Tag: recipes

All Write, Columns

Stuffing Wars

Cindy Hval

When it comes to our Thanksgiving menu, I stick to the basics.

My brother and his wife bring a sweet potato casserole, I bake apple and pumpkin pies, and we serve turkey, homemade mashed potatoes and gravy, green bean casserole, cranberry sauce, rolls, olives, pickles, and my favorite – – stuffing.

I buy Mrs. Cubbison’s cornbread stuffing and bake it in the oven (not in the turkey) just like Mom did.

To quote “The Mandalorian,” “This is the way.”

This has always been the way until about five years ago, when my husband’s friend told Derek about the stuffing he makes and gave him the recipe.

It’s called ‘Dan’s This is What Stuffing Will Be Like in Heaven.’

After reading the ingredients, I strongly disagree that this is what will be served in Paradise.

I’m a stuffing purest. The dish should be all about the seasoned bread cubes, copious amounts of butter, and a bit of sautéed celery and onion to give it crunch.

No oysters.

No olives.

No oranges.

Dan’s recipe doesn’t contain any of the above. Instead, it calls for dried cranberries, two boxes of wild rice mix and ground sausage.

Pork sausage!

But Derek wanted to try it, so I bought the ingredients.

He made his version, and I made mine. On Thanksgiving, we served both.

I tasted a small bite of the foreign stuffing. The flavors and the textures were all wrong. I didn’t mind the mushrooms or slivered almonds, but I shuddered at the sausage and cranberries.

Imagine my surprise when our guests LOVED the “new” stuffing. They raved about it. Even our sons were huge fans. Oh, they all ate my version, too, but there’s no denying Derek’s was a hit.

Now, every year, we serve both kinds. If there happens to be more of my traditional stuffing left over, I’m good with that. I eat it cold for breakfast the next day, and if I’m lucky, the day after that.

Dan’s ‘This Is What Stuffing Will Be Like In Heaven’ Recipe

(This is transcribed exactly as received. What size can of mushrooms? Derek uses 8 ounces and it works. What oven temperature? I stick it in with my stuffing at 350 degrees.

1 pound good ground pork sausage from the meat counter, NOT Jimmy Dean

8 cups dry bread cubes

2 cups sliced celery

1 cup chopped onion

1 can sliced mushrooms, drain; save juice 1cup or more!

Slivered almonds

1 egg

1 or 2 (or 3) cans of chicken broth

2 boxes of stove-top type herb and butter flavored long grain and wild rice mix or equivalent

1 cup or so cashews

½ or 1 cup dried cranberries (Craisins)

Brown almonds in a frying pan with light oil (olive) – move ‘em around so they don’t burn. (They will go from perfectly browned to burned really fast).

Set aside. Snack on these while you prepare all the following.

Fry sausage, chopping it up as it browns – save drippings!

Prepare rice according to directions, set aside.

Chop up celery and onion, set aside.

Put celery, onions, mushrooms (drained) and drippings from sausage in frying pan; add some salt, pepper and butter; simmer for a few minutes until slightly cooked, but still crisp.

In a large bowl, combine the rice, sausage, almonds, all the vegetables and the drippings they were simmering in, and add the bread cubes. Mix this around for a few minutes to get all the dried bread moistened. Throw in the cashews and the dried cranberries. Mix some more. Add mushroom juice and as much chicken broth as needed to get the proper consistency; moist and sticky, no dry bread cubes. Throw in an egg for good luck. Mix more. Keep in mind that when you heat it up in the oven, it may dry out some, so, chicken broth.

Put stuffing into a covered pan or baking dish and bake to heat it up before serving.

Feeds one person for three entire days.

Mrs. Cubbison’s Corn Bread Stuffing

(Oven-prepared as per the back of the box, the way God intended.)

1 box (12 oz.) corn bread stuffing

1 cup (2 sticks) butter

1 cup onion, diced

1 cup celery, diced

1¾ chicken broth (or water)

1 egg, beaten

Preheat oven to 350.

Spray a 9-by-13 (3-quart) casserole dish with cooking spray.

In a large 5-quart saucepan, melt butter on medium heat. Add vegetables and sauté until translucent. Remove from heat.

Add stuffing mix and gradually stir in chicken broth or water. Add salt and pepper to taste. For richer stuffing, add a well-beaten egg and mix thoroughly.

