At Home My Way

My husband and I got married pretty young compared to today's standards.  I was 18 and he was 20.  We had never lived away from our parents and moving "out" was a terrific experience.  We cooked all kinds of things (BBQ for breakfast???) and had a ball making up on our own "rules"  like eating in the living room ha-ha.  After 26 years of ups and downs, (more ups thankfully LOL), we are back to just the two of us... Our older daughter graduated from college, officially "moved out" and got a terrific job this summer.  Our younger daughter is a couple of hours away at college so for the most part, we're back to being "home alone".   The juicy burgers supper I made last night was one of the first things I learned to cook.  My mother IS a terrific cook but she wasn't much into sharing her kitchen with a teenager, so I learned this "method" from a co-worker, who was just a couple of years older than me but who had already mas...

This weekend we celebrated my Mom's birthday. We decided to have a shrimp boil and fish fry since we would be eating lots of comfort foods this week for Thanksgiving. It was so yummy! We used bags of large frozen uncooked shrimp that we got from Walmart (since we live in the midwest and fresh isn't an option for us), cooked in a big pot on my stove in "shrimp boil" seasonings with new potatoes and little corn cobs. We started the water with the spices and the potatoes until they boiled (this took MUCH LONGER than we thought it would). Once it started to boil, we let the potatoes boil about 10 minutes, then added the corn (we had to use frozen so I had heated them in the microwave to take the chill off since we were about the starve to death.. LOL.)  We let the corn boil for about 3 minutes, then added the shrimp, which need to boil only a minute or two until it was pink and ready to serve!  My sister-in-law even made her own cocktail sauce using ketch...

I don't know about your area, but here in Mid Missouri, there are no nuts on the trees. I don't know what the poor squirrels are going to do! We live in the midst of a bunch of hickory trees and usually our yard is loaded, and I mean LOADED with hickory nuts! We have to shovel them or else our ground will be a mass of crushed hickory nut shells (the remnants left from the squirrels). Also our area usually has lots of pecans! Missouri pecans are so wonderful! But this year, not a single nut! The trees are strangely bare of pecans. What is a person to do when she loves pecan pie more than any pie on the earth? Why, there is a solution! Use oatmeal! This recipe produces a wonderful pie which is super similar to pecan pie. And just think, substituting oatmeal makes this ALMOST a healthy dessert (oh yea... except for all that sugar and eggs). OK, its a smidgen healthier! I'll take it any day over paying big bucks for pecans! Here is how I do a mock pecan pie, an Oatmeal Pie,...