I always seem to hear my mother's voice saying "Never bake an orphan" when I put a pan in the oven. If she was baking a cake, she'd throw in an acorn squash, beets, etc. to roast along for that night or the next's dinner or make a small apple crumble or similar item.

If she was baking a meatloaf, she'd bake potatoes along with it and sometimes make mashed potatoes from them. She'd often add a vegtable part way through the cooking time so she didn't need to turn on the burners and waste the heat from the oven. Foil cooking was big in those days and she'd put the outer leaves of lettuce onto a doubled piece of aluminum foil, add a broken-up box of frozen peas, butter, s & p, and make it into a package to bake with a main course. She also used the foil method for sliced zucchini, onion, and mushrooms with marjoram from the garden.

I rarely bake only one item in the oven and that's directly due to my mom's cooking habits. She died leaving a shallower carbon footprint than I will but in those days my relatives used to say "waste not, want not", even when it applied to oven heat. LOL

My first thought was that I couldn't think of a thing in the kitchen my Mom did that I do also, since my Mom only cooked out of necessity, and rarely with flourish, but upon thinking about it, I remembered a few things. One of her few "fancy" recipes I still use to this day was simply to add olive oil, garlic and blue cheese to hot spaghetti noodles, along with whatever else sounds good at the time, to make what she called "Pasta Shuta" (or shoota?) I have no idea how to spell the shuta part, but it was pronounced with long "u". She learned that recipe from her Italian art teacher and she was so proud of it.

She also insisted that a meal should only have one starch. These days we call it carbs, but then it was starch. We could have potatoes with a meal, or rice, or corn, but not more than one of those items. When I met DH, who grew up with a big time country cook for a Mom, that concept baffled him, and still does to this day. His Mom would serve corn, potatoes, bread, and several veggies along with at least one kind of meat at each meal. I have finally gotten to where I'll serve rice and corn together, but that's for the protein. I still can't bring myself to serve rice and potatoes at the same meal.

And then there's the radio. She always had the radio going quietly in the background, to keep her company. I don't have it on all the time, but I do like to have it on when I'm in the kitchen alone, just to keep me company.

Sally

Sally, we never served potatoes and rice together either, like you it was "too much starch". We always had bread, though, even with potatoes, go figure.

I still find myself breaking the spaghetti in half before adding it to the boiling water, no matter how big my pot is. Grandma's pot wasn't that big and so she broke the pasta in half.

Like Ruthanna, I never bake just one thing unless it's a cake and I want it even, because my oven is not even. I should have Elery help me level it, but I never remember while he's here. If Grandma did meatloaf you could count on baked potatoes and maybe muffins for the "bread", or biscuits. A potroast always had vegetables and biscuits so the whole meal was done in the oven and maybe extra potatoes for tomorrow's breakfast.

I leave the paper on the worchestershire sauce bottle, also hot sauce and commercial salad dressings just because it's too much trouble to peel the stuff off, they glue it in spots. My current bottle of WS, though, is Heinz because I had a 50 cent coupon which they doubled on Wednesday and so I got a buck off, LOL. I'm not brand loyal in most things, I'll buy the cheapest or what I have a coupon for. Just like Grandma.

I remember Grandma shaking her head at stuff like Bisquick and brownie mix and pancake mix, and saying that it was just too easy to make from scratch, why would people pay that much? I do the same thing, walk though the grocery store and see the potato wrapped in plastic, ready for the microwave and costing $1.29 and think "how hard is it to scrub a potato?". (grin)

Like Diane, I only use a peeler for carrots and parsnips, potatoes and rutabagas and turnips get a paring knife. I always shake the milk carton (yeah, I know), but I don't worry about wrapping the veggie peels because they go into a bucket for the chickens. Just like Grandma's always did, LOL.

Annie

When Mom cooked dinner, we always had a small plate of sliced bread on the table and jello for dessert! Three things on the plate: Meat, starch, vegetable (awful canned things).

My dad was a great cook; Mom cooked most nights because we had to eat. Dad LOVED to cook and made wonderful things, but not every night. I don't think I make a single thing Mom made, but lots of Papa's specialties. Poor Mom - she got no credit at all for her culinary skills, but boy, what a loving mother.

