Wow, you REALLY cooked Susan!
Sounds awesome! I'm impressed.

You and me, alisande!

It's rare that I cook for myself. And I love cooking and used to prepare 3 meals a day as you did.

I had dear friend and her DH for Labor Day lunch.

They enjoyed the meal and I enjoyed cooking :o)

I baked today's double recipe of apple strusel for a family BBQ my sister-in-law is hosting and cooking for. It does take me longer and I ache more these days. Heading off for brother's house in a few minutes. We'll be a little late, but DH has his routine that must not be disturbed!

Your meal sounds so good, especially the salad. Do you have a recipe or just do it? You aren't a cook, you're a chef!!

Sounds yummy!! What is bechamel sauce? Never heard of it! My mom is like you; no one to cook for; so she cooks for people who live in her condo association. She makes big pots of soup, stews, etc. and then walks around to people (they know her) who also live alone. She really enjoys it and get to cook! :)

I'm laughing because my "I cooked this weekend!!" thread is up against Melanie's "I'm married!!" Makes my cooking seem pretty trivial. :-)

Bechamel is just cream sauce. I think of it as cream sauce, and would have said it except it was referred to as bechamel in the recipes I was reading.

I used to wing the pastitsio on my own, but I haven't made it in so long that I used a recipe from the Internet--tweaking it as usual. The salad is from a cookbook I own, Grow It and Cook It, by Jacqueline Heriteau. It's a really good book that has growing instructions as well. I made a lot of recipes from it when my kids were young. I tweaked the salad recipe, too, but it's very close to the original. If anyone wants it, I'll be glad to share it here.

Here's the pastitsio recipe I used. I left out the nutmeg and mint, and changed quantities because I was feeding more people. I used Morningstar Farms' frozen "Meal Starter" (I think it's called) in place of the meat for the vegetarian version.

Juellie, that's a nice thing your mom does. Soup is one of my favorite things to cook.

Glenda, glad you got to entertain for Labor Day!

alisande would you share your recipe for Shaggy Top Cake please. I love nutmeg. I bet the cake is delicious. Thanks.
Kittywhiskers

Wow! When you cook, you really get serious!

Your meal sound wonderful, and I'm sure it was.

Thanks, Judy! Here you go, Kittywhiskers........am I lazy, or what?

I wrote on this recipe for the first time when Suzanne was little, but eventually stopped noting ages because I kept making it for everyone's birthday. We all love it.

As you can see, the recipe called for 4 tbsp. of butter and 4 tbsp. shortening, but I changed it to all butter/margarine. I reduced the sugar from 1.5 to 1 cup (trust me, that's all you need), and the nutmeg from 2 tsp. to 1. I never tried it with 2 tsp, but if you do, let me know how it is.

For the icing, I use evaporated milk instead of cream, but yesterday all I had was milk, so I used that--but just a drizzle. As noted, the icing is done in LESS than four minutes.

BTW, the icing doesn't spread easily over the cake, but it all smooths out during the broiling process.

lol, the recipe looks like some of mine.

Shows they are enjoyed and used multi times

Dang, Susan, if I'd known you were cooking, I would have supplied the wine!!

Your meal sounds really yummy, and I've taken a screen shot of your cookbook page. :-)

That cake looks yummy...

I'd love it...the K Boys and Daddy not so much..

I may have to make that though for a girls night out or somethin...

I'd love the salad recipe, pretty please.

pastitsio - that's a new one for me so I'll have to look it up. The cake sounds interesting so I copied and pasted your cookbook page too.

In my family we often rename recipes based on who gave it to us or where it came from. So this one will probably be called Suzanne's birthday cake because that's written at the top of the page. It will be in good company along with Aunt Gerry's Buttercream icing, Library milk chocolate cake and Le Bec Fin's gateau chocolate.

I'll have to try it this week. Thanks.

Maire

This is fun!

But I hope presenting the recipes this way doesn't make it hard for people to copy them. Does it?

The only changes I made to the salad recipe is that I use a couple of chopped scallions (white part) instead of the shallot (shallots are rarely available here); "coarse salt" becomes regular sea salt; my "lettuce heart" is actually part of a head of iceberg--I rarely use iceberg, preferring other types of lettuce, but like it here for some reason (any lettuce would do, though); and I cube the French bread before frying it. Oh, and I never manage to have the dill sprigs, but I'm sure they're a nice addition.

The vinegar I use for the dressing is always wine vinegar.

You can tell this cookbook is getting old and yellowed!

That all sounds great!

I had a (very) little lettuce left but decided to make a green salad last night for dinner, so had to also use a few fill-ins. (there's just the two of us).

I wanted to use something light, such as a vinegar & oil dressing, so went to the internet for a recipe. First thing I ran across was a LONG dissertation on how to make this, to me, rather simple item.

Any, way, in the end (never thought they'd get there), the most useful news I picked up is that one should ALWAYS use a 3:1 ratio on oil:vinegar. Turns out I had exactly one tablespoon of olive oil ready to go, so used that mixed with one tablespoon wine vinegar (& half teaspoon already prepared musatard & lots of freshly ground pepper) & it was plenty for our no-second-helping salad. I should say that I think my husband's favorite condiment IS vinegar, so the 1:1 ratio worked out nicely.