WE'LL TALK OF MANY THINGS....

"The time has come," the Walrus said,"To talk of many things:Of shoes--and ships--and sealing-wax--Of cabbages--and kings--And why the sea is boiling hot--And whether pigs have wings."

Tonight there are "many things" on my mind. One is to answer the challenge given by my daughter, Marie, on her blog to list 5 things concerning food. I doubt that I can come up with 5, but here goes:

1. I grew up on the cooking of an Idaho farm girl. My mother was always a good cook, and our meals were down-home meat and potatoes type meals. My mother always served bread with every meal. She explained to me one time that in her youth, most farmers worried about the curing of their meat. Occasionally, meat would not be cured properly, and people would die from food poisoning. It was thought that a slice of bread eaten with meat, particularly pork, would cut the effects of poorly cured meat.

2. My mother cooked most of our meals, and she taught us girls some cooking skills. For some reason, though, I could never master the art of gravy making. My father often complained of the lumpy gravy and would try hard to teach me how to make proper gravy, which only made me more nervous and more of a failure. My dear husband, who saw me struggling as a young bride to unlump my gravy, went out and bought cans of gravy and packages of gravy, which saved my bacon. Today, I can make unlumpy gravy, but why?? My shelves are full of canned gravy!

3. Because of the fare at our house, I was quite pleasantly surprised when I was introduced to new foods by college roommates. One of my roommates was Jane Messenger from Foxboro, Mass. Jane came to BYU complete with her "pawk the caw" accent and a peaches and cream complexion that was to die for. She was a home ec major, and she could cook. She insisted that all proper Bostonians had to eat Boston baked beans and Boston cream pie on Friday night. So, when it was Jane's week to cook, we were treated to baked beans, root beer, and cream pie and regaled with stories of the Boston strangler who was then still at large and roaming the streets of Boston!!

4. Another roommate was Anna Laura Hightower who came from California in the middle of the year. Her bedroom roommate was never home because she was doing a nursing internship, so, every third week, Anna Laura had to cook all by herself. No problem. She loved to cook. When it was Anna Laura's turn to cook, she came home with grocery bags filled with hamburger. My snooty Salt Lake roommates were outraged!! After all,the 6 of us were paying $10 a week for three solid meals, and there should be some better cuts of meat than hamburger all week. They were outraged until Anna Laura worked her magic. The first night was homemade pizza; the next, tacos; the next, enchiladas; the next tamales....you get the drift.

5. When Tom and I married, he wanted to know if I knew how to make "pasties," which are a type of small pie filled with meat, potatoes, and onions. Tom especially loved his mom's pasties, but I've never been a good pie maker and pasties eluded me. Betty, my sister-in-law who is an outstanding cook, told me that when she was a young bride, her husband told her there were two things he really missed about his mama's cooking--her homemade biscuits and arsh potatoes. Betty tried and tried to make biscuits like his mama did, but she couldn't seem to satisfy him, and she asked everyone about arsh potatoes, and they were as mystified as she. After a few years of marriage, she went to Tennessee to meet Dewey's family, and Mama's cooking secrets were revealed. The biscuits were straight out of the tin from the supermarket, and the potatoes were Irish potatoes found at any store!! Dewey never again mentioned Mom's biscuits.

The Grandkid Quilt Project is well underway. DeAnne's Christmas quilt (on the left) is in Ohio being quilted by my niece. Dad says he had to dip into his savings to send Vale's quilt(the jeans quilt on the right) winging its way to California. TJ's quilt top (a chess quilt) is about 3/4 finished. Harmony, Heather, Ethan, and Connor's quilts are in the planning stages. It's a labor of love---

On a more serious note, Grandma is slowly regaining strength after her flu. She is still weak, she tells us but feels better each day. We will be spending three days a week with her for the time being. Running errands for her and keeping her company. We're down to one class for our mission right now, so we'll still be busy, but with other things. Grandma now has telephones beside her bed and her armchair, and she welcomes phone calls. She's not up to long visits yet, but a phone call would really brighten her day.

Spring is here. It's so welcome after the long winter. Dad has been sprucing up the yard, and we're getting ready to begin re-decorating the upstairs bathroom. Saturday, we went slumming to antique stores, looking for pictures. After we'd roamed around for a while, Dad said, "I don't see what so many people see in antiques. This just looks like old furniture to me." We think we found our pictures but plan to look around some more. It was nice to roam around in sweatshirts. It's Spring vacation for us, so we're going to go Grandma's and enjoy a wonderful gift that Mark and Jennifer gave us of membership in a place on Bainbridge Island called the Bloedel Reserve--a wonderful garden reserve. We plan to take lots of pictures and buy plants to put into those empty planters. SPRING HAS SPRUNG. Enjoy. Mom