Pour the stuffing into a greased casserole dish and bake for 40 minutes. Remove the cover for the last 15 minutes for a crispier top.

All Write

These Recipes are “To Die For”

Cindy Hval

The comfort of a bowl of slow-simmered chicken soup.

A whiff of cinnamon from snickerdoodles just out of the oven.

The tang of homemade ranch dip on a crunchy chip.

Food is the gateway to memory. A bite of rich chocolate Texas sheet cake can evoke your favorite aunt, who brought that dessert to every family gathering and church potluck.

A new cookbook features recipes for all of the above and more, sourced from surprising locations – cemeteries around the globe.

“To Die For: A Cookbook of Gravestone Recipes” (HarperCollins, 2025) features 40 recipes, along with interviews and full-color photographs. What began during author Rosie Grant’s digital archives internship at the Congressional Cemetery in Washington, D.C., became a viral sensation when she started cooking real gravestone recipes and sharing their stories via TikTok.

“I was finishing my master’s in library in information science at the University of Maryland and started a TikTok channel (@ghostlyarchive) about what it’s like to intern at a cemetery,” Grant said.

She came across other social media accounts that featured recipes carved on headstones.

“I love to cook and I love to eat, so I tried three of the recipes and posted them,” she said. “People started reaching out.”

The first recipe she tried came from Naomi Odessa Miller-Dawson’s grave in Brooklyn, New York. Miller-Dawson’s gravestone resembles an open book with her spritz cookie recipe etched in the stone.

While the monuments list ingredients, they don’t often include instructions. Thus, Grant didn’t realize that she needed a cookie press to make spritz cookies.

She laughed and said, “I made pretty much every recipe incorrectly! I now own multiple cookie presses.”

When she’d gathered 20 recipes, publishers expressed interest in a cookbook.

Eventually, Grant ended up with 40 “To Die For” recipes.

The author didn’t just make the recipe; she visited each cemetery featured in North America and photographed the gravestone. She interviewed family and friends of the deceased and often cooked with them, whether in person or via Zoom.

“I made spritz cookies with Naomi’s family,” she said. “They were so generous with their time!”

Gravestone recipes are rare, but the author discovered one right here in Spokane County.

You can find Marty Woolf’s recipe for ranch dip on his headstone at Saltese Cemetery in Greenacres.

An avid golfer, Woolf grew up in Spokane Valley. After graduating from dental school, he and his young family relocated to New Mexico to work alongside his brother and his best friend.

In 2022, he fell ill unexpectedly and died a few days later. His obituary in The Spokesman-Review read, “There are few people in this life that when you meet once, you never forget them. Marty was the sweetest husband, most loving father, and best friend to countless people.”

Grant contacted his sister-in-law to learn more about Woolf. She discovered his nickname was Dr. Death, and he loved to share recipes.

“Dr. Death’s Ranch was something he loved to make,” said Grant. “When I visited his grave, someone had left a can of Mountain Dew beside it.”

When staging the food pictures, photographer Jill Petracek took care to add subtle nods about the deceased. In the photo of the ranch dip, a glass of Mountain Dew sits nearby.

Surprisingly, a few of the recipes in the book came from the living.

“These women were preplanning,” Grant said.

Before Peggy Neal’s husband died, they prepared their headstones together. As an avid hunter, his side featured game animals.

“What do I want to be remembered for?” Neal thought. “Well, I am darn proud of my cookie recipe!”

So, the recipe for Peg’s sugar cookies was etched into the marker, and the book features a photo of a smiling Peg next to it.

“I got to cook with Peggy in Arkansas,” Grant said.

Likewise, Cindy Clark Newby’s recipe for No-Bake Cookies is on her headstone.

“I thought about what my family would feel when they visited my grave,” she said. “I pictured them laughing when they saw I’d put my cookie recipe on there.”

From a chocolate chip cookie recipe on a book-shaped headstone with “Cookie Book” on the spine, to a marker featuring a handwritten chicken soup recipe, Grant uncovered the stories of ordinary people remembered for the way they fed and gave to others.

She urges readers to document their own recipes and food histories and included resources to assist them.

