack (about 3-1/2 pounds) pork spare ribs
Sea or kosher salt
Freshly ground black pepper
1/3 c. extra-virgin olive oil
12 cloves garlic, peeled
4 fresh or dried bay leaves
1 cup (or as needed) canned chicken broth
1 cup dry white wine
½ cup red wine vinegar
2 tablespoons honey
1 to 2 teaspoons crushed hot red pepper

Process
Cut the rack of spare ribs between the bones into single ribs. Preheat the oven to 425 degrees.

Pat the spare ribs dry and season them with salt and pepper. Toss them in a roasting pan into which they fit comfortably with the olive oil, garlic, and by leaves. Pour in the broth and roast, turning occasionally, until the liquid is almost completely evaporated and the ribs are golden brown, 45 minutes to an hour.

Meanwhile, stir the wine, vinegar, honey, and crushed red pepper together in a small bowl until the honey is dissolved.

Brush all sides of the ribs with some of the vinegar glaze, and then pour the remaining glaze into the roasting pan. Continue baking, turning every few minutes, until the glaze is syrupy and the ribs are mahogany brown and sticky to the touch, about 30 minutes. Spoon off as much of the fat as you like before serving the ribs.

Nana’s Notes: I used a rack of baby back ribs instead of spareribs since they seem more manageable, and I was cooking only for my husband and me. It took the whole hour before the liquid came close to being evaporated. And I’m not sure my ribs were ever sticky to the touch, but they did turn a lovely golden brown.

Lidia’s recipe doesn’t include sauerkraut, but I just buy a package of the lovely, ice-cold sauerkraut you find in the deli case at the grocery store and add it to the pan towards the end or heat it separately. To be honest, I like it cold! At some point my mom started putting apples in with her sauerkraut, I assume to make the kraut less sour. I didn’t like this, and remember trying unsuccessfully to eat around the apple. So I served the sauerkraut without apples.

It’s been fun cooking with you all week, Mom!

Nana Love

Posted in Main Course, Meat Dishes, Recipes by

I never asked my mom the question directly, but I assume she liked being a mother. However, I KNOW she liked being a grandmother. You can see her pride and her love in this picture of Mom and Dad with my nephew and sister on the day of my nephew’s First Communion.

We are all many things. For example, I am a Catholic, an American, a Coloradan, a sister, a wife, a mother, and many other things. I enjoy all of my various roles. But unquestionably being a grandmother ranks high when considering what I like and do best.

I love all of my grandchildren. They all have their own unique personalities. Shockingly, I think they are all the smartest, funniest, cutest children on this earth. Each one of them.

Indulge me while I tell you a funny story about my precocious 3-year-old granddaughter Mylee (the same spitfire who wouldn’t brush her teeth in an earlier blog post). Yesterday morning her mother was hunting for the missing Mylee, and finally found her, totally naked, out on their deck enjoying Colorado’s unseasonably warm weather. “I’m hot,” she explained. She then came into the house and told her mother she needed a scarf. Apparently she understands, even at that early age, that scarves are the perfect accessory for any outfit.

I don’t think there is really anything quite like being a grandmother. My mother definitely understood this as well. Like me, she thought all of her grandchildren walked on water. As an example, when my son didn’t make his high school basketball team, it was really all we could do to keep her from marching over to the high school and making the coach aware of his mistake. She would have done the same for any of her grandchildren.

Mom died at the much-too-early age of 69. Though she has been gone for over 18 years, I miss her every day. I no longer mistakenly pick up the phone to tell her about something, but I very often am sad that I can’t. The story about Mylee is a good example. It would have made her laugh.

I take my role of Nana very seriously. I have very vivid and pleasant memories of the time I spent with my grandmother, whom I loved with my whole heart. I have always vowed to provide that same unconditional love to all of my grandkids so that they will remember me with joy, just as my son and all of my nieces and nephews remember their nana.

I often wonder where my mother got her recipes. She probably got many from magazines, and I know she got plenty of recipes from her sisters and sisters-in-law. Her recipe box also holds many recipes she gleaned from the recipe boxes of her children. I have no clue, however, from where this recipe came. She made beef stroganoff often when I was growing up, and it was delicious. My brother doesn’t even have to hesitate for an instant when asked about his favorite Mom-recipe.

Mom’s Beef Stroganoff (exactly as written on her recipe card)

Cut 1 lb round steak into 3X1 inch strips. Brown strips in 2 tbs shortening in large skillet. Add ¼ C cut-up onion, 1 tsp salt and ¼ tsp pepper. Blend in 2 tbs flour, then 1½ C tomato juice and, if desired, 4 oz can mushroom stems and pieces, drained. Cover and cook over low heat 1 hour until tender. Stir in a mixture of 1 small can evaporated milk and 1 tbs Realemon. Heat until steaming but do not boil. Serve over cooked noodles or rice.