Just bought a new bottle of Lea and Perrins Worchestershire sauce and NO PAPER.
The bottle even stated new without the paper....how will I find it???? LOL

Linda

I didn't think I could think of anything (my mother was an awful cook) until Annie mentioned breaking the spaghetti in half. Yep! I do that, too, and for the same reason.

My grandmother was a bigger influence. I still taste the first piece of any produce cut (she claimed because no two harvests tasted exactly the same that it was the only way to know how to adjust the seasoning), throw salt over my left shoulder if I spill any, and automatically take out two clean dishtowels when I start a meal (the colored one for hands, one white one for wiping dishes.

I always leave the paper as well. And like others, my mother was a dreadful cook. She is and was a great, hilarious character, but her tastebuds were in her feet. She would have served Swanson's for every meal including Christmas, Thanksgiving and breakfast. She could ruin not only toast, but Tang.

But--I follow in her footsteps of only mayonnaise, never sandwich spread, always butter, never margarine, and whipping cream, not ersatz.

Yep....never sandwich spread, never margerine, never Kool whip.
And we always ate at a properly set table, with cloth or mats and knives forks and spoons properly laid out, and never a milk bottle nor bread wrapper on the table. The only containers allowed were catsup, mustard and Worchestershire.
In the summer we often ate on the porch or later on, on the patio....and the table was properly set there too, albeit often with melmac and striped or checkered picnic cloths.
And we always had candles on the table, lit when it was getting dark at meal time. There were hurricanes for the porch and patio. One of lifes pleasures was sitting outside on a warm fall evening in the candle light, enjoying another cup of coffee.....and slapping mosquitoes!
Linda C

I don't think I do much of anything like my parents in the kitchen. My father did most of the cooking and when mom cooked she did strange things to the food... at least to my taste. I don't rinse the saurkraut... I wants my kraut sour. I don't put sugar in the spagetti sauce to cut the acid. I don't salt my veggies when I boil them or put sugar on the corn. I don't put stuff in the jello. When I was young I asked my father how to cook something and he replied, "put it in a pan and turn the fire on". Probably the best cooking advice I've ever gotten. I do make dad's "dumplings" which are an egg and flour dough with parsley that is dropped by the spoonful into boiling water. Most often they are covered with chicken gravy but they are also good in soups... added at serving time so as not to become mushy slimey.

Yup, I was and am a contrary child.

: )
lyra

Yes, Lyra, but I still love you, even when you are contrary. (grin)

Beanthere, I'm happy to see you again, even if it took spaghetti to bring you back out of hiding!

LindaC, there was never a bread wrapper on the table because we only had Grandma's homemade bread. Store bought stuff was so rare as to be a treat, and now I bake all my own too.

I never remember having a candle on the table, but we always had to "set the table" and we all sat down together and ate. Grandma hated paper napkins and I must have gotten that from her because I have a big basket of cloth napkins on the end of the counter, I seldom use paper.

Annie

When my mom was making cupcakes she always filled the empty cups with water. Now I do the same. One day a friend asked me why I did that but I didn't know. There must be a reason for this but I don't remember. Does anyone else do this?
Teri

Our table was always set properly with knife, and spoon on the right and the fork on the left with a napkin under it. We set the table for both lunch and dinner. I mostly do the same now. My Mom was a wonderful cook and grew her own veggies in the garden. I am a passionate gardener too. I use her recipe to make crumbs for on top of my fruit pies..she never made a top crust and neither do I except every now and then a lattice for a cherry pie.

She also put a touch of cinnamon in her spaghetti sauce. It was her secret ingredient! For years I always made the roux for gravy by putting flour and water in an empty clean jar that had been saved from something like an old mustard jar. Then you shook it up and used it to thicken the gravy. My gravy is just like hers although I've given up on the jar now!!
Oh how I miss her tender loving care as well as her roast beef!!!

mst, I always fill the empty muffin tin spaces with water, Grandma said it would keep the cups from burning and/or warping.

Annie

My mother did the one starch only thing too and when as an adolescent, I would want a piece of bread, she would tell me I could have a slice of bunny bread. Right. I never did help myself to that white bread loaf!
Now, I would never serve rice and potatoes at the same meal unless it was for lots of people and we had several meats.
Dinner is usually one meat, one starch, one vegetable with additions of sliced tomatoes and Great bread!

