Breaking Cat News by Georgia Dunn for March 10, 2025

I still have my grandmother’s chicken biscuit recipe. She also loved crafts and made it into a plaque several years before her death. It’s hanging in my kitchen.

Love Letters to the heart in my stomach! Sadly, my Granny didn’t write ANYTHING down. LOL But I have managed to recreate many of her best recipes. Mostly through trial and error.

A lot of my recipes are from my brother (who was a gourmet cook) as well as my mother. My mother actually didn’t cook that much.

I cannot recommend a cookbook more highly than “What’s Cooking in Kentucky”, by Irene Hayes. There is plenty of room at the back to write in your other favorites too!

I love that I can now stay up long enough to see the comic when it first posts.

I wonder if we are going to get some recipes this week! Wouldn’t that be fun?

What a lovely way to look at it!

When a close friend of mine passed away many years ago, I’d celebrate her birthday by making her favorite pesto. It was Marcella Hazan’s version, which got the ‘full Genoese treatment’, meaning the pasta had a generous handful of greens beans and new potatoes tossed in. Since her birthday was in early September, I often made a fresh peach cobbler, too.

The only recipes from my maternal grandmother that were written down were for her fruitcake and her ice box cookies. The fruitcake recipe was too long and complicated with too many ingredients to fit onto a recipe card let alone just remember. Many of Grandma’s recipes were taught to me by my mother as I helped her to make them.

My dad remembered his mom’s ingredients for pioneer salad dressing but not the amounts. Mom kept experimenting until Dad thought she had it just about right.

I have my great-grandmother’s recipes from when she married in 1894!

Now I wonder if any of the recipes are for gourmet cat food.

We had eight kids, so most of what my mother made was pretty basic. Nothing that really required a written recipe handed down. Possibly the most unusual thing she made was tacos. Her filling had ground beef, tomatoes, beans, and corn cooked with chili powder until thick. Soft corn tortillas were heated in the cast iron skillet and we had cheese and lettuce.

Oh, are the gang going to try recipes from the 1970’s? They’re in for a shock…

No Dee Dee no. Do not push that button!

Recipe? Who want recipe? Me can no eat recipe. Gimme foods!

I still have my St. John’s Lutheran Church cookbook that Mom gave me. She had her own copy. Some of her best recipes came from there. (That was her church as a child.)

OT temporary absence

I have my mom’s cookbook she made for us. She was one of those cooks that just threw ingredients in the bowl without measuring. She had to reverse measuring the ingredients to come up with a recipe. Miss her dearly.

slightly OT: YouTube. Tasting History with Max Miller. Superb and informative and FUN!

A few years after getting married, we “adopted” one of my (college) student workers. She was vegetarian and the college’s idea of vegetarian was pasta. We weren’t (and aren’t) vegetarians, but we do know how to cook good food. We’d invite her over for dinner and then send her back with leftovers (she eventually learned it was okay to bring some plastic containers on her own). When she graduated (she ended up living with us for a summer because she needed housing to finish her degree. Our house had a college student (her) and a newborn (ours) – that was fun) I made her a three-ring binder of all the foods we’d served her. She had it for a long time (we’d hear how she was still using it. That exercise prompted me to type up (on the computer) all the recipes we use regularly. It even has a table of contents (of sorts). Although the long ago new born (and the later arrival) complain that some things show up in multiple places and other things showed up after the ToC was done. I am in the process of updating it (with a better ToC – computers/word processors have come a long way!) I think, though, it’s going to be at least 2 volumes.

I hope I can still find my father’s recipe for New Mexican chili. I wish I had learned how to make his famous BBQ, especially the brisket. Everything falling off the bone! I must ask my mom for her lasagna recipe and her pumpkin roll recipe. ♥️

When my mother in law passed last fall my husband’s cousin asked for a handwritten recipe, didn’t matter what it was for, she just wanted one. She and MIL had exchanged recipes for years. We never located the recipe card box, but hubby did find a few tucked in different spots in the kitchen. I put them in the mail to her last week.

I have my grandma’s pie crust recipe. Take lard. Add enough hot water to melt it. Add enough flour to stick together. That’s it! Don’t know of much else that was written down.

Even if you have something written down, you still can’t get the same remembered result in some cases.

If you ever have to evacuate quickly because a wildfire is bearing down on you grab the recipes. You’ll miss them most if you don’t.

Okay. I’m all ears! Let’s do this.

Mom never wrote down recipes, even her perfect stuffing recipe. When her recollection faded, the recipes were lost. All I have is the memory.

Meanwhile, Back on the Nile

At the oPyramid Library (Formerly the You Call That a Pyramid)

Beatrixia: Thanks for helping me organize the 641.5 section, Obie.

Obadiah Opossum: Glad to do it. I know you’ve had a lot to do ever since we found those scrolls from the Library at Meowlexandria.

Bea: Sue Chef and Violet-Ifa have agreed to help. And I’ve sent a letter to Afar to Beaver Lee Cleary.

Violet-Ifa: Here we are!

Sue Chef: And we have a special guest.

Bea: Beaver Lee Cleary! I didn’t expect you for days yet, Bev!

Bev: As you say, Why wait until the last minute?

Sue Chef: Let’s start here with Betty Crocodile’s Recipes for Kids.

Bea: Sounds like a plan!

“A meal shared with a loved one across time” Is such a sweet sentiment!

Man I had to beg my mother for family recipes. Then again, we never had that many.

My mom was an excellent cook. Never ever used a written recipe. Fortunately taught the best ones to us at a young age. Thanks Mom!