My post today features some happy mail I received today from Audrey and dc.
Look what Audrey sent me! I love to read cookbooks. It came in the mail today I’m going to make this A Hotdish Recipe
And if you have followed me for a. while you know how much I enjoy knitting. Imagine my excitement as I opened a sheet of personalized return address labels, custom made by dc, all with different yarny and knitting themed photos.
I don’t want to put my address out there but you get the idea from this cropped photo. Take a peek.
I can’t wait to use my Custom-made Knitting themed Return Address Labels. So thoughtful of you dc!
So what a great day for happy mail! thank you Audrey and dc. Two thoughtful friends, making life nice.
Yesterday’s post recipe link had a very strange symbol when there was a fraction involved in the amount of a few ingredients.
Sorry about that.
Good thing I have several eagle eye readers to alert me. Here’s the the entire recipe.
I’m thinking the baking is 325 degrees and not 300 as recipe says but that cookbook was from 1984.
Bake until done.
(Also I’ve used a stick of butter and 1/2 c of olive oil together when I didn’t have good vegetable oil in the pantry) I omit the nuts as my kids didn’t care for them but they are in the original recipe.
Here I’ve declared n kno this recipe COMPLETE. Yikes, I don’t see the 1 tsp allspice in this recipe I’m posting today. Be sure to include it.
Still best the second day after baking. I see I wrote “Best cake you’ll ever eat.” I would say now, “that’s debatable!”
Watercolor by Joanne -Applesauce Cake with Bourbon Raisins baked by Colleen
Joanne writes from Florida:
So …. one day last month I was on the phone catching up with my friend Colleen who lives in Nova Scotia. As we were talking about her new cookbook purchase, Ina Garten’s “Modern Comfort Food“, my doorbell rang and a package was delivered. I opened it while talking and it was a copy of the same book! What are the odds? My dear friend Ruth had sent it as a surprise. Colleen and I decided we would each pick some recipes to try out and share our results. Here are the photos of our month-long project. Fun and nice way to keep in touch. Overall we both agree that Ina Garten’s recipes are easy to prepare and almost always turn out looking exactly like her descriptions and photos.
We’re looking forward to trying out another cookbook author soon.”
Last Thursday on our virtual knitting Zoom, my friend Joanne showed this lovely watercolor painting titled Comfort Food.
I had to smile cause I knew Ina Garten’s Modern Comfort Food cookbook was to arrive at Joanne’s house in Florida the very next day. I’d ordered it as a gift.
Here’s Joanne’s Grilled Cheese Sandwich and Tomato Soup painting, Thanks for sending, Joanne.
Here is what is happening with my friend Joanne in St. Augustine.
A guest blog report in gallery form. It was actually Joanne’s idea to post photos from friends in different locations showing what they have been doing as they shelter in place and are isolated from friends and family. Since she has been updating me daily I’m a bit overwhelmed cause she has been doing A LOT. Her to do list and the documentation of it is lengthy. Here are some of the photos that tell the story of her activities in St. Augustine Florida (where my sister and I visited just last month) Thanks for sharing Joanne. I am posting your crossword still life first.
It tells a story all by itself. She titles them Isolation Day Activities. Here’s the gallery with her photos. One thing I can tell you for sure is that is a lot brighter where she is than Pittsburgh PA.
These photos were taken throughout the week, not just one day. Phew!
Then she and Dan visited through a sliding glass door window
Dan through the glass
Joanne through the glass
Made some comfort food (banana bread and tuna casserole) from my very first cookbook I bought in 1971. Made extra to give to my neighbor
Ironing/laundry
Craft time with champagne cork
Watching Portrait Artist of the Year 2020 on YoutubeKnitting a sock that’s been dormant for a few years
A couple of weeks ago I was given a homemade Devil Dog from Priscilla, my friend Jen’s mother. She hails from Connecticut. I haven’t seen her mom’s original recipe but I found another one for Devil Dogs in my old Junk Food Cookbook by Lydia Sager.
Her individually wrapped Chocolate home baked Devil Dog snack cake tasted really good.
I’m serious.
I couldn’t find commercial Devil Dogs in the grocery store. Here are some coconut marshmallow skin covered chocolate Snowballs snack cakes filled with probably hydrogenated fat.
I purchased these at Weiland’s Market and Kroger in Columbus a few weeks ago.
Thanks Steve got helping taste these. I think you can keep these indefinitely and they don’t get moldy.
Western Pennsylvania is noted for the wonderful wedding cookie tables. Some regions of the country have never heard of a wedding cookie table let alone experience and devour the cookies. Today my good friends and I drove in the teeming rain, alongside swollen and rising creeks, over hill and dale on winding roads, to get to this lovely event. We are so happy we did!
