I remember nothing but delicious meals from my family. Both from my mother, my maternal grandmother, and my aunts on my father's side (my paternal grandmother too, but she was ill after a while and didn't cook as much that I can recall). Big, hearty country meals with homegrown vegetables. Lots of homemade desserts.

My mother was what I would call an adventurous cook - wasn't afraid to try anything. So we had pizza, eclairs, chow mein, homemade Roquefort salad dressing, lots of things that were pretty exotic for a small Alabama town family to try in the 50's-early sixties. She would see or hear about it and try it. I'm sure she had some failures that didn't make it to the table, but we ate well. My youngest brother got the gene. He's a wonderful cook (chef really). Should open his own restaurant he can flat out do it. I'm a good baker & do ok with most anything (just give me a recipe); DD is really good when she has the time to spend on a good meal too.

My maternal grandmother was a good cook. My mother was a good basic everyday cook and was famous for her delicious pies, but it was my father who was the real cook in our family. He did wonderful weekend and holiday meals. He learned form his mother who was cook/household manager when they immigrated to the US. That was how they paid off their sponsor.

Mother-in-law wasn't a good cook at all but she was disabled and that may have played into it along with regional differences.

All the men in our family cook except for DH. He has trouble having a sandwich come out right.

My brother is a good basic cook. Son -in -law helps in the kitchen and is also a good basic cook. DD is another good basic cook who is growing her skills.

I followed my dad's footsteps. I love cooking for special occasions and baking but I find everyday cooking to be a bore. A lot it is due to DH's bland bland bland tastes which makes it hard to cook what I consider good meals. I love flavor, spice and texture. He is happy with a bland one bowl meal.

DS is the star though. He approached cooking as a science from a very young age ( he loved the Galloping Gourmet as a child) and is quite the foodie. He built his own sous vide before most people outside the restaurant business heard of them. He was always experimenting with spices and peppers and different stir fries when he lived at home. He does most of the cooking at home and his kitchen is just a postage stamp with only 24" of counter space. He has fed as many as fifty out of the tiny kitchen. He also has won several cook-offs in competitions with his local foodie friends.

My mom's side of the family loved to socialize and had frequent family potlucks. That was some of the best food I have ever eaten. My three sisters and I were all good cooks. My sister, Ruth, was the star and I think that woman could have taken red clay mud and turned it into a gourmet dish! I still do most of the cooking but I've been using more prepared ingredients lately. DH does the dishes and helps wherever I ask him to, but I can no longer stand for hours preparing food. I miss it!

OMG YESS!!!! My grandma used to live with us and she was the bomb cook!! needless to say, none of use were skinny LOL

My family has/had a mixture. My mother was an excellent cook. Sadly she never realized how good a cook she was, she nitpicked herself (could have been better, didn't turn out right, etc) even though everyone would rave about her cooking. My grandmothers were farm cooks and I never knew them so I have no idea how good they were but since nobody talks about how good either were, I assume they put meals on the table, as was their job, and that was it.

I have aunts that run from a zero to 10 on a scale of 1-10 in cooking. One especially was absolutely terrible. My uncle would eat out as often as possible to avoid her cooking. Several others were excellent cooks and several were mediocre to poor.

Why only the women? I can think of others who were just as good if not better. Seems like daddy taught my mom how to cook. Yes, there were and are great cooks in my family.

All of the women and most of the men in my family are excellent cooks who love to cook.

Some of my favorite family memories involve music playing and my Dad twirling my Mom around the kitchen as Coq au Vin bubbled away on the stove and my Dad frying chicken at the crack of dawn so we could drive up to Sedona to get out of the Phoenix heat and have a picnic.

There were no Suzy Homemaker types on my mother's side of the family. Most of the women had average cooking skills but had busy, outside of the house activities that would be more typical today than back then. Cooking was basic and preference was given to whatever could be done without spending much time. My immediate family had broad tastes, especially ethnic foods, and the easiest way to enjoy those was by going to the restaurants or by take out. The cooking was very basic, not very good and (for me) boring in my wife's family.