Oh, yes, our table was always properly set when I was growing up as the eldest of five. A rose among thorns, I always say, as the other four are brothers! Oh, Mom, you taught me well, even if we do eat on trays most nights now.

I could add here what I do that my father did while in the kitchen, because he, like Sherrmann's dad, loved to cook. He made the best chile, and always added a beer to it. I do too. I don't grill steak these days, but when I did, I tried my darndest to grill them as well as he did. No one has ever made grilled sirloin steak as well as he did. I know he rubbed them with salt and pepper, but other than that, I don't know what his secret was that made them so good.

He liked to make his own mayonnaise, too, but I have yet to get around to trying to do that. I want to sometime, but it's on my list of things to do.

He was the one to cook fun stuff. Mom was the one to get dinner on the table every night. That might be why he liked cooking so much better than she did!

Sally

My mom would peel an apple in a circular method with the peel all in one long piece - I like to do that too if I peel the apple or pear.

Yep, LindaC! Maybe it's our generation, but we always had a properly set table and ALWAYS ate at the table together as a family. Dad had his own business and worked long hours with a long drive home, but we NEVER ate until we were all home together as a family. The milk was in a pitcher, the side dishes in their own bowls. When we got older, the napkins were cloth. We had once-a-week dinners with the best china, flatware and glassware and mom told us it was so we would know what to do when the "time came". I never knew what that meant at the time, but I think I probably was prepared to know what to do with it all "when the time came". Moms are the funniest and the best! They instill in us when we're not expecting it!
Annie'71

Okay, here's one for you....I've only met one other person who's mom did this, and he pointed it out when I absentmindedly did it when preparing a salad for guests.

Mom taught me that when you cut a cucumber you start by slicing off a piece at both ends, then you take one of the the cut off ends and rub the cut part of it in a circular motion on the cut ends of the remaining cucumber. Then you can proceed to peel and slice the rest. She was taught by her mother that it pulled "the bitterness" from the cucumber.

I know it sounds crazy, and I have no idea where the practice started or why, but I still find myself doing it. It's a ritual, probably similar to tossing salt over your shoulder. And, yes, when I taught my own kids to prepare cucumbers I told them this is how "Memere" taught me. I think they do it too, less to ward of bitterness in the cuke, but more as a wink & a nod to their grandmother...and me too, I guess.

I love this thread, all the stories make me smile.

I find that when I'm braising meat I run upstairs and madly close all the bedroom doors because my aunt used to that and I forget to do it until the last second (and its a darn good tip :)

As a child in a boisterous family, I remember not being allowed to jump while a cake was in the oven or it would crash down. I tell my kids the same thing. She also showed me how to properly whip egg whites in a copper bowl so that you could turn the bowl upside down and they would stay there. What a neat trick. My mom was big into quality, vs. quantity. She would buy the best ingredients and the best supplies. I've inherited that gene.
She also taught me that tomatoes never go in the fridge. Mom is a concert level pianist, but can't stand music during dinner. I am the same way. I am appalled that some people have tvs on during meals. We always ate as a family, candles, the whole thing. I rarely get my family together these days. In fact, if you asked them, they would all want the tv on, I bet.
Great thread.

Jo

Re: my above post - "one other person who's mom did this" should have been "whose mom did this."

I know I've sent some posts with spelling & grammatical errors - especially late at night - but this one was mortifying to me when I reread it today. Had to let you know I know better.

My mom always rices her mashed potatoes and so do I. I bet there are a zillion things I do without thinking just because that's the way she does it.

We also sat down to a set table every evening and we rarely started dinner until Dad was home. He was a surgeon and sometimes got home late-ish. I would be starving, but we waited anyway. On nights that we knew he would not be home until very late, we would have very simple meals. Always kind of a treat.

- keep a tissue tucked into my left sleeve, with just the tip peeking out. Comes in very handy when cooking hot things or things with onions which will make my nose run.

- after buying cheese sliced at the deli, my Mom would cut it in half so that it would fit in the refrigerator door better. It really makes no sense, since there's the whole rest of the refrigerator to store sliced cheese. Nevertheless, I do it too.

