Recipes

Last night's blog set me to thinking of my great-aunt Johanna, who never married and spent most of her life taking care of various family members. She had a beautiful sister, my great-aunt Kate, who was married to a very wealthy Chicago businessman and disgraced the family by running off with the family chauffeur. Although her husband searched high and low for her and even advertised in the papers, she never returned and Aunt Johanna was left as the only caretaker for my mother and her sisters and brother. Pictures of Aunt Johanna show her to be a plain, even homely woman of middle age but I think she was very kind to the motherless children. My mother grew up to be a wonderful cook, a skill she must have learned from Aunt Johanna.
As I type this, I have in the oven a dish referred to as a chicken hot-dish. It is the first time I have tried this particular recipe and I do hope we can eat it. I did not inherit my mother's cooking skills and have to struggle along as best I can. I have several cookbooks, some quite expensive, but I still have as many failures as successes.
We are somewhat isolated here, but as I sit here I can see across the way to the house where the twelve foster children live and it cheers my heart to think of all of them gathered around the table eating dinner, or playing board games. They are remarkably well-behaved children, and range in ages from about three to nineteen or twenty. The house is built in two stories and there are lights in all the windows. up and down.
Well, time is flying by. Please keep in touch.