List your favorite meals and treats:
- Macaroni and Cheese.
- A fried egg, over medium, with rye toast.
- Special K loaf: a vegetarian non-meat loaf that, with cream of mushroom soup, cheddar cheese and ground walnuts in addition to the cereal, promises all the fat, calories and cholesterol of any beef or pork loaf. It doesn’t matter…I like it even better!
- My healthy Gumbo, over Basmati rice.
- Cashew Chicken, the way Linda and I have always made it.
- San Shan Soup with Crispy Rice, as introduced to me by my friend, Huey Chu.
- and Chinese Pork Dumplings, just exactly as she prepared them.
- Homemade chicken soup with star noodles, the way I made it for my daughters when we decorated the Christmas tree.
- If my Mom were around to prepare it, I’d love a sampling of her beef tongue. She baked it whole, slathered in blackberry jelly and studded with cloves. It was delicious! I am, however, totally grossed out by the idea of handling or cooking beef tongue, and if I did manage to get through all that, I’m sure I wouldn’t be able to eat it. I sure enjoyed it when Mom prepared it, though.
- Lemon Chicken with Basmati rice. I have Katie Couric’s recipe, and make it several times a year.
- Hot, buttered noodles, with grated Parmesan cheese. When my teen-aged daughters and I were living on campus, and all busy with classes and other activities, this was our go-to supper. We’d throw frozen broccoli in to cook with the noodles, and it would be a full, satisfying meal in a bowl.
- Gazpacho, the way it was prepared at the little restaurant near campus. My daughter, Jen, and I would walk over for cold soup with hot bread. We have been trying to duplicate that recipe for years!
- Lasagna. My husband and I went through a time when we’d get a babysitter once or twice a month, and go out to the Villa Restaurant in Lapeer for dinner. He’d always get a steak; I’d have lasagna. There are many good recipes, and I make a good one myself, but none are as good, in my mind, as the lasagna dinners I enjoyed there.
- Boiled dinner. In the fall of the year, when the vegetables are fresh from the garden, nothing beats a boiled dinner. Carrots, potatoes, turnips, onion and cabbage all cooked in the good broth provided by the picnic ham…delicious!
- For dessert, any small bit of dark, rich chocolate will do just fine…or fresh berries in season…strawberry shortcake, the way Brenda and I made it one year, with fresh whipped cream and homemade, barely sweetened biscuits…a small dish of ice cream over a sliced banana…or, in the fall, Affy Tapple!
cindyricksgers 