"Lunch" was the light midday meal. "Supper" was the evening meal, regardless if light or heavy. "Dinner" was the midafternoon Sunday meal, always heavy, and always special. But "Dinner" was only on Sunday. I still refer to meals the same way.
And there was only one starch, one cooked vegetable, one meat, and one fruit per meal. Desserts were mainly on Sunday. I wonder how much the Depression had to do with those limitations.
And yes, I serve one meat, and one starch. But often have two vegetables, one cooked, and one raw.
Rusty

I grew up in the San Joaquin Valley where where we took the abundance of inexpensive year around fresh produce for granted. Mom served fresh fruit with every meal. Today, I do the same. It was easier in the San Joaquin!

/tricia

Like my Mom, I always use a paring knife to peel a potato , carrot, apple etc. I simply cannot manage a "peeler".

I also cook too much food , my Mom was always paranoid about not having enough especially if we had company. She taught me leftovers are a good thing!

Saturday nights I usually make spaghetti. Every Saturday my Mom made homemade spaghetti and let us eat it watching Tarzan on the TV. It was the only time we were allowed to eat in the living room.

Sunday here is always a fully dressed table, all the best stuff and , when the kids were home, attendance was compulsory. Those were Mom's rules, we could bring as many friends as we liked BUT we all had to be home for Sunday dinner. Menu was a roast of beef or pork and always Yorkshire Pudding. Like her, I have one muffin tin that is designated for Yorkshires, you wouldn't want to bake anything else in it! LOL

I really miss my Mom and wish Meredith could have known her. I also will forever kick myself for not paying attention when she made Butter Tarts. They were the world's best.

Forgot...Mom's Sunday dinner was roast chicken with all of the trimmings. I never roast a whole chicken except on Sundays. It just wouldn't seem 'right'?!

Sorta funny when you think about it...Dad purchased beef by the half-side. We always had porterhouse steaks in the freezer. Yet, roast chicken was our 'special' dinner??

I prefer roast chicken today over the best steak.

/tricia

I make my mother's fried potatoes. Some people call them home fries but they are not. I start with fresh uncooked potatoes, and cut them into small chunks. I then rinse the potatoes and dry them . Once they are dry into a hot skillet they go. Cook until browned and crispy like a french fry. Sometimes my mother would add a chopped onion to the potatoes. It really makes them taste good. My mother has been gone now for 6 years and I still miss her very much. I still feel like I should call her and talk to her at times

Daylily, go ahead and talk to your Mom, you just don't need a phone now.

Rusty, in my family the evening meal has always been supper. Dinner was the noontime meal, which was the biggest meal for us, a family of farmers. So we had breakfast, dinner (instead of lunch) and supper at night.

Annie

daylily: My mom's been gone five years and I miss her every day as well. I do, as Annie says, speak to her often in my way but I wish she were here still to share and laugh the way we used to do. We are forever blessed when we have carried forward those sometimes quirky, sometimes wise, always loving habits and knowledge of our mothers, grandmothers, aunts and sisters. By the way -- we're coming close to fathers day -- someone should start a thread on the influence of fathers.
Annie'71

My mom always uses Hellman's mayo (still does), never Miracle Whip or even another brand of mayo. So I always use Hellman's, too. She also made more than one dessert one having company, usually three. Generally, I can't have even just one other person over for dinner without giving them a choice of desserts. Mom also made a salad to go with almost every meal. I always did that, too, especially when the kids still lived at home and I was cooking for the family.

Actually, I wish I followed my mother more when it comes to things kitchen-wise!

Lori

I always serve jarred red cabbage at Thanksgiving and "pudding in a cloud" in wine glasses and yes it is cool whip! I also always burn the dinner rolls like she did:)

I make Egg Creams only with Fox's U Bet syrup.

I often don't realize that something my mother and I do isn't something EVERYONE does until my friends laugh about it.

Garnishing plates with flowers comes to mind; I overheard my best friend arriving at a potluck, pointing to a platter with flowers on it, and saying, "Oh, I can see [gellchom's] already here!" I thought I only do it because I can't arrange things to look pretty on a platter. But then I realized that my friends like to leave their flowers in the garden -- I'm the only one who's always harvesting them like vegetables and putting them in vases, teacups, whatever's on hand, all over the house.