Traveling to cemeteries throughout the country and recreating cherished recipes allowed Grant to understand the role of food in preserving memories, as well as fostering a deep appreciation for the loving legacies etched in stone.

“It’s a testament to who these people were in life – generous and giving.”

Columns

Love in Every Bite

Cindy Hval

For many years, I’ve written an annual zucchini column for The Spokesman-Review’s Food section.

It started when my husband planted our first garden and made the rookie mistake of planting three zucchini plants.

The abundance of zucchini prompted me to delve into my cookbooks and recipe files. It also led me to give the gift of a gourd to friends, neighbors and random strangers who offered to take some squash off my hands.

This was when our two youngest sons were still at home. They resignedly ate the resulting side dishes, casseroles and soups, and happily devoured the breads, cakes and cookies that resulted from our garden abundance.

Flash forward to our empty nest and more manageable zucchini crop. Manageable because we’ve reduced the size of our crop, and I learned how well the resulting baked goods freeze.

My Norwegian brother-in-law is a big fan of my chocolate zucchini bread. He and his wife have a beautiful saltwater swimming pool in their backyard and graciously allow us to swim on sweltering summer days.

A tasty homemade thank-you gift is always ready in my freezer. This year, I upped the ante with chocolate zucchini cupcakes studded with chocolate chips.

Earlier in the summer, a friend had ankle surgery. Her husband is in my writing group. Zucchini isn’t the only garden goodie that lends itself to baking. Our bumper crop of raspberries became a decadent coffee cake. I served some to my group and sent the rest home for Sarah.

Twice a month, we host a family dinner. I never have to worry about dessert because I’ve got plenty of zucchini peanut drop cookies or zucchini chocolate chip cookies on hand. All that’s needed is a carton of vanilla ice cream.

I may have read too many “Little House on the Prairie” books as a child, because nothing makes me feel more accomplished than having homemade goodies on hand. I’m like Laura Ingalls Wilder, but with an upright freezer instead of a root cellar.

Where does it all go?

Well, this summer I served lemon zucchini bread with lemon glaze to a former member of my writing group and his wife.

They’d moved to Montana a few years ago. When I had the opportunity to interview them about their new ministry, I invited them to our backyard gazebo. When they left, I sent the leftover dessert with them to sweeten their journey home.

My Norwegian brother-in-law is a big fan of my chocolate zucchini bread. He and his wife have a beautiful saltwater swimming pool in their backyard and graciously allow us to swim on sweltering summer days.

A tasty homemade thank-you gift is always ready in my freezer. This year, I upped the ante with chocolate zucchini cupcakes studded with chocolate chips.

Earlier in the summer, a friend had ankle surgery. Her husband is in my writing group. Zucchini isn’t the only garden goodie that lends itself to baking. Our bumper crop of raspberries became a decadent coffee cake. I served some to my group and sent the rest home for Sarah.

Twice a month, we host a family dinner. I never have to worry about dessert because I’ve got plenty of zucchini peanut drop cookies or zucchini chocolate chip cookies on hand. All that’s needed is a carton of vanilla ice cream.

Every season, I find new recipes to try, and during my weekly phone call with our Texas son, I told him I’d been baking chocolate chip zucchini bread.

“You should send me some,” he said.

I’ll be popping a loaf in the mail soon.

Last week, I got a text from one of my closest friends. Her only sibling had died unexpectedly.

Stunned and saddened, I pulled a loaf of orange chocolate chip zucchini bread from my freezer. On the way to her house, I stopped at the store and bought a sympathy card and an Uber Eats gift card.

I know she appreciated the gifts and my presence, but it was the zucchini bread she mentioned more than once.

When forced to swallow the bitter pill of loss, a taste of homemade sweetness sometimes offers a moment of respite.

All I know is my freezer full of baked zucchini goods makes me feel prepared for whatever celebration or sadness lies ahead.

Over the years, I’ve cut these breads and cakes into wedges, rectangles and squares. I’ve served it on glass trays, porcelain saucers and paper plates.

Anyway I slice it, it all adds up to love.

Columns

Zucchini Mayhem

Cindy Hval

I know I say this every year, but it seemed like zucchini season got off to a slow start.

No gigantic gourds awaited us when we returned from vacation – just one or two supermarket-sized squash.

Even more shocking, I still had two loaves of lemon zucchini bread and one loaf of chocolate zucchini bread in our freezer.

