Cooking Skills

I'm grateful for the ability to cook. My grandparents were amazing cooks. Granddaddy White served as a cook during WWII. Those were some lucky soldiers. And we were lucky to be served every Sunday afternoon by him. Grandma White made the desserts and fruit salads and sides. Oh, such good food! I loved Grandma Bass's chicken and dumplings, apple pie, potato salad (and I didn't even like half of the ingredients she put in it, but I loved her potato salad), strawberry shortcake, and she always had homemade bread and strawberry jam. I loved that! My mom was a good cook too, but she was so busy that eventually she would have Kellee or me make dinner before she got home. We ate a lot of Hamburger Helper, tuna casserole, spaghetti, and even Spam casserole sometimes. But I did learn how to cook the basic things to be able to take care of a family. I have since learned how to make bread, pies, more complex meals, and a variety of other things. I absolutely love the Everyday Food Storage website. If you haven't checked it out, it is definitely worthwhile. I was going to go to the store tonight to get a couple of things we are running low on, but then I decided I really didn't want to, so that meant I needed to make graham crackers to make a graham pie crust instead of buying either the crust or the crackers at the store. I got the recipe from that website. It's really not that hard since I've done it a couple of times before, and it's fun to be able to make it. In other pinches (can you tell I hate going to the grocery store?) I have made my own cream soups, evaporated milk, sweetened condensed milk, and cool whip. That's just what I can think of from the top of my head right now. Oh, we made milkshakes for our family night treat last night with no ice cream -- and they were really good! I have a lot of fun in the kitchen, and I'm grateful for that, too because it seems like I spend a lot of time there!