Just like Mama ...

I leave the paper on the bottle too! Measure crisco or lard by the water displacement thing. Have a sink full of hot soapy water available while cooking/baking...to wash hands or wipe up whatever. Add me to the list that prefers a paring knife for most things...just like DM..can't do that one whole peel thing yet though. The only thing I don't do anymore is wash the dishes before they go into the DW. I've finally broke DM of that one too! Taste and adjust and taste some more would be another one... by the time I'm done cooking I'm not hungry anymore...LOL!

David

My mom did and I still .

Only use a veggie peeler for carrots and parsnips and a paring knife for all other peeling.

Serve only one starch, one meat and one veggie at supper.

Scrap every last bit of mayo, salad dressing, etc. out of the jar or bottle.

Always make whipped cream from scratch, no Cool Whip or canned whipped cream allowed.

Put dabs of butter in apple pie before putting the top crust on.

Use only CainÂs mayonnaise.

Never serve dessert during the week

Buy 10lbs of baby Maine shrimp at a time when they are in season. Steam, peel and freeze them. Yum!

Always have the radio playing when working in the kitchen.

Put a little mint in spaghetti sauce. Mom claimed it cut the acidity.

Once each month, bake 2lbs. kidney beans (Boston baked style) for Saturday night supper then freeze the rest for the remainder of the Saturday nights in the month.

Yes Lea & Perkins with the paper on the bottle. My Dad once bought FrenchÂs by mistake; he was appropriately chastised.

Make Pot Roast in a the same cast iron Dutch oven with onions, potatoes, carrots, Italian green beans and rutabaga.

Use fresh ground pepper in just about everything.

My MomÂs been gone 16 years but every time I cook her influence is there and I think of her. It makes me smile.

My mom has been gone almost 27 years and I also still miss her. Unlike many of you I never got to be an adult when she was alive but she still influences my cooking, as does her kitchen.

I mostly use ceramic bowls in the kitchen to mix and serve in because she did. I can recognize that stainless steel is lighter and not breakable, but for me not right. Having 2 young boys it is especially fraught with peril. last summer they were fighting over who would bring a bowl to the table and my largest mixing bowl was smashed as a result.

I do most of my cooking on the front right burner of the stove a that was the only perfectly working one on my mother's stove. Some of the others worked but had to be lit with a match, so they were second choice. It made it harder to buy a new stove a that one is usually the simmer not the high heat burner.

I always used to leave the paper on the Worchestershire sauce as well. That is the correct way, however DH once removed it because it had gotten gross. I could not find it for the longest time.

I agree, great thread.

-Robin

I have enjoyed reading all of your posts. In our home growing up on a farm, it was always, breakfast, dinner and supper and it still is. In Home Ec. I learned to serve two vegetables, a meat and a starch and I find I still do that at times. Some vegetables do taste better when cooked with some sugar in the water, like peas or sweet corn. I learned more from my Grandma than I did my Mother. My Mother had some different recipes, tomatoes and sweet corn, tomato dumplings, macaroni and tomatoes, soup beans and flat dumplings, to name a few. I still like them today.

Sue

Gellchom, your memory and practice of garnishing made me smile and sound beautiful.

On a less stunning note, I still put paprika on baked mac'n cheese from years of my mom saying "it just needed a touch of color."

So many heartwarming memories here!

Cathy in SWPA

And paprika on the top of potato salad and devilled eggs.....just a little color! LOL!
Linda C

Jeepers, while reading this thread, my eyes welled up and I even ended with having tears running down my cheeks. Thank you everyone, for sharing your "Mom-memories."

My Mom was, in my most charitable definition, merely a "serviceable" cook. That doesn't sound very kind, but the fact is that raising two kids on her own, making ends meet and trying to save pennies towards buying a house (which she did by the time I was 10 years old, on a bank teller salary) made feeding us as cheaply (and as quickly) as possible while maintaining our nutritional needs her first priority.

We always had some kind of meat for protein (except for a few end-of-the-month dinners when we were very young and she, very poor), a vegetable and a starch on our plate, and always something, even if it was as simple as a can of fruit cocktail or a dish of jello for dessert with dinner.