I cook well, my wife is good with basic things. Elaborate dishes and experimental meals are reserved for when we have guests or family visits, day to day is basic which for us is about anything EXCEPT meat and potatoes. Our kids all cook well and like us, they all enjoy almost all types and styles of food.

My mother was an excellent cook. She baked all our bread too. She learned from her mother, who had to be frugal to feed guests at the drop of a hat and feed her family of 6 on a preacher's salary. Nothing was wasted, and it was delicious. Can't say the same for me. I am a basic cook and cook from scratch, and my kids are good cooks too. One son and his wife are real foodies, and he taught his wife to cook.

My maternal grandmother never had much food TO cook with. She was a Scots-Irish immigrant who came to NYC on a sailing ship with her widowed mother and an older brother -- both of whom were dead of TB in a few years. My mother could make basic dinners, but was the sole support of her mother and father during the Depression -- and later, me! She was a successful career woman.

My paternal grandmother was the DD of a doctor who had gone to Colorado from Pennsylvania to work in a mining community. She learned some skills from PA family, but with seven kids and very little money, she was a basic and thrifty cook. She ran a boarding house for college men in Columbia, MO during the Depression.

DH's mother was an RN and hospital administrator. Her parents were immigrants from Norway who eventually had a successful farm in Minnesota after disastrous years in a sod house in Iowa. She took cooking and baking lessons as a newlywed (age 45) because her DH expected her to be able to entertain his customers.

I'm that one-bowl, one-pan, cook. I eat to live; not the reverse. Cooking is a chore, not 'fun'. We do eat healthy food -- just basic -- and seldom go out to eat. DIL and DS are foodies. They watch TV cooking shows and *cook*. DGS likes to cook; he's promised me a pumpkin pie for Thanksgiving. DIL is from 'an eating family'. (DS got lucky! However...they are both overweight.)

My mom was a good cook, she knew how to feed us 6 kids - 5 of which are boys. Most of our food is good ole comfort food which is what I mostly cook having learned from mom. Her mom was not a good cook, she could put a meal on the table but certainly it wasn't something she would have preferred doing. Don't know about my dad's side as I never met his mom.

I like to cook and most of the family and friends enjoy my cooking.

My mother didn't have an adventurous spirit as a cook and made the same things over and over. But what she did make, she made very well and from scratch such as homemade noodles, pickles, jams, soups, etc. She made her dough without a recipe, and knew just by feel when it was ready. My DH's mother was ill for many years, so didn't cook a lot. I think of myself as being a very good cook and baker. My sister has me beat, however, because she is a very imaginative cook and improvises recipes, unlike me who mostly follows a recipe. DH is a basic cook and I am grateful when he decides to make meals, such as today's BLTs!

My mother wasn't a fantastic cook, but she certainly liked to experiment. Must say that most of her experiments were very good, and we still make those "experiments" today. Have to say she was fantastic baker. My paternal and maternal grandmothers were both very good cooks. My sister and I are very good cooks and we both like to experiment. Several years ago, when my kids were younger, as we sat down to eat dinner, my son asked, "Are we eating another experiment, Mom?" We all laughed. I also learned quite a number of years ago to always write down what ingredients were used, how much of each ingredient was used, and the method of preparation. I made an experimental cake that was so, so good that we ate it all in one evening. But, because I had written nothing down, have never been able to recreate it. Every once in a while, my son will ask me if I ever remembered what I did for that superb cake - after all these years he remembers and wants to be able to make it.

There were no men in the kitchen in my family because, all the women were stay at home moms and that was their job to cook, not the men's. I have been for the most part a stay at home mom. That was the way life was back then.

Sue

My mom was a stay home mom, and my dad still cooked sometimes. Took the load off. Many chefs are men. Cooking is not limited to women, even if stay at home?

Yes both my Mother and my Maternal Grandmother were good cooks. Also my Dad's Mom was good also and my Dad especially loved all her baked desserts! I love to cook and so does my son and daughter!