I blame our No. 3 son. He got married in October and now his lovely wife keeps him well supplied with sweet treats.

This year, I made a vow to slow down on baking and cooking. Unfortunately, our zucchini didn’t get the message. Neither did my husband.

When he hauled out the food processor to shred our first batch, I gave him my second-largest mixing bowl and told him not to fill it to the top.

Derek misheard me and shredded every zucchini in sight, and could barely get the lid on the bowl.

“Oh no!” I said. “I needed some to slice and dice for casseroles and soups!”

He raised his eyebrows.

“Can you wait a couple of days?”

Of course, he was right. Even with only one plant, I’ve got squash coming out of my ears.

It’s a good thing my recipe game is strong, and last year it was augmented by my sons’ former choir teacher, Helen Kennett. After last year’s column ran, she graciously sent me recipes for Zucchini Bacon Quiche and Zucchini Peanut Drops.

Both are wonderful, and I’ve included them below, along with a recipe for a tasty casserole that calls for a box of stuffing mix. It offers a taste of Thanksgiving in August.

Right now, I’m giving thanks for the goodness of the green gourd and the comfort of an air-conditioned kitchen to prepare it in.

Zucchini Bacon Quiche

From Helen Kennett

1 tube (8-ounce) refrigerated crescent rolls

2 teaspoons prepared mustard

6 bacon strips, diced (save 2 tablespoons bacon dripping)

3 cups thinly sliced zucchini

1 medium onion, chopped

2 eggs beaten

2 cups shredded mozzarella cheese

2 tablespoons dried parsley flakes

½ teaspoon pepper

¼ teaspoon garlic powder

¼ teaspoon dried oregano

¼ teaspoon dried basil

Separate crescent dough into eight triangles.

Place in a greased 10-inch pie plate with points toward the center.

Press dough to the bottom and up the sides of plate to form a crust.

Seal perforations. Spread with mustard.

In skillet, cook bacon over medium. heat until crisp. Remove to paper towels; drain, reserving 2 tablespoons drippings.

Sauté zucchini & onion in drippings until tender.

In a large bowl, combine eggs, cheese, seasonings, bacon and zucchini mixture. Pour into crust.

Bake at 375 degrees for 25-30 minutes until knife inserted comes out clean.

(Cover edges loosely with foil if pastry browns too quickly.)

Taste of Thanksgiving Zucchini Casserole

6 cups diced zucchini

1 (10.75-ounce) can condensed cream of mushroom soup

1 cup sour cream

½ cup chopped onion

1 cup shredded carrots (honestly, I usually omit these, and it still tastes great)

1 (6-ounce) package stuffing mix (I use Stove Top cornbread or chicken)

½ cup butter, melted

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Grease a 2-quart casserole dish.

In a large saucepan over medium-high heat, cook zucchini in lightly salted water until crisp-tender, about five minutes. Drain and place in a large bowl. Stir in the soup, sour cream, onion and carrots.

In a small bowl, mix together stuffing and melted butter. Spread half the stuffing mix in the bottom of the casserole dish, add a layer of zucchini mixture, and top with remaining stuffing.

Bake 20 minutes or until the top is golden brown.

Zucchini Peanut Drops

From Helen Kennett

1 cup margarine (I use butter)

1 cup peanut butter

½ cup sugar

1 cup packed brown sugar

2 eggs

1 teaspoon vanilla

2 cups grated unpeeled zucchini

½ cup chopped peanuts

3¼ cup flour

½ teaspoon baking powder

½ teaspoon baking soda

1 teaspoon salt

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Cream margarine (or butter), peanut butter and sugars until light and fluffy. Add eggs one at a time, beating well. Stir in vanilla zucchini and peanuts. Combine dry ingredients and blend into creamed mixture. Drop by tablespoonfuls onto greased cookie sheet (I use parchment paper).

Bake for 15-18 minutes.

Columns

Just one more recipe…

Cindy Hval

In January 2022, I launched “The Collector,” in The Spokesman-Review– a series of stories about what people collect and why.

From Lilac Festival pins to saws, from typewriter ribbon tins to Matchbox cars, I’m having a ball, meeting folks and discovering their collections.

