Way back when I was in home ec class in high school. You know the dark ages! Lol We made the simplest cute and useful aprons. I hate losing it in the flood. I will have to make another one. It was basically 2 large rectangles edged on all edges. And a long strip of the fabric deep enough for a pocket. That strip was the same width as the rectangle and was sewn on the front rectangle across the bottom, leaving the top open, like a giant pocket. Then stitch 2 lines from top of pocket to the bottom spaced apart from each other evenly to turn the giant pocket into 3 equally sized pockets. Then stitch the 2 rectangles right side together at the top edges only about 2 inches each. That creates a boat neckline so that you can slip it over your head. Now you have an apron with a boat neckline and a row of 3 pockets along the front bottom. All you need now is a tie. Sew a ribbon or a piece of the fabric, with the edges sewn, to each edge of the front rectangle at waist height. Done. It literally takes less time to make it than it did for me to type this. This style is called a cobbler apron. Similar to this one.

My mother was an awful cook. She fried almost everything, yet she was slender as were my sister and I. She had a 5-6 dish rotation: smothered steak (fried round steak cooked in brown gravy until tender-ish); fried pork chops; fried chicken; fried frozen shrimp on Friday nights (we are Protestant but she served fish on Friday); over-cooked, shoe-leather tough roast on Sunday; and at some point every couple of weeks, the worst spaghetti you’ve ever tasted. There was no such thing as a casserole. Green salads were rare to non-existent. I never could understand the penchant people had for mac and cheese when I was growing up. Here is Mother’s recipe: Cook elbow macaroni until it is flabby. Drain and put in a rectangular baking dish. Beat 2 eggs. Add milk. Pour over macaroni. Top with a few slices of very mild cheddar cheese. Bake until the macaroni is hard again. We had an abundance of vegetables because we had a huge garden (couple of acres) that we shared with the people who worked for Daddy. Mother did not can food, but she froze a lot of vegetables. I ate a lot of fresh tomatoes growing up. We had them for every meal, including breakfast, when they were in season. I would sneak into the garden, find a good one and eat it like an apple! Then there was fried okra; fried field corn (corn cut off the cob and cooked in a skillet with butter or bacon drippings); pole beans; yellow squash; cucumbers, butter beans (harvested when they were tiny) and crowder peas. For such a lousy cook, Mother had very high standards. Vegetables had to be small and tender. Tomatoes had to be vine-ripened unless they were being used for fried green tomatoes, in which case they had to be truly green and hard. Fruit had to be unblemished. We had no processed foods ever. I didn’t know what American cheese was until I was 23. It wasn’t that Mother was purposefully a healthy eater. She just didn’t like the taste processed foods. Mother never baked a cake from scratch, except a coconut cake at Christmas. The coconut had to be fresh (as in ”first you buy a coconut…”) and finely grated by her own hand. Her pie crusts were always from scratch and always flaky and tender. She had 2 pies she made, lemon meringue and chocolate. Biscuits and cornbread were made without a recipe and were always perfect. Mother’s best dishes were her potato salad and her cornbread dressing. I can’t make either one to save my soul. My sister comes really close on the cornbread dressing. Mother was over 90 when she died. She was living by herself in her own home, doing her own housework and cooking her own meals (still nothing processed). She did the light portions of her own yardwork but hired a really good-looking, very buff young man to do the heavy lifting and mowing. We teased her that she found things that needed doing just to get him to come to the house! I suppose my ”rebellion” is not cooking like Mother did. But I wouldn’t mind having her yard man mow my grass. 😉 ETA: My sister just sent me these pictures of Mom. She may have been a lousy cook, but she went some interesting places!

My DD and her fiance came out, and my dad treated us all to lunch at one of my fav local Mexican food restaurants. I’m still thinking of my veggie chili relleno with queso fresco. Ahhhh. I wish I could eat it every day. :) I tried to convince them to move in with us, but they won’t. I’m not doing Empty Nest Syndrome well. I want to be with her every day. It’s been years since she moved! She’s 27! When do I get used to it?!

Moses,I love your Gardenia story! You did a great job with that gardenia and it sounds like a beauty. I agree August Beauty is one of the better varieties. I had a few at my old house and they bloomed a lot and were easier to care for than some others that I had killed lol! I don't know what variety this one is. It is by the back steps. There's another huge shrub right next to it, that I have yet to identify. That other shrub grows monsterous and tries to shade out the gardenia and I have to continually whack it back! The first winter we were here it rained then froze to 10F one night! Very unusual for us. This gardenia had branches burst open from the freeze. I had to cut it down to a couple feet high. This year it has come back enough to produce several blooms which have begun opening for Mother's Day! Diane, I too, wish you could smell her heady tropical scent! So heavenly.