In the 1930's and 1940's the men on the farm were not in the kitchen cooking in my neck of the woods. If men are working long hard hours, they depend on the wife to do the cooking and taking care of the children. That is the way it was.

Sue

I probably didn't give my sister enough credit in my first post ;0) She went through a period where taught herself and cooked completely from scratch, right down to the dough for hamburger and hot dog buns, tortillas for a taco dinner. Growing a garden, canning - something my mother and grandmother had never done. We didn't live close enough when I was married she could particularly teach me, but she was an inspiration for putting some thought into food and learning the skills. She taught some classes through her 4-H involvement: nutrition and one I remember her repeating a few years was how to stretch a dinner for unexpected guests without tearing out the back door to the store ;) In the 70's when microwaves became available to consumers, she taught classes in healthy microwave cookery.

We can still laugh together (out of Mom's hearing) that among the first things she bought herself for her kitchen were cooling racks and a mixer, things our Mom had never needed or wanted. There was one cookbook in our house when we were growing up, and I still have it. My sis and I both can go overboard on cookbooks and have shelves full ;0)

So you only want to hear from country folk from your specific time? Got it. I answered with a "city" answer that was more accepting of all lifestyles. Sorry that bothers you? My dad and his brothers cooked because their father died when they were at a very young age, and his mother was left raising them on her own. Which included working at a hospital. Sorry she didn't remarry and move out of town to satisfy your thoughts.

rob, I wonder if the undertone is urban vs rural, or is it regional, or socio-economic, or what? I don't think it's a question of better or worse, it just seems to be different lifestyles from home to home. I wonder why?

There are often threads from people commenting about their weekly pies or other desserts, baking bread or rolls, preparing food for neighborhood gatherings, doing all manner of kitchen work. To be honest, these practices sound interesting but seem like a lot of work and are rather foreign to me. I'm not sure I've ever known or known of anyone who does this kind of stuff regularly or even at all.

No. My mom was widowed with four kids and returned to work. She was never particularly interested in cooking and thus did the basics (meat, potatoes, canned vegetable, white roll). I was also a very finicky eater so my memory might be colored by that fact. One way or another no family recipes came down to us worth making.

We liked to bake cookies, brownies, loaf breads, etc. That was the extent of my cooking abilities until I left home.

rob333, I know it's your feminist side ranting about men not cooking, but the simple FACT is that in my family, men simply didn't cook. Many of the men went into the service and none were cooks. Few, if any, actually learned how to cook more than absolute basic things. I was probably one of the first males in a big part of my family to do any cooking, and that was by necessity. An older cousin started cooking after I did and he was a great cook (as was his mother from whom he learned some things) and had some natural talent for it. Few women in my family's older generations had a lot of outside employment. Most of those who did worked more part time and most who were married had the children and took care of the home. My dad's family lived on a farm. No, the men didn't come in and cook, they worked the fields and livestock and some of the women did the cooking and housework while the excess of women were recruited to the fields. Although I thought for a while this could explain why some couldn't cook, but the worst one never set foot in the fields and seldom in the barn. Some of the best, did most of the hard work in addition. My mother's side moved to town and my mother was the best cook in the family so she generally cooked and got some work cooking and things like that to help support the family.

It's the way things were, like it or not. Nothing to need get so worked up.

I didn't mention males simply because so few cooked! Geez. I have a brother who can make a pot of chili, make a tuna salad and that's about it and his wife is a terrible cook. Sister is an OK cook but nothing special. She says I can always out-cook her and she often asks for cooking advice and info. There might be a couple cousins (male) who can grill something but that's the extent of their cooking.

So that's why males weren't mentioned.

I did have the experience of visiting a working farm at harvest time when I was five or six. I was put to work shelling peas and snapping beans for the big noon meal. I had never seen so much food, or such a long table, or so many men. I'd never seen so much food simply disappear in such a short time either! The women cooked and cleaned. The men labored in the fields. It was hard work for both. (Maybe some of the men would have *liked* to cook, but unless you were "Cookie" on a ranch, cooking was 'women's work'.)