Until recently, I didn’t think I collected anything, but the unwieldy stack of papers at my elbow proves otherwise. Somehow, I’ve amassed an enormous collection of recipes. It’s a little out of control, but I can stop adding to it anytime.

I blame my mother and the internet.

Mom collected many things over the years. I know because I’m the one who had to dust them. At one time or another, she collected salt and pepper shakers, chickens, ducks and teapots.

These were all manageably sized collections. As she grew older, the chickens went home to roost with my sister-in-law Bonnie, and the ducks and the salt and pepper shakers left via garage sale. The teapots she kept.

It wasn’t until Mom moved into an assisted living facility that we realized her real collection was stuffed in envelopes, notebooks and binders and tucked away in kitchen cupboards and drawers.

Mom was an incurable recipe clipper. She lived alone for 22 years after Dad died and subsisted primarily on Lean Cuisine frozen dinners. Yet she kept snipping recipes from the newspaper and magazines. Dorothy Dean had nothing on Mom when it came to recipes involving Jell-O or Campbell’s soup.

Her new place didn’t come with a kitchen, so I tried to sort through her stash. Overwhelmed, I finally gave up, took a couple of her cookbooks home, and called it good.

Scratch cooking, however, is often how I relax at the end of a stressful day, and one afternoon while scrolling through Facebook, I saw an intriguing recipe for sheet pan chicken and peppers. I clicked on it and printed it.

Big mistake! The next day an email from Holy Recipe arrived and like a fool, I opened it. It featured a recipe for Cinnabon cinnamon roll cake.

The kids were coming over for dinner and I love having a new dessert to serve them. I clicked the link and printed it.

You know what happened next, don’t you?

A few hours later my email flag waved. It was a message from Recipe Reader tempting me to check out something called “My One-and-Only Soup.”

My printer whirred and spat it out.

Every day brought a slew of new concoctions from varied sites.

Before I knew it, Big Blue, my extra-large three-ring binder filled with family favorites, had sprouted an additional section: New Recipes. And then the binder got too fat to close.

Where to put the sourdough waffle instructions from Recipe Spot (even though my husband is in charge of waffles and only uses Bisquick)? And what about the spicy pepperoni dip and the peach dump cake I wanted to try?

I found the answer in Columbus, Ohio, at the largest Barnes and Noble store I’d ever seen. We stopped in on the way to the airport after visiting the grandkids and I found two lovely “Favorite Recipes” binders. They came with dividers and quality stationery to use for printing recipes.

When we returned, I unburdened Big Blue and started sorting through my collection. That was seven months ago. Now, I have three partially filled binders and piles of recipes on my desk, waiting to be sorted. Too many recipes. Not enough time.

I’ve decided not to add any more until I get my collection under control. This is proving difficult because during the time I sat down to write this column, I received a recipe from Command Cooking for picnic chicken salad, a link to “Heavenly Bars” from Fussy Kitchen, and one from Recipe Reader for “Creamy Pineapple Dream.”

Don’t worry, I’ve learned my lesson. I didn’t open a single one and plan to add these sites to my spam filter. I’ll put it at the top of tomorrow’s to-do list.

My email flag is waving. What’s this? A recipe for Chicken Tamale Pie!

It shot from my printer before I even blinked.

I finally understand what collectors have been telling me – the lure of adding just one more is incredibly hard to resist.

Columns

Brown sugar cookies bring sweet memories

Cindy Hval

Chocolate chip cake bars, cowboy cookies, gingersnaps, snickerdoodles – on most Saturdays, Mom’s kitchen was filled with the fragrance of fresh-baked cookies.

When my youngest son started kindergarten and I returned to work, Mom assumed my children might never get a homemade cookie again. So she baked. Cookies were her love language.

Mom didn’t drive, so one of us would stop by her house to pick up the goodies. See what she did there? A Saturday visit from her daughter, son-in-law or a grandson was guaranteed.

Of all the treats Mom baked, brown sugar cookies were my favorite. Sweet and chewy with an added spark of cinnamon. It’s impossible to eat just one, so I often secreted a stash away from Derek and my boys.

In August, I came across her handwritten recipe.

My future daughter-in-law was coming to meet the wedding florist in my home to choose flowers for the bouquets and boutonnieres. I planned to serve them tea and cookies, and as I thumbed through my recipes, a flash of Mom’s tidy penmanship caught my eye.

