Mom's Cooking

Mom never measured ingredients (she really didn't even have a full set of measuring cups and spoons). She was a "by guess and by gosh" sort of cook. When she made biscuits, she just spooned flour and baking powder into a bowl, then cut some lard into this, added canned milk, mixed them up and rolled them out. Occasionally, she added too much milk, and then we had "drop" biscuits--but that didn't happen too often. She initially had a coal stove. I can still see her holding her hand in the oven to determine if it were hot enough to bake biscuits.

 

When Mom moved to to West Virginia from Idaho in the early 1940's, she had never eaten corn bread. But, she quickly mastered making corn bread. She had the best corn bread and beans ever! One thing she served, though, that West Virginian's weren't familiar with was refried beans for breakfast. They thought that was a novelty. Now, they're pretty common.

 

We kids also learned to cook by guess and by gosh. This had its ups and downs. One time, Dewey Alan made fudge. He was using a recipe, but he was stumped when it called for "a pinch of salt." He poured salt into his hand, threw a pinch into the boiling fudge, then dumped the remainder into the pan, also. We had salty fudge that night, but we ate it anyway!

 

I'm including a few of Mom's recipes here. Hopefully, with time, this list will grow (but, it's hard, when so little was written down). One of her handwritten recipes that I still have is Ms. Massey's Chocolate Marshallow Candy Roll. We loved that recipe! You'll find that recipe under Ms. Massey.