Adventures in Cooking

As a young bride, I knew how to boil water and make meatloaf. I could probably bake a chocolate cake from scratch. That's about the extent of my cooking ability.

I made biscuits one time. They were terrible and hard as rocks! We threw one outside and the neighbor's dog wouldn't even eat it. :-(

I know there are many "never fail" recipes out there. I also know I won't ever try one of those recipes again! I tried a never fail rye bread recipe. Guess what!? Yep, it failed!

Mom gave me many of her tried and true recipes and some from her sisters. A neighbor made yummy pecan pie and I have that recipe. I also had a couple recipe books. Even with all this, I still had some crazy adventures in cooking!

I'm sure you have heard the expression, "burned to a crisp." Well, I can testify to that fact because it happened to me. I put a pot roast on the stove, seared it on both sides. Then we left for church. Halfway through the church service, I wondered if I had lowered the heat after searing the meat. I could not remember. When we returned home from church and opened the door - we were greeted by smoke! The three-and-a-half pound roast was reduced to ashes and one piece - a cinder about 1"x1"! Oh, my!

Another time I fixed baked beans for a Sunday evening supper. The beans were actually ok. The adventure came when I was carrying the dish from the stove to the table. Evidently my bare hand touched the hot dish and I reacted - I just threw the dish straight up! There were beans on the curtains, the floor and the ceiling! The dish landed rightside up with enough beans for supper. When Chuck came upstairs he viewed the wreckage and asked, "Are you redecorating?"

My Mother made wonderful cinnamon rolls; however her recipe left a lot to be desired - a pinch of this and a bit of that. These directions did not translate into wonderful cinnamon rolls in our home!

There are successes to my adventures in cooking. They aren't nearly as funny but they tasted better! I made carmel candy at Christmastime for many years. The kids help cut and wrap the carmels. The Open Line cookbooks (from a local radio station) had a number of fudge recipes that were good - chocolate marshmallow fudge and brown suger fudge. Yum! Those recipe books had many good recipes in them, shared by listeners to the radio station. Texas sheet cake with cooked brown sugar frosting became a favorite of mine. Lemon bars from a neighbor's recipe were really good. None of the successes came from "never fail" recipes!

We perfected a tasty pizza sauce and made good pizzas from scratch. It took several months to perfect the sauce. We found the secret ingredient was a little sugar in the sauce brought out the flavor.

The kids loved to help with filled cupcakes - ala Twinkies. They would put too much filling in the cupcake and cause it to blow apart. They thought that was great fun - and loved eating them. The probably have cooking adventures of their own that they could share! ;-o

More Jewelry (2)

The top left photo is of two of the six-strand necklaces I've made. The top right photo has a dark bracelet done in peyote stitch and a Russian spiral bracelet that Patti liked. The middle photo shows the focal beads I used for four different bracelets plus the red and black bracelet. The bottom photo has the same red and black bracelet (I forgot I'd already taken a photo of it.) The two other bracelets were made with new beads with the exception of the focal bead in each one. These focal beads were left over from a lovely necklace and bracelet set I made for myself.
Making jewelry is such fun because I always get the first of any project!!!!!

The bottom three of these bracelets were made with the focal bead from a set of beads (in the front) that Don's daughter Leslie gave me. The focal bead on the pink and green set is one left over from a necklace and earrings set I made for myself. Often it is hard to decide what to do with one lonely bead. This was an excellent idea because all four bracelets were made with beads I had in my bead stash! They were fun to make, and especially because I had everything on hand!