My mother wasn’t the greatest of cooks. But there was something she "made" that I couldn’t get enough of when I wuz a kid, "city chicken". Haven’t had since, been 55+ yrs and the cool thing is it wuz on a stick, yup.
There is another thing that can not be replicated, cuz "they" changed the flour as I wuz once told, that is my grandmother’s paczkis.
I worked in a butcher shop in southern Wisconsin. Once in a while, one of the old timers would order city chicken. If I recall, we would alternate pork and either beef or veal on a skewer. I'm not sure what they did with it.
My grandmother made a dish where she'd dry roast a chuck roast, and serve it with baking powder dumplings and tomato gravy. I learned a lot of her recipes, but I don't know that one.
We had a restaurant there called The Castle Restaurant.
They had a homemade salad dressing called Loretto Dressing.
The restaurant closed down in 1997.
I have searched the internet for this recipe and I have found many so called "Original Recipe" but only one has been close and to me it didn't taste how I remembered it.
Maybe my pallet has changed but It's not what I remembered.
My Mom's apple slices. People have tried to make them but they're not the same. And she used to make a dish with leftover pot roast and noodles. She would mix them together, add something that would bind it together. Place it in a shallow glass dish to cook it. When it was done she would cut it in to squares and pour beef gravy over it
My nana made the best apricot glaze pound cake for my mother's birthday every year until her passing due to Alzhiemer's. My mom has tried to recreate it, but alas it isn't as good. Mom's can cook too.....perhaps it's the nostalgia associated of being at Nana's house surrounded by family playing tricks on me?
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1. Dad, who was a terrible cook (almost killed us with a tuna salad he made - for real!), used to grill up lamb riblets slathered with a sweet ketchup-based sauce Mom made. First problem is that I can't find the riblets anymore - not sure what part they came from, but were very fatty, about 2" long. Dad would load up one of those cheap semi-kettle grills, pour a ton of lighter fluid on them and lit the bonfire. As a kid, I LOVED it! Then the riblets were sort of nuked, dunked into a pan full of the sauce, then charred. LOVED IT! Second problem is not having the recipe for Mom's sauce. I do recall she dumped a bunch of ketchup into a pan, threw in 2-3 thinly sliced lemons and maybe 1 thinly sliced onion, then simmered for a while. There may have been other ingredients. It was a wonderful, sweet-tangy sauce that went well with the fatty lamb.
2. Mom made what she called a "dressing" for Thanksgiving instead of stuffing. A whole challah bread loaf, usually the twist kind, first soaked in water and then squeezed dry into a bowl. A whole head of celery and 1-2 yellow onions run thru the hand grinder we had (clipped to the side of a table or counter) - almost a puree consistency. Once ground, sauteed in a large fry pan using chicken schmaltz. Into the bowl with the bread after cooling. A dozen eggs separated; yolks mixed into the bread mix. Whip the egg whites until they "peak". Gently, very gently fold the whites into the bread mixture into a large baking pan/dish and then baked in the oven. I cannot recall the oven temp, nor the amount of salt and pepper added - she probably just eyeballed it. Bake until a toothpick comes out dry. What you get is a bread cake, light, fluffy, delicious. We never had traditional stuffing.
Last edited by GolfGeezer; March 1, 2022, 11:02 AM.
Dressing is what we have in the southeast. Never stuffing. Stuffing is stuffed in the bird - which we all know is problematic and potentially unsafe for a lot of reasons. Dressing is cooked in a pan separate from the turkey. Most southern dressing I've had in my life uses cornbread as a base. Your mom's sounds like a different regional take without the cornbread. So here we always talk about "turkey and dressing" for Thanksgiving - even in restaurants that serve it.
My parents were both wonderful cooks. Fresh ingredients always. Steaks on Friday night, roast on Sunday afternoon. Our house was THE house to be at during the holidays. That said I think I could hold my own if not do better then they. However, mom did make something I've never been able to recreate, we just used to call it the Green Jell-O. I had one cousin who refused to come over unless mom made the Green Jell-O. It had real whipped cream, pineapple chunks and juice, lime green Jell-O and whatever else her secret ingredients were. It was kind of like ambrosia salad if you ever had that but better. I've tried, as I said to mix those basic ingredients but I can't seem to get there.
Sometimes though, I think a lot of it has to do with the passage of time. Things that seemed fantastic when you were a kid would never come close to tasting as good today.
My family made something similar, not sure if they added whipped cream or cream cheese to jello (usually lime or orange), and added a bunch of fruit and such. They'd put in in a mold pan and let it form up so it would hold its shape. Not sure how they got it out of the pan in one piece.
Rivel Soup. It was often made right before coal miners payday. It was just home made chicken stock, eggs and flour and whatever maybe in the pantry. Celery, corn, carrots etc. Occasionally it would have chicken meat. In hard times a big pot would hold us over for a couple days.
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My Dad’s battered and pan fried venison backstrap with pan gravy and camp cast iron biscuits. Good camp memories. A huge part of these nostalgic dishes is the people who prepared them and ate them with you.
Both my parents were good cooks. I started cooking in my early teens and was making full meals by age 15. So I cna cook most anything the way they did except my Mom's bread pudding. I never got that recipe, and my wife doesn't like bread pudding, so I haven't tried to replicate it.
The thing I miss most though is one of my Aunt's sausage and gravy on homemade biscuits. I know how to do it, but the spice mix she used is no longer made. I found one mix that is close, but it's just not the same. I do have some patties in the freezer now.
My Dad used to make a casserole with tomatoes, cooked spaghetti and cheese. We ate it with crackers. When he was a teenager his mother broke her arm and Dad had to cook for the prisoners where his Dad was jailer in Wilkesboro. I never thought to ask but I'm sure the casserole was one of the jailhouse recipes.
My mom was a really good cook held back by my dad’s boring tastes. I do miss her chicken and noodles and meatloaf though. Neither were anything special as I know my mom used to used canned chicken and frozen egg noodles. One day after years of my aunt giving her grief, mom finally let my aunt show her how to make homemade noodles and the chicken and noodles were even better from that point on. I need to get that same lesson from my aunt before it’s too late.
Mom loved it when I really started cooking, if I was making something new she’d drag dad over so she could try it. I cook tastier food than she did, but wish she didn’t leave us so early as I think we would have had a lot of fun cooking together. She had to have a Weber Silver A after I got one and cooked for them a few times on it.
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