Growing up, we all loved my Mom's Barbecue chicken. It seems to be a bit of an odd recipe - a lot of vinegar, and little oil, a raw egg. The chicken would become very tender after a long soak in the marinade, then would turn golden when grilled and basted with the sauce several … Continue reading Mom’s Barbecue Chicken is really Cornell Chicken!
My mom used to make this chocolate cake, with the secret ingredient of salad dressing, quite often. In fact, I also have versions of it as a Spice cake . I've updated a little, and my 8.5 x 10.5" pan is perfect. You can make it into 2 round layers, or a 9 x 12 … Continue reading Mom’s Salad Dressing Chocolate Cake
I found a recipe for a meatball dinner many years ago, and have modified it over time to meet the preferences of my family. It's comfort food for sure, and makes the house smell terrific. It's a good weekend night meal, which you can make in advance and either refrigerate or freeze. It's almost a … Continue reading Easy Weeknight Meatball Casserole
Beef stew was a favorite thing in our family growing up. It took a little meat, usually something that needed a long cooking time to make it tender, a cheap cut of beef. Or whatever my mother had left int the freezer from a slaughtered cow. Daddy had a specific way to eat it - … Continue reading Fox Pines Beef Stew
My mom was always stretching food, and never wasting anything. Once in a while (once every GREAT once in a while), there would be left over cake. So this trick works with any cake - frosting, no frosting, any filling. Sheet cake, layer cake, bundt cake. Cake that's slightly dry or starting to get stale. … Continue reading Make a quick dessert from leftover cake and pudding!
I have fond memories of helping my mother cut up (with a hatchet!) the Hubbard squash she grew each year in the garden. If you've never seen a Hubbard squash, read this. They are huge, and can make dozens of pie from just one squash. And we always had more than one! My mom used … Continue reading Fox Pines Pumpkin Pudding
Denning is a natural instinct for dogs – just watch a dog afraid of a thunderstorm. The first thing they do is hide behind or under something to feel protected. For puppies, crate training is most often associated with house breaking, but a crate can be a friend for life when needed. A crate is … Continue reading How to Crate Train a Puppy
Bread pudding was a dessert my mom always made on the farm. On the practical side, it was inexpensive to make for a large family, it used up stale bread, and it was easy to make. from ingredients always on hand. On the down side, as much as I loved it,, it was commercial white … Continue reading Make a Posh Farmhouse Bread Pudding
Flour is really a pretty generic term, even though we most commonly use it to mean white wheat flour. At it's most basic, flour is a powder, finely ground from roots or grains. It can be made from many things. Native Americans made flour from acorns! My mom only had one kind of flour, and … Continue reading Just how many kinds of flour are there?
I have obsessions in my kitchen - cast iron anything...really good knives....beautiful ceramic dishes. I have plenty of each, more than I need to actually have a function kitchen. I also obsess over glass jars. It's my mothers fault. She saved glass jars (and card board boxes, "Just in case we need it") in addition … Continue reading My Kitchen Obsession – 20 Ways to Reuse Glass Jars