OMG YES! Every woman in my family was tops. My mother especially. She can make anything and it totally rocks. I make loads of their recipes.

My mother made great meals, but just basic meat potatoes and veggies. She worked full time and was raising 4 kids alone. There wasn't much money or time, but we were always fed and everything tasted great. Mom and her family moved to the US from England when mom was a infant..I remember my grandma cooking a lot when I was a child and lots of baked goods that usually involved apples or pears. She would spend many hours making a plum pudding every christmas, I miss that plum pudding lol...she also made a wheat type of dessert for christmas and for the life of me I can't remember what its called. Furmenty??? I think that's what it was called.

Me, I'm just a basic country cook, comfort foods. I also bake frequently in the cold months. I'd say I'm fairly good, I get compliments and everyone seems to enjoy what I cook, however I don't venture from the basics. I don't expecially enjoy cooking...no that's not really true, I do enjoy it at times I just hate deciding what to cook and I hate any mess in my kitchen lol. I'm the type that once a year I will dig out the french fryer and take it outside to make homemade fries, no grease in my kitchen if its avoidable.

My mother was an excellent cook--which is incredible considering that she lost her mother when she was 5 years old. Her older sister (who was 10) taught her to cook, and was also a marvelous cook. They grew up (poor) on a family farm in Virginia, so I grew up on country foods. We didn't have fancy foods, but everything tasted great, and Mom also made lots of homemade jams, etc., and canned vegetables from her garden.

I hated that Mom made me help her in the kitchen from the time I was a child, but I'm grateful now that I learned to cook from a pro!

1. My mother was a very good cook and loved to bake pies, cookies, and cakes. She had three sisters and they were all fantastic cooks. My dad's side of the family all lived in other states so hardly seen them. I used to love to cook and bake and loved planning my table settings. To me, that was half the fun and that was the first thing I did before planning the meal. Now, I eat out quite often as it isn't much fun to cook for one but with winter coming up, I will most likely do more cooking. My husband made good soups and chili but you wouldn't get any fancy desserts from him! :) . My two sisters also loved to cook and were good at it but my older sister who lost her arm at ten yrs. old when a tree branch broke that she had climbed on ,made homemade bread, rolls, made quilts, and loved to entertain also.

My grandparents and parents grew up in a time and culture (not in this country) where any cooking was done for them, not by them :-) When my mom and dad were married, she couldn't even boil water!! It wasn't until they moved to this country right before WWII, that cooking for themselves and their family ever entered the picture. Fortunately, my mom was 'adopted" by an older neighbor lady (my godmother) who showed her the ropes and taught her how to cook. Surprisingly, after such a late start at it, she turned out to be pretty darn good!!

Since my parents were British, we grew up with a number of uniquely British dishes on the menu, which are still very popular with my sibs and I. And because they lived in the Far East before the war, a few Asian specialties were included as well, usually reserved for special occasions due to the less common ingredients involved and much more prep time. Aside from that, it was standard American fare of the 50's and 60's.

Neither my brother or sister cooked much while still living at home - baking now and again was about it. But both have developed into fine cooks. I was quite a bit younger and taught myself mostly and pretty much took over the cooking at home until I left for college.

I think that chances of becoming a "good cook" increase significantly if you are a foody at heart. And have an appreciative family to cook for. And all three of us lucked out in that regard so all three of us are pretty decent cooks :-) My ex still calls or texts every so often to ask for my recipe for whatever as apparently new wife is not so great in the kitchen. And my fully grown daughter still has her favorite dinners she insists I cook for her when she visits - according to her, it never tastes 'right' when she tries them herself.

Absolutely it's in the Cajun genes. Cajun Men are usually excellent cooks too. Living on the farm with fresh grown everything including the meat. I can't imagine not growing up with those wonderful things and not having the experience of the foods we enjoyed.