Nana’s Notes: 1 small can evaporated milk = one 5-oz can. As with yesterday’s recipe, Mom always used the least expensive cut of round steak – thin piece of meat. My brother insists it tastes better than using a more expensive cut of beef. Though her recipe says it can be served with noodles or rice, I never remember a single time that she didn’t serve it over rice. I can’t imagine serving it any other way! Tonight I served it with a bottle of wine called Middle Sister, perfect for me as I am a middle sister!

Happy Homemaker

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Battling another cold today, I spent more time than usual in front of the television. I chanced upon a movie, Mona Lisa Smile, starring Julia Roberts. Being a Julia Roberts fan, it sucked me in. I’m somewhat embarrassed to say that if you held my feet to the fire and ordered me to tell you my favorite movie of all time, with a very red face (from embarrassment, not the fire), I would admit that it is Pretty Woman. But I digress.

The movie was about a woman (Roberts) who comes to teach at Wellesley College in 1953 from California. Much to this professor’s chagrin, the young female students, though exceptionally bright, were for all intents and purposes simply biding their time at college, eagerly awaiting their destiny of a ranch-style home and a husband and children. Two hours later, Roberts’ character had taught them that there was more to life than setting a pretty table and having four beautiful children. Cue 50s music and photos of post-WWII housewives as the credits ran. Not a bad movie, by the way.

But seeings as I am full-out nostalgic this week thinking about my mother’s recipes, the movie got me to thinking about my mother’s life as a young woman. She was married by age 21, and had her first child 12 months later. Kaboom. Welcome to life as a homemaker with no grace period. I wonder if she ever thought about a different kind of life, or did all girls in post-WWII just assume their role in life would be as a wife and mother.

And, in the famous words of Jerry Seinfeld, “Not that there’s anything wrong with that.”

My mother’s life turned out to be a bit different than the typical wife and mother of the 50s and 60s, however. Because she and Dad had their own business, much of her time was required away from home. She made good use of our wonderful grandmother, who often watched us as Mom worked in the bakery. And when my sister was old enough, she cooked breakfast for the rest of us if Mom had to leave for work a bit early. Still, she had a home-cooked meal on the table every night. Like most women, she worked hard.

In 1980, when I had my son, I felt as though the pendulum had swung in the other direction. If a woman had a college degree, people considered it odd if you quit your job to stay home with your children. Perhaps that limitation was self-imposed, but I definitely felt that way. I’m happy that the options are much more plentiful today, or at least they appear to be to these almost-60 eyes. That’s a good thing.

But on to my meal of the day. Breaded pork chops are what my sister Jennifer would have my mom cook for her magical come-back-to-earth-for-a-day meal. And I’m pretty sure that if she were to invite my father, he would be very happy to oblige. He loved them.

As with many of my mom’s meals, she had no recipe for breaded pork chops. So I Googled it, and came up with a recipe from allrecipes.com that seemed close. Most of the recipes I saw called for thick pork chops. Money was never plentiful in my family, though we lived a very comfortable life. But, though my mother was a good cook, she was also an economical cook. The pork chops in her recipe were the inexpensive thin-cut chops. So that’s how we like them.

One final note, my grandmother, and then my mother, always served breaded pork chops with macaroni and cheese made with Swiss cheese. My mother would grate the Swiss cheese and then place it in the cupboard so that our busy little hands wouldn’t snitch all of the cheese before she was ready to make the macaroni. In deference to her, I always put my grated cheese in the cupboard until I’m ready for it.

Breaded Pork Chops

Ingredients
4 pork loin chops
2 T all-purpose flour
½ t. salt
½ t. paprika
1/8 t pepper
1 egg, slightly beaten
1 t Worcestershire sauce
½ c dry bread crumbs
1 T vegetable oil

Process

In a small bowl, combine flour, salt, paprika and pepper. In another small bowl, combine egg and Worcestershire sauce. Coat chops with seasoned flour; dip in egg mixture, and coat with crumbs. In large skillet, heat oil over medium-high heat. Brown chops on one side until golden brown (about 4 min); turn and continue cooking for another 4 min. Serve hot.

Nana’s Notes: I am pretty sure there was no Worcestershire sauce or paprika in my mom’s recipe, but I thought it sounded like a nice addition to flavor them up. Also, I would be willing to bet that my mom didn’t dip the chops in flour. I suspect she simply dipped them in egg and bread crumbs. Also, according to my sister who chose this recipe, after the chops were browned, Mom would put a little bit of water in the pan, cover it, and let the chops cook a bit to get more tender. That’s what I did. Finally, we all remembered that Mom would bring home bread crumbs from the bakery that she gathered from the bread slicing machine. No store-bought bread crumbs necessary!