Brown sugar cookies.

I hadn’t tasted them since she moved into an assisted living community seven years ago. I’ve baked a lot of cookies over those years, but I didn’t have the heart to make my favorites.

I wanted to remember how they tasted when she pulled them from the oven and placed a warm cookie in my hand.

I wanted to picture Mom in her element – stirring dough with a wooden spoon in the sunshine yellow mixing bowl and scooping dollops onto her battered and bent cookie sheets.

If I’d known that long ago batch would be the last one she’d be able to bake, I would have savored each bite, feeling her love in the sweetness of every mouthful.

Now, Mom’s memories are jumbled and fragmented. The details of hundreds of meals and thousands of cakes and cookies she churned out are lost somewhere in the depths of dementia.

It felt like it was time to fold new memories into the richness of the old. So, I affixed the recipe to the range hood and assembled the ingredients.

While they baked, I spread one of Mom’s lace cloths on the table and warmed a teapot for my guests, just like she showed me.

The timer rang, and I pulled a pan of cookies from the oven. As usual, I couldn’t wait for them to cool. I juggled one from hand to hand and finally sank my teeth into the deliciousness of brown sugar and cinnamon. They were every bit as wonderful as those that came from Mom’s kitchen.

I shouldn’t have waited so long to make them.

When Naselle arrived, I served the cookies on the glass dessert plates we used at my wedding 38 years ago.

Of course, she loved the cookies.

For her bridal shower, I created a cookbook filled with favorite family recipes. I included Mom’s piecrust and a copy of her handwritten brown sugar cookie recipe.

I hope the memory of the day I finally made Mom’s cookies will be as sweet as the ones I have of her baking for my boys.

But if that moment fades or is lost to me in the haze of age or illness, perhaps my daughter-in-law will bake a batch and remember for me.

Brown Sugar Cookies

1 cup shortening

2 cups brown sugar

2 eggs

2 tablespoons water

2 teaspoons vanilla

3 ½ cups flour

2 teaspoons baking powder

1 teaspoon baking soda

1 teaspoon salt

1 teaspoon cinnamon

Cream shortening and sugar. Add eggs, water and vanilla. Sift dry ingredients and mix well. Take small balls of dough and mash down with a glass dipped in sugar and cinnamon.

Bake at 350 degrees for 8-10 minutes on a greased cookie sheet.

Columns

Recipe for easing worry

Cindy Hval

Many years ago, on a bitterly cold January afternoon, I sat down to write a column about soup because January is National Soup Month.

Like many columns, this one had a mind of its own and turned into an essay about worry.

I wrote, “Making homemade soup is great therapy. In fact, it’s become my surefire stress reliever. Nobody does worry like a mom, and mothers of teenagers are in a league of their own. If worry were an Olympic sport, moms would own the medals stand.”

Now, with our four sons safely past their teenage years and on their own, I assumed our pleasantly empty nest would become a fret-free zone.

Wrong.

Not only do I still occasionally worry about my kids, I now worry about my aging mother. How’s that for the circle of life?

August is too hot for soup, but recently, after an extremely stressful day, I stood in my kitchen surrounded by bowls, pans, veggies, chicken breasts, lemons and spices. I needed some cooking therapy.

Some people stress-eat. I stress-cook, and the recipe for the day was lemon-herb chicken, broccoli and potato sheet pan dinner.

Place a sheet pan in the oven. Preheat to 425 (leave pan in the oven). Cut Yukon gold potatoes into chunks and toss with olive oil, salt and pepper in a large bowl. Remove the pan from hot oven and coat it with cooking spray. Spread potatoes on the pan and roast for 15 minutes.

Mom is losing her teeth and for various reasons isn’t a candidate for dentures. With one lone upper tooth, she’s distressed about her appearance and afraid she won’t be able to eat. At least once during every visit, she asks, “What about my teeth? I don’t know where they went. Everyone asks me what we’re going to do about it.”

And I explain again the importance of caring for her remaining teeth and remind her of all the good things she still can eat – like potatoes.

In a large bowl, combine chicken breasts with olive oil, salt, pepper, parsley, rosemary and garlic powder. Grate the zest and squeeze the juice from one lemon and toss with chicken. Thinly slice the second lemon.