My immediate family are all wonderful cooks. All three of my brothers and I and all of their children are more than competent in the kitchen. My eldest brother, in particular, was especially daring even as a teenager. He had spent summers with my aunt who had trained at Le Cordon Bleu as a young woman and returned to us with all kinds of crazy recipes, lol.

My paternal grandmother was from Hungary. She was a great cook and a fabulous baker....never used a recipe. We lived on opposite coasts but we sure looked forward to a big box of her cookies at Christmas.

Food is an important element of most all ethnic and cultural traditions, I don't think necessarily more so with any one than others.

I was very happy to have grown up and still live in an area where wide ranging choices of fruits, vegetables and nuts are available for most of the year and have long been a part of the local food scene. California remains a major produce supplier to the rest of the country, often growing items that don't grow as well elsewhere if even at all. I wouldn't have been happy to grow up or live in a rural setting nor on any kind of ranch or farm but I know many are.

cynic, since you've addressed me directly, it's partly feminist, but mostly, it's an acknowledgement that many lives are lived in many ways, all should be well regarded (I think Elmer its on to something). I wouldn't doubt a lot of widows and widowers existed in the 40s, given healthcare realities then (diabetes and polio issues alone), so it's probably fairly well established those men and women did whatever had to be done, and they deserve recognition. Just my opinion. I think my grandmother did a grand job, but so did her resilient children. I guess I just admire it a lot.

I grew up with a stay at home mom but she HATES cooking and, in my opinion, it shows so no, I wouldn't call her a good cook.

I took over family hosting duties in my 20s so she wouldn't have to cook. Growing up I had a lot of what I call homemade hamburger helper. Every meal contained convenience foods, canned veggies or cream of something soup combined with other processed stuff. None of it was very good and if I eat it now I can tell how high in sodium it is.

I prefer to cook with fresh ingredients and experiment. I'm not a recipe person. People rave about a few of my concoctions and ask me to make specials meals for them so I presume I'm a somewhat decent cook.

Hubby has a cousin who is a professional chef and he has praised my cooking so I take that as a major compliment.

Moms mom died when she was a child so I've never experienced her cooking.

Dad's mom was pretty decent. I always looked forward to being at her house, though truthfully she loved the entertaining side of hosting more than the cooking side so I can't say her actual food was that amazing, but everyone loved being there!

Hubby didn't really know anything about cooking when I met him but he can certainly throw together a meal now. He is particularly good at dishes with an Asian flair, which is good because they aren't my forte. I'm better at Tex-Mex, Italian and American style cuisine.

My mother was an excellent cook. Her ordinary daily meals were more than I would make for a holiday. Always a home baked dessert or pudding, sticky buns, tapioca, pies, cake, and an elaborate noon meal . I hate to cook and eat out three nights a week.

My Grandmothers were wonderful cooks. When they lived with us we ate like royalty. Their sons and daughters were horrible. Perhaps they were intimidated by the older generation? I grew up on mediocre foods and whatever passed as convenience foods of the 1960's. Eggs for dinner or TV dinners and casseroles. I have been told I am a great cook. I think Midwestern plain is more my style. My siblings hate cooking so it is in their best interest to flatter someone who will do the work. Only one of my children is interested in cooking and he is fabulous.

Mamapinky, frumenty aka furmenty is indeed a kind of wheatberry porridge which also has saffron, sugar, almonds and dried fruit in it. It's been passed down in England from medieval times. How cool that your grandma made it!

My Mom was a good cook, and had boarded with an Italian family when she went to ladies college so Italian food was in her repertoire and common on our family table back at a time when it wasn't common for non-Italian families to do so. She was pretty adventurous in her cooking and eating so I grew up eating a wide range of cuisines and also inherited her cooking skills. Most of my working life I've been a cook in one place or another.

Mom's mom died when I was two, so I have no memory of her food, but I was told she was a good cook whose specialty was pies. My mom's specialty was cakes; I do both :-) Mom was an only child so no aunts on that side.