Memories and Meals

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A few weeks ago, when Bill and I were still in Arizona, my brother David and I were sitting outside late in the afternoon. Talk turned towards our childhood, as it often does whenever any combination of the siblings gathers.

I think we all agree that we had a wonderful childhood. None of us ever doubted that our parents loved us. Times were different, however. There wasn’t a lot of “I love you’s” tossed around though we knew they did. A term you hear thrown around these days is “helicopter parent.” You know, the parent who hovers around their child making sure no harm ever comes to little Junior or Juniorette. I think it’s safe to say that neither my mother nor my father would ever have been accused of being a helicopter parent.

Here’s an example: My mother was a very sound sleeper. Because of this, it really took a lot of guts for any of us to wake her up in the middle of the night. We knew it would involve a lot of shaking of her shoulders. Eventually, she would leap up in bed with a loud, “What is it?” Gulp. It had better be good because by this time Dad was awake.

For me, it was either “I’m going to throw up,” or “I can’t sleep.” If I was going to throw up, she was liable to ask me why I was telling her this in her bedroom instead of leaning over the toilet in the bathroom. And the “I can’t sleep”, well, that just got on her very last nerve.

Her answer to that particular complaint, without exception, was (say it with me Siblings), “Nobody ever died from a lack of sleep. Go back to bed.” I have no recollection of her ever getting out of her bed to tuck me back into my bed.

By the way, as an adult, I can certainly see, clear as day, just how silly it is to awaken someone to tell them that you can’t sleep. But for some reason it made perfect sense to me as a 7-year-old.

On the other hand, it wasn’t a good idea for anyone to bring harm or even angst to any of her children. Do so, and out came the Mother Lion. I clearly remember when a neighbor boy who was a year or so older than me and a bully before people became concerned about bullies chased me down, held me to the ground, and kissed me on the lips. I was probably 7 or 8 years old. I broke free and ran to my mother in tears. I vividly remember that she went to her closet, got the broom, and chased him all the way back to his house. She may not have caught him, but I’m sure he felt the bristles on the back of his neck.

But back to David and my conversation that day. We were talking about Mom’s good cooking. He told me his favorite meal and I told him mine. It got me to thinking about her cooking, so this week I asked all my siblings what meal they would have Mom make if she could come back to cook one dinner for them.

My sister Beckie’s response: Mom’s fried chicken. My mom, by the way, always claimed that she couldn’t cook a lick when she got married. All of her cooking skills were learned from her mother-in-law. I’m sure that’s true as my mom was the youngest of 13 kids, and her mom died before my mom was married, and sick for much longer than that. Not in a position to teach my mom to cook. So Mom’s fried chicken is actually my grandmother’s fried chicken, and now my fried chicken. Don’t confuse this chicken with southern-style because it isn’t crunchy. Instead, it is tender and flavorful.

My Family’s Fried Chicken

Ingredients
1 frying chicken, cut into 10 pieces (my mother always cut each breast into two pieces}
1-2 c. flour, well-seasoned with salt and pepper
Butter and vegetable oil, half and half, deep enough to fill a pan to a depth of about a quarter of an inch

Process
Preheat the butter and oil in the fry pan until it’s hot enough to sizzle if you flick a drop of water into the pan. Dredge the chicken pieces in the flour, shaking off the excess. Lay the pieces skin-side-down into the hot oil. Cook until it’s nicely brown, 5-6 minutes. Turn over and do the same on the other side. It doesn’t have to be cooked all the way through. Only fry a few pieces at a time or your shortening will cool down too much and your chicken pieces won’t brown nicely.

As you remove the chicken pieces from the pan, place them into a roasting pan. (Conversely, you can place them temporarily on a plate and return all of the pieces to the pan to finish. Make sure your pan is oven-proof and has a lid if you choose this option.) Cover the roasting pan with aluminum foil and place into a preheated 350 degree oven for an hour or so until the chicken is cooked through and falls off the bone.

Nana’s Notes: Personally, I believe a cast iron skillet is imperative to make good fried chicken. Having said this, I must say I don’t believe my mother used a cast iron skillet. Still, you would have to pry my lovely well-seasoned iron skillet out of my hand to make me fry chicken in a regular skillet. I used to fry the chicken, place the pieces on a plate until finished, pour out most of the grease, return the chicken to that pan, cover and finish cooking it in the oven. Now, however, I fry the chicken and put the pieces into a toss-away aluminum roasting pan, cover it with tin foil and finish it in the oven. There is no getting around it. Frying chicken is messy business. Also, I add a bit of cayenne pepper to my seasoned flour. Don’t tell my mother.

