My mother wrote this down for me many years ago.  It's fun to see her handwriting.  My cornbread is in the oven. Two 8x8 pans, ready to be mixed into dressing for Thanksgiving Day. I came here to look up the dressing recipe that my mother gave me many years ago. Decided I would share it again in case you are looking for a recipe. I made this last year and it was as good as I remember. It's the simplest recipe out there.  As far back as I can remember, we had dressing. Not stuffing. Dressing is baked in a dish separate from the turkey. Stuffing is just what it implies—i ..read more

Slow Cooker Beef Stroganoff   I got a text yesterday wishing me happy birthday that continued, "I hope you aren't cooking your own birthday dinner!" Well, it turns out that I did cook supper last night. We can have a "birthday dinner" some other time. Yesterday afternoon was busy so I planned a slow cooker meal and tried a new recipe. This one is good enough to share. The recipe is at the bottom. What I did give myself as a birthday treat was extra time at the piano. I started piano lessons at age 6. And for well over 50 years everything I played was some kind of music written ..read more

My friends and I needed some post-hurricane time to visit, to compare notes of our damage which ranged from "none" to "significant." So I invited everyone here for lunch. I promised it would be "all things pumpkin" since it's nearly Halloween. And I told them it would all be very simple. We just needed to be together. Turns out it was a good thing simple was my original plan. I had two extra kitchen helpers yesterday while I was getting ready. These two plus their mom are here for the week. That's always fun. And it's always interesting to see how they view the world. I told a friend yes ..read more

Wednesday morning, Sept 25   Like so many people in our state and our neighboring states, last week didn't end like it started. I have photographed this barn hundreds and hundreds of times for years. I've documented the sunrise in all seasons. When I walk into the kitchen each morning to get coffee, the old barn and the sunrise is my first view of the day. Saturday morning, Sept 28 Then on Friday morning my sky view was unlike anything we had ever seen. Hurricane Helene blew right over us. Here. Hundreds of miles from the coast. In a place where hurricanes don't exist ..read more

 Yes, I'm still here. Just staying busy. Or moving slower as I get older, therefore not getting as much done. Both poor excuses for not posting. But this morning as I was looking in the recipe index here I realized I need to keep up with sharing new recipes. It is easier for me to find them again here than it is to remember where I found the recipe originally. But before I actually share a NEW recipe, I'm going to repost a blog from over a decade ago. Tomorrow is the first day of fall. The pumpkin farm down the road from us opens today. Mommy's family arrived here last night (fall break f ..read more

Tomato Corn Avocado Salad Finally a new (to me) recipe. It tastes like summer.   I often have all the ingredients on hand. It only takes minutes to put together. We paired the salad I made with Boars Head snack packs  of meat and cheese and wedges of pita for  the easiest porch dinner for two before we headed to the lake. TOMATO, CORN, AVOCADO SALAD 1 large ear of corn--cook and cut off kernels 1 medium avocado, diced 1-1/2 cups diced cucumber 1 cup halved grape tomatoes 2 tablespoons diced onion, red or white 2 teaspoon olive oil 2 tablespoons fresh lemon juice ..read more

Garlic Parmesan Chicken Pasta Bake I'm getting lazier and lazier about cooking. But eating out brings it's own set of things I don't always want to do—getting dressed, driving to town, waiting on the food, etc. It can take longer to go out for dinner than cooking. So last week I tried a new recipe minutes after announcing I wan't cooking dinner. Cooking seemed to be the lesser effort. The recipe was good enough that we ate it for two nights, then packed up the last bit and took it to the lake for a quick meal down there. We are getting the lake place ready for family that will head ..read more

Just a quick hello this morning. No new recipes. But I am making a grocery list right now while I sip my morning coffee. That's progress. We spent the weekend at our lake house trying to take care of some chores. And while we were there we got to watch a beautiful full moon rise over the lake. The reflection in the water gets me every time. Last week I took a piano workshop. Five days, three hours each day. It was designed for piano teachers who wanted to be more creative in their teaching, who wanted to add jazz and blues to the traditional repertoire. I got to sit in and listen. What did ..read more

In the last couple of weeks I've had local people say to me, "You haven't posted much on your blog lately. I really enjoy reading it." That made me smile. I don't read the statistics that I could find somewhere on this platform to see how many views a post has had. I don't keep up with how many subscribers I have. I have never monetized the blog. Notice there are no pesky ads?  All these years I've written it because I enjoy the process of writing. And the length of these posts suit me well. (Did I tell you that I wrote a newspaper column back in the day?) Occasionally I will look back ..read more

Pulled Pork in the slow cooker. What is wrong with me??? I'm constantly saying I can't think of anything to cook. Yesterday it dawned on me I needed to look at MY OWN RECIPE INDEX here on the blog!!! Yes. Once I post a recipe, I often forget about it. So yesterday I picked out one I had not made in years. One that would make enough to stock the freezer. And one that I was sure we liked. We have been waking up crazy early lately. This morning was no exception. After coffee on the porch as the sun came up, I put together this recipe in the slow cooker. This one takes 10 hours to c ..read more