I have no memories of meals at Dad's mom's house- all the family celebrations were mostly at our place, so I guess that might be an indication. Similarly I don't have any memories of his sister's cooking.

My stepdad (born 1930) was a good cook himself, having learned from his mother who I was told was an excellent cook. His older brother though was even better than their mother at sponge cake making, much to her chagrin :-)

My DH learned Home Ec at school and can cook a reasonable meal, but prefers to let me cooks for company. His mother is a decent enough cook, but a very plain cook (she herself prefers plain food) and regards cooking as a chore to be endured rather than enjoying it. I recall mentioning that I had seen some food product in the store and it immediately got my mind to thinking of how I could use it, and my MIL asked, "Do you do that often?" and replied "All the time." I was a bit saddened (though not surprised) when she said, "I never do."

DH's only sister does not cook, and isn't really much interested in eating. Her partner is an excellent cook though, and family celebrations are usually catered by the three DILs- me, DH's sister's partner, and DH's brother's wife, who is a good cook of savoury foods though a little dodgy on desserts- because she doesn't really like sweet foods and gets a little weirdly experimental at times.

DD learned to cook when she was young. She's good at savoury foods as well but sadly avoids baking if she can as she isn't a sweet eater either. I was worried about what I would do with the family Christmas cookie recipes with her totally uninterested in them, but her DH, who is a very good cook (he makes his own gnocchi), has indicated he's interested.

i don't know if there is a sexist vibe on this thread, but I have observed the following:

DH and my SSs are good cooks and have never been afraid to "fend for themselves" in that department. I love that in them find it very a very appealing quality/skill. But I can think of members of my family and his family where men did not cook, did not want to cook and when they lost their mates, they either quickly remarried or drastically changed their diet to fast foods, to their detriment.

And BTW some men in the military DO cook. SS entry level in the army was thru the kitchen. For a while he even considered being a chef but grueling hours in the kitchen and mess hall changed his mind.

My Mother was a meat and potato cook. Nothing adventurous, the only casserole we ever had was mac and cheese or tuna noodle. My Mom was a wonderful baker though, she made the best butter tarts and pies. Her pastry was so good. My Mom's Scottish Dad did all the cooking in their house. I never saw my Grandmother cook anything but she always made the lime cream cheese Jello salad for family dinners. My Mom's sister, my Aunt was a good cook. As long as I can remember she made the best sweet and sour chicken or ribs and always a requested meal. When she moved back to Windsor to take care of my Grandparents all our family Holiday dinners were spent there or just informal family dinners. I learned a lot about cooking from her.

My Dad's French Canadian Step Mother was a good cook I used to love watching her in the kitchen. A favourite time that I can remember was helping her make concord grape jelly and concord grape pies in the kitchen of their 3 room house. My Dad also liked to cook, especially large family breakfasts. His signature dish Sunday mornings was something called Red Lead, a stewed tomato concoction he ate while in the Navy. My Dad's sisters were wonderful cooks as well, and my Uncle Joe made the Sunday breakfasts. first time I had ever seen anyone use a cast iron frying pan.

My sister Lizzie liked to make casseroles, something we never had growing up except for the mac and cheese. She liked using her crock pot and we were amazed when she made a crock pot cake in the early 1970\s. haha the reason we were both amazed is because my sister couldn't bake a cake if her life depended on it. She always burned cakes or left out ingredients, etc. It was our standing joke. I always had to make the cake for her kids birthdays.

My brother is a good cook. He took culinary courses in school when he took Hotel Management. I always ask him for advice when cooking roasts and such. My younger brother is also a good cook, don't know where that came from haha. I am a good cook but I don't cook anything "gourmet" I read cook books like novels to get ideas but rarely follow recipes except when baking. I like to bake as well.

My mother couldn't boil water without burning it. Dad was always the cook. My maternal grandmother was a great cook and always did the holiday dinners. I used to help her and took over the day to day when I was in the fifth grade. My paternal grandparents died before I was born, but they had a large farm and 10 kids, so it was very traditional. She cooked and he worked the farm. The first Thanksgiving after my grandmother died and I was doing dinner with help from my Dad, neither of us could find the giblets. Of course they were in the neck cavity! He really turned into a fantastic cook. His coconut cream pies were so popular, he had to take two to church. We still call his chocolate cake. Grandpa's Cake.

