We are starting off 2011 with pretty good news. I was worried there for a minute, but today was full of good news. Matt, our oldest grandson, was accepted into The Ohio State University today. He graduates from Columbus State in March and then attends Ohio State, a long time dream of his. Nate graduates in the spring, so we are having a double party in May for sure. I must gear up for that event, because we have invited all the relatives from three different family branches to come to party for the day and evening. Hopefully another grandson will join us soon and begin his college career also in the spring or summer. That's three, now for the grandson in Florida--he was asked to be on the varsity baseball team and he is in the 7th grade! He's that good!(I taught Robert O'Neil, a famous Reds ball player, so I am hoping his success rubbed off on the Lechlers.)
I am trying a series of cake mixes from Trader Joe's. I have yet to try any product from that store that has not been successful. Last week I made their packaged gingerbread cake and Andy commented on it with every slice he ate. Today I just took their truffle cake out of the oven. You don't even need a mixer for these 'stir up' cakes. Very simple, but with a deliciousness that is unexpected for a mix...however, I am not putting down mixes. I think they are great. Bless them...the ones who invented these time savers.
I read this morning that Maya Angelou has written a cookbook. Seems everyone is in on the cooking action, but I wonder how long people are going to continue buying cookbooks when all of the recipes are available free of charge on the Internet. I read cookbooks like novels from cover to cover, if I like the author, so maybe that is the saving grace of a cookbook author. I must admit, however, my cookbook buying is way down. I will not buy any more of the Barefoot Contessa's books; she is repeating herself (how many ways CAN she actually cook a chicken) and stretching the limits in her last book. Back to Basics is really basic and How Easy is That? was a ho hum that I didn't even get through. When I remember, I still watch her show but repeats are frequent.
Having written the above, I thought about our formally wonderful Cook's Corner in the Columbus Dispatch now squeezed in by crossword puzzles and celebrity gossip. I wondered at not seeing Betty Rosbottom's semi weekly column any more, so I Googled her and find that she has a fledgling web site that is very nice and will soon be exceptional if I know her--and I do, a little bit. She was my former cooking teacher at Lazarus Department store in Columbus years ago--in the eighties. She has written several really good cookbooks and her classes were absolutely inspiring. They happened in the midst of my, every- other- month, trips to Paris and since she spends so much time there, even now, I will visit her web site often, I'm sure of that. I will print this blurb of her talents and her web site address so you can enjoy her too.
Betty Rosbottom http://bettyrosbottom.blogspot.com/
Amherst, Massachusetts
As a food writer, Betty was a nationally syndicated food columnist for over twenty years and a frequent contributor to Bon Appetit Magazine. She is the author of eight popular cookbooks and working on her ninth, "Sunday Roasts" to be published in the fall of 2011 by Chronicle Books. She was the founder of the nationally recognized La Belle Pomme Cooking School in Columbus, Ohio and served as its director until 1995 when she moved to New England. Betty currently is the Cooking School Coordinator for the "Different Drummer’s Kitchen" in Northampton, Massachusetts. Her PBS television program produced by WGBY in Springfield, Massachusetts “On the Menu” continues to air in western New England. She has also made appearances on both NBC’s "Today Show" and "The Early Show" on CBS.
The Cooking School Cookbook shown here is from 1987 when she, Betty Rosbottom, was directing La Belle Pomme cooking school in Columbus, Ohio. She now has eight cookbooks published and another is due in February. I am still cooking from the recipe hand-outs from the 1980s that she graciously gave to attending students. Those hand-outs fill an entire binder. We also got to sample each dish that was created and the room was always packed with students...well, we sampled all but the brie soup. LOL Diaster ensued when they made this expensive soup in a pan that caused a chemical reaction to the contents and they had to ditch the entire batch made for thirty or forty people.
Someone sent me this in an email, thinking I was old enough to remember these things (and I am). LOL I hope you enjoy this trek down memory lane.
... THOUGHT YOU MIGHT ENJOY THIS ....
'Someone asked the other day, 'What was your favorite fast food when you were growing up?'
'We didn't have fast food when I was growing up,' I informed him... 'All the food was slow.'
'C'mon, seriously. Where did you eat?'
