Wednesday, October 22, 2008

Carrot Cake, (Old) Cookbook , Comfort Food, etc.


Strike is at home in the kitchen....& b/c of that she helps make our house a home. Tonight we baked a homemade carrot cake together. As I type, it's COLD outside but our home is cozy & smells delicious! Strike must have inherited her love of baking from her Grandma on her Daddy's side. We used one of my mom's old cookbooks. It's a bicentennial cookbook (I was about 8 years old back then...) that may have been a fundraiser for the little town in Nebraska where it was made and where family friends lived (& who we stayed overnight w/ on our looong road trips to Indiana) ... You know...the kind of cookbook w/ the lady's names next to the recipes they submitted....& all kinds of really good(!) ... but not necessarily "good for you" recipes - ie. comfort food! The original recipes were typed with a typewriter!! Interspersed thru'out the book - on pages w/ extra space - are various words of wisdom. On the page w/ the carrot cake recipe:

The only place success comes before work is in the dictionary.

On the opposite page:

A careless person is an accident going someplace to happen."

Near the front .... a short poem:

SOMEBODY GOOFED

If somebody goofed and forgot the salt,
Or flour, shortening, milk or malt;
Don't hesitate, best be sure.........
Pick up the phone and express your wonder
To the gal who signed her name down under.

It's all just very nostalgic....Feel like I should have a record player going in one room & a black & white TV in the other ... & the yellow phone w/ square push buttons/curly cord on the counter should be ringing any minute ... & instead of stainless steel, my fridge should be harvest gold - & I should've washed all my dishes in the sink w/ a tad of bleach & rubber gloves so my hands wouldn't get too dried out. Given that it's after dark, I have to ask myself if I left a gallon jar of sun tea out in front - & if the doorbell should ring....my guess is it would likely be the Fuller Brush man or the paper boy collecting his money. Given that it's late October....we should have our jack-0-lanterns in the front window & lit up for at least for a little while.

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