Hey, Everyone!
I’m so excited to get to do this with you all! I spent a lot of years of my life cooking big meals. Every day of the week, anyone on our farm and trucking company property was expected to stop what they were doing at noon time and come on up to the house to have dinner, and yeah, that’s what we called it – dinner.
To those of us on the farm, dinner is the big, noon meal, and supper is a lighter, smaller meal you eat, often leftovers from dinner, after the chores are done for the day and you’re inside for the night.
At any rate, our big meal was at noon, and I was often responsible for cooking for anywhere from seven to twenty people. We have a big table that stretches out and we can put boards in, and, if we grab our picnic table benches from outside and use my piano bench as well, we can seat twenty people around it comfortably. It makes for a fun time.
Honestly, there have been times where I didn’t even know the names of all the people who were sitting at the table with us. We just grab them, sit them down and feed them!
Once, my friend who was going through a hard time, was there with us along with her five kids – a daughter and four little blond-haired boys. Real cuties. We also had two men from Chiapas, Mexico eating with us as well, one who had just arrived in the US for the first time.
As we ate, the new fellow spoke to the man sitting next to him in Tojolab’al, the language the native people speak in that Mexican providence. While we understand a little Spanish, we didn’t understand Tojolab’al and we asked the fellow he’d spoken to what was going on, since the man had pointed at the children and had seemed amazed at something.
The man we’d asked grinned a little and said in halting English, “He no has seen such white skin. He no can believe they are very much pale!”
We laughed at the fun of it – a Mexican sitting at a table in Pennsylvania talking about the little Italian boys who happened to be sharing a table with him. Kind of funny when I think about the culture that has sat at our table.
Hospitality is a trait that the Bible commands, and, while I love for my home to be clean and everything in its place, hospitality is less about having a perfect house and all about making the people who grace your home and table feel comfortable and welcomed and loved.
Food is a big part of that. I always tried to make hearty meals that would “stick to the ribs” and keep my growing, working boys and the men fulfilled and satisfied the rest of the day.
I also tried to make things easy on the girls and myself and keep things simple. We had some favorites that were a little complicated – lasagna and chicken pot pie – but a hearty chili or simple roast beef sandwiches and gravy were often on the menu.
I’d like to share two simple 5-ingredient recipes with you today that I often used during those times of feeding a bunch of people simply, on a budget, but still wanting to give them hearty meals that kept them feeling full for an afternoon of working outside.
Jessie’s Pizza Casserole
- 1 16 oz box of pasta
- 1 20 oz jar of spaghetti sauce
- 6 oz pepperoni (or more ; ) sliced and cut into quarters
- 2 cups mozzarella cheese
- 2 pounds of hamburger, crumbled and browned
Directions:
- Cook the pasta and drain.
- Cook the hamburger and drain the fat.
- Mix everything together and serve.
*Notes from the farm: I typically served it with garlic bread and peas or broccoli, depending on what I had in the garden. You can also add mushrooms and onions and peppers – anything you’d put on pizza. I often threw it together and left it in the crock pot on low for several hours so the guys could feed themselves if I had to be gone over lunch.
Jessie’s Favorite – Creamed Dried Beef Over Toast
- 2 1 oz containers dried beef, chopped into small pieces
- 2 sticks of butter
- 3/4 c flour
- 8 c milk
- 2 c sour cream
- Melt the butter in a cast iron skillet.
- Chop the dried beef and add it to the butter.
- Put the flour in and mix it up.
- Pour the milk in and stir continuously until it bubbles.
- Add the sour cream.
Serve over a loaf of French bread, cut long-ways and toasted in the oven.
*Notes from the farm: You can chop up leftover ham and use that in place of the dried beef. If I use ham, I don’t usually use as much sour cream. You can also use sausage in place of the dried beef. French bread was what we aimed for, but sometimes I used toasted hamburger or hot dog rolls – whatever bread we had is what we used. : )
“I’ve got to do something about Mom. I don’t care how worried she is, when she hurts other people she’s gone too far.” Cheyenne collapsed on the couch beside Aubrey.
I thought the same thing the first time I went to Corsicana to transport a dog. But when I saw the Collin Street Bakery on my way to the city shelter, I had to stop. After that, every time I drove to Corsicana, I stopped at the bakery first. I would get a cherry turnover to devour on the way home, peanut brittle for my hubby, cupcakes, and a sample of their fruitcake, which is by the way, pretty good.
My mom held her finger close to my kids so they could ooh and aah over her boo-boo.
As everyone knows, the cost of groceries has gone up. The cost of eating out has gone up too. So while researching a few things for an upcoming book, I ran across some interesting tidbits of information about what things cost back in the day. My book takes place in 1903 and the charts I found are from the same. All I can say is, my how things have changed! 
My book takes place in Denver, Colorado. As my heroine owns a bakery, she’s going to need some eggs and can get herself a dozen for .23 cents. Next she’ll need flour. She can pick that up for .55 cents for a half barrel bag. Yep. Barrel.
And we can’t forget about coffee, which ran from .17 – .35 cents per pound depending on what kind it was. I could go on but you get the idea. Fruit and vegetables were a different ball game and it also depended on what part of the country you were in. Needless to say, they were a lot cheaper than today. Still, back then wages were different too. If you worked for my bakery owner, you could make a whopping .21 cents an hour. A blacksmith out west made .32 cents an hour. Someone who laid bricks could make as much as .69 cents an hour in the west. If you were on the east coast, you’d make .54 cents an hour. Makes you wonder how many brick layers headed west. A furniture maker could make .43 cents an hour. If you were an unskilled laborer, you made about a dollar a day. This was the average wage for an unskilled worker from around 1700 to World War I. Thus the saying, “another day, another dollar.”
I don’t know about you, but I love to bake.
Howdy!
Steps for making easy catsup:
Recipe for making easy spaghetti sauce for meatballs or meat sauce from home-grown tomatoes:
To be entered in my random giveaway for the Hanging With My Peeps T-shirt and a signed copy of Family Ties leave a comment about your favorite Jell-O recipe or the oddest one someone you know has made.
Despite that beginning, a recipe for a side dish with diced pumpkin was published in New-England’s Rarities Discovered, in America in the 1670s. After that, women developed more pumpkin recipes. Serving sweet pumpkin dishes during the holidays didn’t start until the 1800s. However, the first pies were scooped out pumpkins filled with a ginger-spiced milk, then roasted by the fire. Hmmm, an early PSL?