Anchors Away

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Today is Veterans’ Day, and, as always, it makes me think about my dad – that would be Musician 3rd Class Reinhart Gloor, serial number 317-11-31, United States Navy.

I always thought it was funny that my dad, having lived nearly his entire life in land-locked Nebraska (he was born in South Dakota but only lived there for a short time) chose to enlist in the Navy. Apparently he chose the Navy because they offered him the best opportunity to be a musician. He tried out for the Naval Music School and was accepted in the Music Corps. Instead of carrying a gun, my dad carried a saxophone and a clarinet.

You see, though a baker by trade, my dad loved music. It always seemed entirely appropriate to me that my dad spent his military years entertaining troops during World War II. He was stationed on the island of Trinidad.

I wish I had talked more with my dad about his years in the Navy. He had, to my knowledge, never been out of the country. Heck, I would guess he had never been out of Nebraska. Here he was, an inexperienced boy of only 18 or so, sent to basic training in Chicago and music school in Washington, D.C., then on to Trinidad. No friends with him, his mom and dad and sisters far away with no internet or even much in the way of telephones I would assume. He probably was nervous and excited.

He was one of many young boys and girls who were experiencing the same mixed feelings of excitement and fear, loneliness and suffocation from being around other people all of the time. Those soldiers, sailors, airmen/women and Marines needed the comfort of music.

A number of years ago, my husband and I were able to visit the Normandy area of France. We walked on Omaha Beach. I don’t think anything I’ve ever seen has had such a profound impact on me as seeing that enormous section of beach, onto which those men – boys, really – involved in the D-Day invasion had to disembark from their ship and run like hell. Brave, brave men.

And that’s just one example. There are thousands and thousands of stories of young people who have fought in places so, so far from home to keep America safe and free. They have truly sacrificed, and continue to sacrifice, so much for us so that we can bring up our families as we see fit and worship as we please.

My husband also served, in the United States Army during the Vietnam War. Thankfully for him (and for me), he never had to serve in Vietnam. I’m proud of him and his service to all of us. (I don’t have a picture of him in his uniform or I would post it!) In fact, I’m pretty sure all of us know a vet, perhaps more than one. Today is a good day to tell him or her thanks for their service and for helping keep us safe and free.

Happy Veterans’ Day!

Cookie Home

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Posting my cookie recipes this past week made me think about cookie jars.

One of my sisters pointed out to me that I have always had a cookie jar. So did my mother, which is surprising in that I don’t have memories of my mom making homemade cookies very often. My father, as I have mentioned, was a baker, and made, among many delicious baked items, cookies. It wasn’t surprising then that my mother was an infrequent cookie maker. Still, she had the cookie jar. Doesn’t everybody, I wondered?

I began to survey friends and family about whether or not they have, or grew up with, a cookie jar. To my surprise, neither of my sisters had cookie jars. “Where did you keep your cookies?” I asked one of them. Tupperware or plastic bags was her answer. The lack of a cookie jar doesn’t seem to have impacted her children negatively. My other sister said she rarely made homemade cookies because she worked full time. Still, cookies don’t have to be homemade to deserve a cookie jar. However, her children also seem to be normal citizens who contribute to society.

One of my best childhood memories involves a cookie jar. At the home of one of my best friends there was a cookie jar that always – 100 percent of the time – was full of homemade chocolate chip cookies. Now, to be fair, that family, which included seven children, had a housekeeper whose job duties apparently included keeping that cookie jar full of chocolate chip cookies. She was very good at her job. Or at least the chocolate-chip-cookie-making part of her job. I can’t vouch for anything else.

That cookie jar full of chocolate chip cookies led me to promise myself that when I was grown up and had children, my cookie jar would always be full of chocolate chip cookies. Foolish childhood dreams.

I must admit that what my cookie jar is almost always filled with is Oreos. That’s because my husband, and ALL of my grandchildren, love Oreos. (As a side note, it’s interesting to see how each of them eats an Oreo. One eats it just like me – pulls it apart, eats the filling, then eats the cookies. Another eats it as a whole, in several bites. Two of them pull them apart, eat the filling, then attempt to simply throw away the cookie part. I say attempt, because that’s a no-go if I see them considering it. As for Bill, one bite and it’s gone!)

From my very limited survey, I have had to admit that more of my friends and family didn’t/don’t have a cookie jar than did/do. Thank goodness cookie jar manufacturers don’t’ have to rely on these folks for their living.

So I’m curious to know, did you grow up with a cookie jar? Do you have one now? Am I the only house with a cookie jar?