Joy in the Kitchen!

  Our little garden is producing!  We didn't plant most of it until Father's Day weekend due to weather and crazy schedules but it is on now!   When we moved to this home, we left a large garden plot and a slightly warmer climate.  Gardening really helped us feed our large family on a budget.  I remember several years canning close to 100 quarts of green beans, freezing 50-75 3 cup packages of corn, canning several quarts of tomatoes and up to 30 quarts of salsa in a year.  Whew!  I had several children at home so along with many mouths to feed, we had many hands to help!   The garden at our current home has a small garden plot with several raised beds on the side.  This is enough for just a few of us and I don't miss the busy days of canning until the wee hours of the morning when the house was cooler.   We had a fabulous red raspberry crop this year.  I have no idea how many we ate fresh (as we picked), but we weigh...

  I brought home an old cookbook from my Mom's stash of recipes.  I wish I'd have asked her more about it when she was alive, but now I'm just making guesses as to it's history.  This book is the Larkin Housewives Cook Book .  Copyright 1915,16,17, and 1923.   I love old books.  My Mom was born in 1929.  I would guess this is her mothers' cookbook.  Her mother passed away when Mom was 6 years old.  My grandpa cooked and had housekeepers to come watch after the house and children for several years after.  Any of them could have enjoyed using this cook book.    There are a few recipes with "good" or "very good" penciled in to the side.  A few small notes in lovely handwriting. (There are even pencil scribbles from a child on a few of the back pages - I had fun imagining my Mom or her brothers doing that while their mom's back was turned.)   One way I can tell the best recipes is in play in this book though, th...