Later on, when she was a bit better off, she did try to get a bit "fancier" with her cooking, but she had a dull palate, I think because she wore dentures and the nasty glue that held them in hampered her ability to taste things, and she had a tendency to a far too heavy hand with herbs, salt and pepper. She baked better than she cooked, however (I've since noticed that it is often the case that people are better at baking or at cooking, one or the other.)

In spite of all that, I bless her for taking the time to teach me the basics of cooking. So many of my friends found themselves, when first out on their own, struggling to learn how to feed themselves. My first memory of cooking was helping her cut out sugar cookies, and based on my memory of the kitchen, I could not have been more than 4 years old.

By the time I was 9 or 10, much of Thanksgiving dinner was left in my hands, as she had to work a half day on the holiday. I'm sure we ate a number of overdone turkeys and underdone potatoes for a few years.

After so many years, I had a hard time thinking about what things I still did because she had done them.

One thing, is that once I have filled cake pans with batter, I always drop them onto the floor from a short distance a few times, to knock the air bubbles out. I have no idea if there is any real reason to do that or not, as I've never made a cake without doing it.

Another quirk, is that I must roll my pie crust up on my rolling pin to carry it to the pie pan. Even now, when I roll it out on a silicone mat that I could perfectly well simply invert over the pan, I use the rolling pin, because that is the way Mom taught me.

One thing she used to do that I never thought to ask her the "why" of, was to prick a potato several times with a fork before baking it. I found out why, once, when I forgot to do it and had to clean exploded potato off my oven walls.

There are many things regarding kitchen hygiene that I did simply because my mother taught me to do them that, over the years I have learned the "why" of. I rinsed chickens and meat after taking them out of the package without knowing why. I scoured wooden cutting boards (the only kind we had then) with salt and bleach and doused them with boiling water. I scrubbed iron fry pans with plenty of hot water but no soap. I used different towels to dry dishes than I used to dry my hands.

Great thread Linda!

My poor mom, she was a great cook but my dad has to be one of the pickiest eaters on the planet. He just wore her down! My brother is super picky too. Mom and I were the kindred spirits at the dinner table, chowing down on all the fresh veggies. I think that is one of my mom's greatest legacies to me, she served fresh from the farm vegetables and fruits in the summer. We were blessed to have a farm stand about 5 minutes from our house, with the veggies and fruits growing out back. Plus in my little midwestern hometown, when the backyard gardens come on, you can always count on getting something good from your neighbors. My dad's plant foreman was a marvelous gardener and we reaped the benefits!

My mom didn't learn to cook much from her mom, and I didn't learn much from mine either. When I was young she showed me how to make cookies and such. But by the time I was in Jr. High she was working full time, and by that time dad had taken all the fun out of it I think. Our meals were extremely plain but that was because of my dad and brother. I had to wait until I got out on my own to learn to cook seasoned and mixed foods, lol! But mom going back to work was a great gift to me in the cooking department, because I had to pitch in and get dinner started after I got home from school, so I learned to cook that way. And just like my mom, I learned to cook from a cookbook. As grandma always said, "If you can read you can cook." Mom collected recipes and so do I. And she never made most of them and neither do I, lol! Mom isn't much of a cook, but she is a foodie. I end up cooking more now than mom did because I get to make whatever I want. No sense cooking for my dad. But mom loves it when I'm home because I'll make something yummy for her and I, just like the old days except now the roles are reversed.

My mom was a very gracious hostess, which I think was a good influence on me. She also tried to keep us away from too much sugar and junk foods, which I hated growing up, but I now thank her for.

My grandma always made blackberry pie with a lattis top - me too. My mom cut the bacon in half (to fit into her skillet), so do I. My dad's mom always put paprika on potato salad and deviled eggs - it doesn't look "right" if I don't! Any vegetable/fruit "scraps" Mom would say "Go throw over the (cow) fence. I've had a compost pile in my garden for 30 years. And my mom made cloth napkins for every holiday. I only use cloth napkins, and many are ones I stiched up and have to iron. When I was younger I always got my drinks in a stemmed glass. My daugher does too, even if it's just a drink of water from the sink. Life goes on, but somethings remain the same (thankfully)!