Both my son and son in law are very good cooks. The SIL does all the cooking. My husband is rather clueless, but my father would have starved if he had had to cook.

My mother and older sister were very good cooks. Nothing fancy, but well prepared, every day sort of food. I have taken some of their recipes and tweeked them a little. My husband didn't as much as fry an egg for the first 15 or so years we were married, but then he started cooking a little bit....and pretty good, too.

When he started working on a tow boat, he used to cook. Usually the deckhands did that, but he thought they were pretty bad cooks. He used to call me and ask how I cooked something. (He was gone for two weeks at a time.) The deckhands loved his cooking. Left to their own devices, their idea of food was frozen pizza.

Forgot to say in my post above that my son is a very good cook; in fact, he is a much better cook than his wife. Thankfully, she acknowledges that, so when they are going to have guest, he is the one who cooks.

Oh my mother was a fantastic cook!... She and dad were married during the dust bowl and big depression...and poor as church mice. She had to always be the cook....and work in the field all day and carry her water to heat in a big black pot and wash on the wash board....while dad never turned a hand to help her. She could make the best meal out of basically "nothing"...and stretch it with beans or rice, but made homemade bread every day in her wood burning stove. She never used a recipe...just a handful of this and a pinch of that....and sadly, I never liked to cook and am not a good one.

One day when my son was about 12, he said to me, "When are you ever going to learn to fry chicken like grandma"... sadly it never happened! I do not enjoy entertaining...I always feel like my cooking is not "good enough" .

cherryfizz, would you share the butter tart recipe? Those are just divine and I don't have a good recipe, thank you!

Joaniepoanie, my maternal grandmother was from Hungary also. She cooked a lot of Hungarian dishes as did my mother. She always made Hungarian kifles for Christmas, and a Dios Torta for New Years. Cabbage, apple, walnut and poppyseed strudel too. My grandmother's strudel dough covered the whole kitchen table, it was so thin. I don't consider myself a good cook (just OK), but my sister is and so are her sons. Oh, and my uncle was a good cook too.

Mom's birthday is coming soon, makes me nostalgic. I grew up on a farm, breakfast,lunch, and dinner every day. Sunday dinner was amazing. She could feed twenty people with no notice. My sister was a caterer. Neither one taught anyone else how to cook.

Mom was a good cook. (Aren't all Moms good cooks?) We lived on a small farm during final days of the Depression and through WW2. She made many meals from scratch. During the early '40s, she baked much of our bread, and cornbread, too. Fruit cobblers were popular, made with blackberries, peaches, or apples. For breakfast, it was fried meat, biscuits, gravy, and fruit jelly. The butter was home made. All her cooking was done on a wood burning stove except for a couple of years, we had kerosene kitchen stove for cooking and canning. That was ditched because it was too dangerous to have in the house. There was potential for the gravity fed kerosene to flood and spill out. If this happened while a burner was lighted, a fire would soon follow and our house would be gone. That appliance was moved out of the house. If we had a "summer kitchen", it could have gone in there. (Summer kitchens did burn down on occasion. and that was the reason for having a small cheap shack separate from the house for a summer kitchen. It also kept the cooking heat out of the house during hot weather.

Mom learned her trade from her mother who had been born in Missouri during the Civil War. After that war, the family moved to Arkansas for about 15 years and then on to the new State of Oklahoma in 1909. Fish from local streams was part of their diet as was for our's during the warm months. Mother loved to catch a 'mess' of fish in the afternoon and prepare those for the evening meal. In those times, we did not have refrigeration, but that mattered not since Mom's policy was to use only fresh caught fish. At present, when I view the stream we fished, I find that it has become too polluted to employ the practices we once did.

HB I will find the recipe sometime today and post it.