I have a husband, a dog, 2 cats and a huge a aquarium full of discus fish. Now that my kids are raising kids of their own and I’m retired, I’ve found the time to return to one of the things I love most – cooking – OLD style!
I feel like there’s value in what our Mom’s and Grandmom’s did (and in the case of some of the younger blog readers – Great Grandmom’s) in the kitchen. They knew how to serve a passle of kids a hearty tasty meal on a shoestring. Sometimes that even included doing it on a government rationed shoestring.
They were so cool! They invented ways to make yummy moist cakes without eggs, milk and butter! They could stretch one chicken to feed a family of four for 3 days! They didn’t use prepared and packaged mixes when they could make it from scratch and they learned how to make it from scratch in a hurry and preferably in one bowl or pot because they didn’t see the sense in washing piles of dirty pots and pans after dinner.
I love that old fashioned “can do” attitude and I’ve tried to stay true to it for the better part of 30 years. Oh sure, there was that decade when I was divorced, going to school and working full time and it was just plain easier to throw a frozen dinner into the microwave or order Chinese take out on the go, but mostly I’ve managed to bake my own breads, make my own scratch cakes and even make a wheel of cheese now and then.
My life is about more than artistic dabs and dashes on a plate. It’s about a LOT more than pastel frosting piled on mini-cupcakes that look oh-so-cute and taste like, well, a pile of frosting! Eat more than one of those things (and let’s face it, you HAVE to eat more than one, right? right??) and you’ll have jitters so bad that you’ll wonder why anyone ever thought coffee was the ultimate in legal highs.
So nope, no fancy plates of food will be gracing this blog. Instead you’ll find comforting, mostly inexpensive and easy old fashioned foods that I learned to cook from my Mom back in the dark ages. I’ve updated them over the years as tastes and available ingredients changed, but the core is still the same.
This blog is all about my life and how I live it…
My life is about family, food, and finding the balance between:
“Oh gosh that looks amazing! How many hours did it take to make that?”
“Oh no, mac and cheese casserole again?!”
“Is this grocery list going to put us in debtor’s prison?!” and
“There’s GOT to be something I can make that’s as quick as take out”
Live life and enjoy your food,
Toni
Dang Good Cooking!