THE PITTSBURGH WEDDING COOKIE TABLE BOOK BENEFIT
Sunday, September 9
1—3 PM Connoquenessing Country Club
We went to taste the varieties of dozens of cookies to help in the “creation of a cookie table book in this benefit for VOICE (Butler’s Victim Outreach Intervention Center), Young Writers of the Western Pennsylvania Writing Project and Animal Friends.” The three hosts were “cookbook author Suzanne Martinson, of “The Fallingwater Cookbook” and retired food editor of the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette”( who graciously answered many questions and who has initiated many cookie tables in other states) “portrait photographer Linda Mitzel of Linda Mitzel Photography and journalist/WPWP teacher consultant Jane Miller of The RUFF Writers of New Sun Rising, a new family/school/ neighborhood writing project.”
We had a wonderful afternoon sampling cookies and sipping tea and coffee or lemonade. Someone baked adorable doggy cookies in the shapes of bones and doghouses, using pumpkin and peanut butter. Now dog cookies aren’t the usual offering at a wedding but appreciated as a welcome home treat for Fido. There were white bakery boxes to fill with cookies to take home. (Thanks Deb)
Thanks to Suzanne, Linda and Jane, for hosting a wedding cookie table afternoon.
I baked Esther Maiolo’s Pignoli Cookies and Mrs. Scarano’s Italian Strip Cookies
Julia Child’s Kitchen in the National Museum of American History, Washington DC as seen and photographed by my neighbor Joaquin.
When he said he’d be in DC at the Smithsonian museum, I asked if he went to see Julia Child’s Kitchen, would he please send me pics-and he did.
I used to watch the cooking shows which were filmed in her Cambridge, Massachusetts kitchen.
Seeing her actual kitchen in the museum is on my list of things to do!
Just the other day, my friend Roberta and I were sitting on the front porch, perusing a couple of Julia Child cookbooks. We read some fun passages, talked about cooking some of her menus and enjoyed thinking about her. I’ve had apple tart on my mind.
And one of the books we were reading Click link to Watch staff move 1200 items for move and renovation of her kitchen and read ten facts about it!
Here’s what we missed –
“If you are planning to check out the National Museum of American History’s Julia Child birthday extravaganza tomorrow, be there at 1 p.m. for a special surprise involving 50 pounds of butter, Julia’s favorite ingredient.”
•And Julia Child’s Recipe for a Thoroughly Modern Marriage by Ruth Reichl about Julia Child’s impact on food and how we cook and eat Smithsonian Magazine article
Twinkies® have been in the news lately. They’ve been in existence since 1930. I saw one fried at Kennywood. You might remember the reference the Twinkies Defense? And now the company is filing for Chapter 11. With word of bankruptcy- the future of Twinkies unknown.
Would you believe that PBS has an Ode to Twinkies contest, haikus and all, to honor this American snack classic (from the label)? You can click on the link and read some of them, no matter how you feel about Twinkies
Surely they could accommodate different forms- limerick, sonnet, a villanelle or sestina.
I’m not a Twinkies fan but that sure sounds unAmerican.
I’m fascinated by the snack cake phenomenon. Little Debbie, Tastycake, Drake’s Cakes and Moon Pies etc. and I am always looking for food to photograph.
The other night my friend R(who is the inspiration for this post today) was over for dinner and we were talking Twinkies®. I showed her the recipe in my old 1979 Junk Food Cookbook. We spoke of Urban legends. Someone told us that a penny left in Coca-Cola for three weeks will disintegrate but a Twinkie® soaked in the same Coca-Cola the same time period, remains unchanged. Makes one want to experiment, though, just to test the hypothesis.
But Science Fair projects aside, I thought I’d purchase a pack of Twinkies and photograph them and include the wacky cookbook, too.
After school I went to the Bryant Street Market and the Hostess selection on the wire rack was slim. One package of Snoballs, the pink rubbery marshmallow coating and coconut flakes over a half sphere of chocolate cake and white fluffy filling in the center, two wax coated paper sleeves of fruit pies and the Bonus Packs of Twinkies with an extra cake. Great!
Nutrition Information is an Oxymoron
440 calories from this package alone! YIKES!
I thought it would be cool to post the homemade version out of the Junk Food Cookbook but then I read the front page and decided against it. Alas, I have zero permission from the publisher. Copyright important to respect and no time to write to the publisher and get permission.
If you want to see a list of sightings in movies and TV shows there’s a list at this link
Interior of a Twinkie
Twinkie Twinkie Little Cake
How long do you take to bake?
Most of your ingredients
Sound like they are fake.
Perhaps if Hansel and Gretel had dropped
Twinkie crumbs, the birds wouldn’t have touched them
and they could have found their way out of the woods.
I recently did a photographic session of a Jell-o salad mold.
No kidding.
I don’t think I have a future in food photography and come to think of it, there isn’ t anything of food value in Jell-o. It was a challenge and I will post the results of that after the photograph is made public at a charity auction.
But I looked up as I sat at the kitchen table and chuckled when I saw The Jell-o Cookbook there on the shelf. I reciprocated and sent her the Heinz Ketchup Cookbook. I am sure she hasn’t made anything out of that cookbook either.
Laura gave me the RECIPES notebook and it is filled with clippings and family favorites
Colleen has been featured on the blog with quilts, cookbooks and a mug rug she made me
Click link to 