'It was a place called 'at home,'' I explained. ! 'Mom cooked every day and when Dad got home from work, we sat down together at the dining room table, and if I didn't like what she put on my plate I was allowed to sit there until I did like it.'
By this time, the kid was laughing so hard I was afraid he was going to suffer serious internal damage, so I didn't tell him the part about how I had to have permission to leave the table. But here are some other things I would have told him about my childhood if I figured his system could have handled it:
Some parents NEVER owned their own house, never wore Levis, never set foot on a golf course, never traveled out of the country or had a credit card. In their later years they had something called a revolving charge card. The card was good only at Sears Roebuck. Or maybe it was Sears & Roebuck. Either way, there is no Roebuck anymore. Maybe he died.
My parents never drove me to soccer practice. This was mostly because we never had heard of soccer.
I had a bicycle that weighed probably 50 pounds, and only had one speed, (slow)
We didn't have a television in our house until I was 12. It was, of course, black and white, and the station went off the air at midnight, after playing the national anthem and a poem about God; it came back on the air at about 6 a..m. and there was usually a locally produced news and farm show on, featuring local people.
I was 21 before I tasted my first pizza, it was called 'pizza pie.' When I bit into it, I burned the roof of my mouth and the cheese slid off, swung down, plastered itself against my chin and burned that, too. It's still the best pizza I ever had.
I never had a telephone in my room. The only phone in the house was in the living room and it was on a party line. Before you could dial, you had to listen and make sure some people you didn't know weren't already using the line.
Pizzas were not delivered to our home But milk was.
All newspapers were delivered by boys and all boys delivered newspapers --my brother delivered a newspaper, six days a week. It cost 7 cents a paper, of which he got to keep 2 cents.. He had to get up at 6AM every morning. On Saturday, he had to collect the 42 cents from his customers. His favorite customers were the ones who gave him 50 cents and told him to keep the change. His least favorite customers were the ones who seemed to never be home on collection day.
Movie stars kissed with their mouths shut... At least, they did in the movies. There were no movie ratings because all movies were responsibly produced for everyone to enjoy viewing, without profanity or violence or most anything offensive.
If you grew up in a generation before there was fast food, you may want to share some of these memories with your children or grandchildren Just don't blame me if they bust a gut laughing.
Growing up isn't what it used to be, is it?
MEMORIES from a friend: My Dad is cleaning out my grandmother's house (she died in December) and he brought me an old Royal Crown Cola bottle. In the bottle top was a stopper with a bunch of holes in it. I knew immediately what it was, but my daughter had no idea. She thought they had tried to make it a salt shaker or something. I knew it as the bottle that sat on the end of the ironing board to 'sprinkle' clothes with because we didn't have steam irons. Man, I am old.
How many do you remember?
Head lights dimmer switches on the floor.
Ignition switches on the dashboard.
Heaters mounted on the inside of the fire wall.
Real ice boxes.
Pant leg clips for bicycles without chain guards.
Soldering irons you heat on a gas burner.
Using hand signals for cars without turn signals.
Older Than Dirt Quiz:
Count all the ones that you remember not the ones you were told about. Ratings at the bottom.
1. Blackjack chewing gum
2.Wax Coke-shaped bottles with colored sugar water
3. Candy cigarettes
4. Soda pop machines that dispensed glass bottles
5. Coffee shops or diners with tableside juke boxes
6. Home milk delivery in glass bottles with cardboard stoppers
7. Party lines on the telephone
8 Newsreels before the movie
9. P.F. Flyers
10. Butch wax
11. TV test patterns that came on at night after the last show and were there until TV shows started again in the morning (there were only 3 channels - if you were fortunate)
12. Peashooters
13. Howdy Doody
14. 45 RPM records
15. S& H greenstamps
16. Hi-fi's
17. Metal ice trays with lever
18. Mimeograph paper
19. Blue flashbulb
20. Packards
21. Roller skate keys
22. Cork popguns
23. Drive-ins
24. Studebakers (we had a brand new one)
25.. Wash tub wringers
26. How about wax lips?
If you remembered 0-5 = You're still young
If you remembered 6-10 = You are getting older
If you remembered 11-15 = Don't tell your age
If you remembered 16-25 = You're older than dirt!
I might be older than dirt but those memories are some of the best parts of my life.
