Ha, Nancy, I've been waiting for you! Grandpup gets us up before six am-ugh! Well, everyone got part of the answer. The two gentlemen were Cesar Ritz and Escoffier. They joined forces in 1886, but it was about ten years later that Ritz opened his own hotel. While Escoffier was offering lighter and simpler food that appealed to women, Ritz was making his hotel restaurants proper and elegant enough that proper and elegant women could safely accompany their male relations to them. Loved your reference, TM! 'gal, I also have had "Puttin' on the Ritz" going through my head since yesterday! Abientot mes amis. Cynthia Thanks for playing.

Sharon, I'm sorry your kitties are not doing well. It's so hard to watch our furbabies be sick. I'd love your take out meal, on your patio of course. Here's what our freezer fiasco led me to make for dinner (and I lost very little from the freezer - just a few things on the narrow top shelf of the side by side fridge/freezer in the garage.) Thirty three minutes in the PC for the lamb shanks and the white beans and a Tuscan influenced dinner emerged. The cooking and natural cool down allowed plenty of time for me to shape and bake two rolls from my refrigerated dough in the TO and make a simple salad. Dinner was good. We had a Spanish red wine, Reyla garnacha-merlot single estate with the lamb. There is one lamb shank left over and enough beans that I can cut up the meat and add a few veggies and make soup for tomorrows lunch. Lee

How did I miss this thread five years ago? I see names of those that I miss seeing here 🙁 My mom and my grandmother were great cooks. I learned from both and we have always eaten well. I grew up eating food cooked from scratch and my grandparents and parents always had gardens. My grandmother loved to can and freeze. She made the most wonderful veggie soup that she canned every year. What I would give to have a bowl of that soup!! I have always cooked the same. In our early years, my grandmother would can green beans and other items for me and we would get together and prepare/freeze corn. The Mr. and I don't always have a garden, and when we do it is usually small but I still buy certain things from the produce store and put up. We do grow tomatoes and I love making pasta sauce and freezing for the coming year. I learned to bake from scratch too. Now that I am retired, I enjoy finding new recipes to try. I really do enjoy cooking!

Family, friends and neighbors teased me about being a "prepper" because I raise our own beef and chicken, have a big garden and like to can. They are now oddly quiet about it, LOL. They've also become strangely silent about my "labor intensive" home grown shelled and dried beans. Yeah.... I plan meals around what produce is in the refrigerator that needs to be used, how many eggs the chickens laid today, whether I've unearthed a couple of packages of venison from last year, what I need to cook for my 84 year old Mother, I cook meals and "deliver" them weekly. Tonight I made chicken and noodles for Mother, a batch of cabbage rolls, some deviled eggs, broccoli cheese soup and dark chocolate raspberry muffins. Elery and I had chili and I put every vegetable in the refrigerator that needed to be used in it, as I always do with chili. Tonight it was carrots, celery, onion, butternut squash, corn, two kinds of beans, a couple of quarts of home canned tomatoes and half a jar of salsa from the fridge. I should have made homemade tortillas, but instead I canned chicken stock because I "found" a couple of chicken carcasses from past roast chicken meals. Naturegirl, I have already started the hot peppers and I have my lights set up and seeds and soil ready to go, I'm going to start tomatoes, eggplant, sweet peppers, cabbage, cauliflower and broccoli next week sometime. Elery and I are building removable "hoop houses" for the tops of two raised beds that just don't get enough sun for strawberries and I'm going to plant some spinach, lettuces and mizuna, maybe some bok choi, gotta get my head start on gardening before my 100 strawberry plants and 3 sweet cherry trees arrive! I'm sorry your trip was cancelled, though. Annie