You're Doing It Wrong

My mother-in-law loved her seafood.

Every holiday or get together we’d have some sort of shrimp thing or crab thing. I will be recreating one for Thanksgiving. Stay tuned.

There are crab recipes throughout all her recipes. There another deviled crab recipe in one of the books that is the mostly thoroughly loved recipe in the entire book — spattered and crumpled.

I am only a medium crab fan. One Christmas I managed to have three crab dinners. One with Priscilla, one with Mom and Dad, and one at the Moreheads.

That was a lot of crab.

It’s tough to tell from this photo how old and worn this notebook is.

It’s one of my favorites.

It’s about half-full of newspaper and magazine clipped recipes.

I love the graphic on the Ice Box Rolls.

Under the recipe it says (capitalization as in original): An Old Irish Custom Which Lasted Until About 1860 Was for Green Grocers to Decorate Their Stores With Four Leaf Clovers. This Was Supposed to Keep Their Food From Going Bad Before It Was Sold.

Tonight is our first test recipe: Cream Cheese Tuna Bake from the Executive Mansion. (Recipe here.)

If you know me, you know that the first thing I did was adapt the recipe.

Mrs. Evans wanted me to use 4 oz. of uncooked macaroni.

HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA.

I’m not going to all this trouble and then using a tiny amount of macaroni. I tripled that.

She also didn’t call for cooking the green pepper and onion first and I did not feel confident about that cooking enough from the time in the oven.

I did add a can of mushrooms. I had a 12 oz. can of tuna and I added about 2/3rds and left the rest for Bob to make into something next week.

I thought I was okay but when I opened the tuna I thought it smelled terrible.

But the finished casserole smelled good and I ate a generous helping. It was fine. Not my favorite but not terrible.

Quote from cooking: It seems good except for the tuna.

My husband loved it and had to drag himself away so that he could have the leftovers this week.

I haven’t picked a test recipe for next weekend yet. I’ve still got lots to choose from.

Priscilla grew up in Port Townsend and this little cookbook was sitting at the top of the pile. Bob mentioned seeing the Governor’s wife’s tuna casserole recipe and I knew I had to make it.

I do not like tuna and have suggested to Bob that if he wants to eat it, he should to go outside.

But I’m going to make this for fun and education! I bought all the stuff. Notice it doesn’t say what size can of tuna. I decided to go all in and bought a big one.

I will try to document the process and post on Sunday but if I run out of time it might be later in the week.

What’s not to love about this recipe? Super simple. US Forest Service notepad. Obviously well loved.

Here’s how I interpret the instructions:

Fry the onions first. Take onions up and put in hamburger; add 2 tablespoons of chili powder to the hamburger, mash in lard. Add 4 eggs beaten up; add 3/4 lb. of cheese, 1/2 cup tomato catsup. Add the onions, salt and pepper. Cook slowly until done.

After eating don’t breathe near an open flame for at least four hours!

We love blueberries in this house. Our favorite time of year is the first blueberries at the farmer’s market.

We freeze a bunch and eat them all winter long.

We planted 4 blueberries a year ago. They aren’t producing much yet but maybe next summer.

Mostly I’m including this because I love the recipe card.

I’ve come full circle on frosting.

As a kid I loved it. I remember my mom got birthday cakes with roses on them and if you were the birthday girl you for sure got a rose.

Then I went through a phase where frosting was gross. It depends on who made the cake.

Now I don’t mind a slab of frosting now and then.

There are a bunch of stroganoff recipes in Priscilla’s files. I have made stroganoff, but not this recipe, for my husband and can’t begin to describe the delighted look on his face when he comes through the door and sees that on the stove.

I wish I had the time and inclination to do more research. All these recollections are off the top of my head.

There was a particular moment in time when wok cooking became popular. I remember my mom getting a wok and bringing home an assortment of different utensils.

It’s hard to remember now that ethnic cooking was once an exotic thing to try. The ingredients weren’t always easy to get or required clever substitutions.

We didn’t have this cookbook at our house.

My mom got really good at wok cooking.

To this day I’m timid with heat and I never managed better than a giant dish of soggy vegetables.