Mom's Cooking

As I stated yesterday, I am putting together cookbooks for the kids that have lots of recipes from my childhood. Like mom's chicken and dumplings, chop suey, salmon loaf. Yum. I do not have a recipe for her swiss steak, but that's okay. I hated her swiss steak. Actually, I hated anything that had stewed tomatoes or anything that looked like stewed tomatoes with it. I think that must be due to my camp experience.

We used to joke that if it came in a can, mom could cook it. She did use a lot of canned stuff, especially in her chop suey recipe. My mom was not into growing her own veggies. Mostly because the only plants she had any luck with were the silk variety! She really was a good cook, but I think after raising 6 kids, she just burned out from all the cooking.

I remember mom saying her Aunt Rose taught her how to cook, and Rose cooked a lot of German dishes, but my dad didn't like it, so mom stopped cooking it. Oh man, how I wish I knew what some of those dishes were now.

Some of the things my mom did really well were huge dinners, like Christmas with turkey and dressing. That would feed our large family for a couple days. I remember her cooking chicken and dumplings and that was my favorite of all her dishes. In fact, I made it for dinner last night in the crockpot. That is my comfort food. I also loved her salmon loaf. Apparently my sister Mary is the only one who will admit to liking that dish. My mom made pot roasts, meat loaf and stew and anything that would feed our crew - 6 kids and two adults - and I rarely remember leftovers.

What I wouldn't give for her pie recipes - she made a killer apple pie and a wonderful lemon meringue and a terrific banana cream pie. And pineapple upside down cakes. I think the latter was made from a mix, but I've never been able to duplicate it. And I don't have those recipes to pass along. Now that is sad.

Copyright 2011, ACK for Gene Notes