Simple Things

      “I COOK WITH WINE, sometimes I even add it to the food.”

      Seriously, I am NOT the world’s best cook (not even the state’s, nor the county’s, nor the neighborhood’s) but now and then I get the urge to try to make something like Momma used to make. 

     The main problem with this is that Momma cooked by  pinches and dabs and smidgens.  One of her recipies even called for a half-eggshell full of milk.  Since eggs come in small, average, large and extra large - I have no idea what size egg she was using, so I have to guess at that one.

      I have tried at various times in the past to make Momma’s chicken-n’-dumplin’s.  On one occasion, I had the dough rolled out just right, nice and thin, and after I put the dumplin’s in the boiling broth, they totally disappeared.  All I ended up with was a nice, really thick, chicken soup.

      Another time, I gave it a try and decided to make the dumplin’s a little thicker so they wouldn’t disappear.  Well, they did not disappear.  They puffed up really nicely (and they kept on puffing up and up and up) until they had absorbed all the liquid in the pot.  The sad part was that I had no time to start all over, so I had to serve them for dinner.  I thought it might work out pretty well, until my husband asked why there were 3 bowls of mashed potatoes on the table.  Well, there weren’t - one was mashed potatoes, one was the dumplin’s and the third one was gravy.  

      Now I had also chosen to make biscuits for this fine meal.  I used Momma’s recipie of pinches, dashes and handfuls, and made some nicely brown biscuits.  I don’t know the secret, but there has to be one, because these biscuits were so hard we had to throw them out for the dog.  He thought it was a great game of catch and kept bringing them back to be thrown again.  Since he wouldn’t eat them, I put them in the bird feeder and three days later they were still up there, but covered with “bird disapproval”.   Thank God that somebody thought of putting biscuits in a can!  In fact, if it wasn’t for Swansons, Pillsbury, Sara Lee, and Kraft my family wouldn’t get to eat much. 

      Martha Stewart, Rachael Ray and Emeril, you have nothing to fear!  I don’t want your job!

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