I just love reading all these stories. It puts a warm fuzzy in my heart that even if your mom was an okay cook or a great one, some of these habits got passed on. They are like heirlooms of our family that will be passed on to our kids. Growing up we would put our veggie scraps out in the garden, and now after I peel a vegetable or crack an egg Rhiannon will go out and throw it in the garden, even in winter time. I don't have a compost pile we just add it to the garden. From Grandma I learned a lot cracking an egg on the counter so if some shells fall they don't fall into the bowl, she also worked for a diner when she was younger and never added pepper to any food ( I do though) because the owner told her they may think that it is dirt, funny because my mom won't eat anything that has lots of pepper in it.

I also follow her routine making homemade ice cream and my mom does too. I miss her each time I make the ice cream because I would always call her each time for the recipe that and for deviled eggs. I could do it by heart but always called her for the recipe. I know that my mom would do the same thing. My mom also did some gardening and always did canning and freezing of things in the summer. Now I do and when Rhiannon was 2 I found her in her play kitchen with jars, lids , flats and she told me that she was helping me can.

Great thread:)

Stacie

gig

Oh my goodness, LindaC! How could I forget the deviled eggs and potato salad. I'm laughing!

Cathy in SWPA

Okay, here's one going forward ...

When my son was a camp counselor, the camp started getting calls from parents whose kids had written home that their counselor always made them eat every bite of any kind of meat or fish that they had taken -- no meat in the garbage. They had to tell him to ease up.

It's just a thing I have; I'm no vegetarian, but I just feel terrible throwing meat into the trash. But I don't think I was ever as strict about it as he seems to have been for there to have been calls from parents!

Just when you don't think they are listening ....

The post about rubbing the ends of the cucumber made me think not of my mother but of an ex sister in law who explained to me when i started to laugh that it was "the way her mother did it"

I still soak egg plant in milk to remove the bitterness even on the young barely formed ones because that what my mother always did

A favorite story I remember of my mom was watching her make a ham and putting it in the roasting pan. She always cut the two ends off so I have always done the same. A while ago it came up when speaking to her sister, my aunt. I found out WHY she did this and got a good laugh! My mom's mother, my grandmother, always did this because her roasting pan was too small and therefore had to cut off the ends! My mom followed suit "just because her mom did it, never knowing the reason why." Mom was a pretty good cook but being English, she always overcooked EVERYTHING. And served peas, peas, peas all the time, from cans. She NEVER bought frozen peas. Her spaghetti was great though, always one of my favorites, made very thick with lots of ground beef - a lot like chili in thickness. I'll never forget when I was a teenager and came home one day from school with a couple of friends. There was a fully cooked turkey in the fridge! We started "nibbling" on it from the inside so the outside remained perfectly intact. Imagine her horror when the bridge club women came that night and Mom proudly started carving it at the table, only to find the knife just sinking through the crispy skin on the outside and into a hollow half-carcass - oh did *I* get in trouble with that one!!!

arline

What a wonderful thread! My mom's been gone for 8 years and I still miss her every day. She was a fabulous cook and enjoyed entertaining, even when she was on a tight budget. Like many of the previous posts, my mom made it a rule that we all ate together, table always nicely set with tablecloth, cloth napkins, etc. and NO milk bottles, pickle jars, etc. on the table. Milk was always in a pitcher and condiments in little bowls, even though we had no dishwasher. My stay-at-home mom didn't have a lot of extra money, so her excellent cooking was also frugal. When we had a chicken for dinner the rule was that you could have one 'good' piece and one 'utility' piece (i.e. backbone, wing, neck). I'm 64 years old and I still call those parts 'utility' pieces! I loved the 'no orphans in the oven' comment - my mom never baked without putting in multiple items. She taught us all to cook and our first menu was always meatloaf, baked potatoes and baked squash - all baked in the oven at the same time. I remember two days before my wedding, my mother insisted we spend the afternoon with her teaching me how to make pastry. I remember telling her I didn't have time - there was so much to do. My mom just said, "You can't get married until you learn how to make a tender flaky pie crust". My husband is eternally grateful to her!! (And I am too).

Great thread - makes me miss my mom.

When my mom stood at the stove cooking, stirring, whatever, her left hand was always on her hip.

My sister and I noticed that we both assume the "cooking stance" ourselves! It was a riot to finally realize we both did that.