The tangy smell of lemon makes me think of my oldest son and his love for sour things. Ethan and his friends planned to float the Spokane River later in the week. They don’t have tubes or floaties; they just wade in and float. I’m pretty sure he’ll forget sunscreen, but he’s 33. At some point, you have to stop sending “don’t forget the sunscreen” texts. At least I know he’s a good swimmer. Those years of lessons paid off. But the river is unpredictable.

In the bowl used for potatoes, combine broccoli florets with the remaining oil, salt and pepper. After the potatoes have roasted, carefully remove the pan from the oven. Add the broccoli and stir to combine with the potatoes.

Our youngest son Sam doesn’t care for broccoli much – or roasted potatoes. As I cook, he’s driving to Dallas from his home in Odessa, Texas, for a getaway. Tollways. Traffic. Unfamiliar city. Did he top up the coolant in his car? Are Google Maps up to date?

Clear four spots on the pan for the chicken and add to the pan. Scatter lemon slices over. Roast for 15 minutes.

Zach is working on his new album. Our third-born would love to quit his day job to make music full-time. He’d also like a steady girlfriend. It occurs to me that most of my worries are about my three single sons. I wonder if when they are partnered like Alex, I’ll worry less.

Remove pan from oven and brush chicken with soy sauce; roast until the chicken is cooked through and the veggies are tender, about five minutes more.

As I set the table and cleaned the kitchen, my heart felt lighter and my mind clearer. I often pray while I cook, and that plus the absorption of the tasks helps me chop, measure and mix my concerns into bite-size pieces.

Cindy Hval can be reached at dchval@juno.com. Hval is the author of “War Bonds: Love Stories from the Greatest Generation” (Casemate Publishers, 2015) available at Auntie’s Bookstore and bookstores nationwide.

Columns

Classic Mom Meals

Cindy Hval

When the countdown to our youngest son’s move to Texas loomed, I doubled down on feeding him home-cooked meals.

I worried that he’d soon be subsisting on fast food takeout augmented with chicken nuggets, scrambled eggs, toast, and macaroni and cheese – the only foods I’d seen him prepare.

So, when the three of us sat down to slow-cooker simmered chicken over rice, I was amused to hear Sam say, “Now, this is a classic Mom meal.”

“What other dinners are classic Mom meals?” I asked.

He quickly rattled off a list: spicy chicken sausage navy bean soup, dirty rice, hamburger soup and Mississippi pot roast.

The next night I made sloppy joes.

“Oh yeah, sloppy joes are definitely a classic,” Sam said.

Intrigued, I quizzed his three older brothers to see if I could identify the ingredients of a “classic Mom meal.”

Ethan and Alex love my white chili–filled with chicken, onions, beans, sour cream and jalapenos.

“And the potato soup I ask for on my birthday,” Ethan added. “And beef stew.”

Soups and stews emerged as a theme, when Zach listed, “Post-Thanksgiving turkey noodle soup.”

They all mentioned my meatloaf and Hungarian goulash, so ground beef is a key ingredient. Most of the dinners they recalled are basic and quick and easy to prepare – vital for busy families.

This got me thinking about the meals my mom used to serve.

Mom loved clipping recipes, but she was born during the Great Depression, so thrift was always on her mind. Casseroles with cream of mushroom soup and canned vegetables loomed large. Ditto canned or frozen vegetables on the side.

My siblings enjoyed a dish she called hamburger fluff. It included ground beef, tomatoes and rice and was always served in her big yellow Pyrex mixing bowl. I’m morally opposed to any main dish with fluff in the name, so I was not a fan.

Pot roast or pork roast made regular appearances on Sunday afternoons. She used McCormick Bag n’ Season, putting the meat, carrots and potatoes in the bag and cooking it in the oven on low while we were at church. The house smelled heavenly when we arrived home.

By the time I had kids to cook for nutrition and taste buds had evolved. Now, we know the importance of fresh produce and lean protein. Additionally, Americans have embraced global foods and flavors. We don’t have to rely on Season All and black pepper to enhance recipes.

Slow cookers have been around since 1971, but Mom never used one. However, that simple appliance was a lifesaver for me. Even now, I use it weekly. While friends have embraced Instant Pots and air fryers, I cling to the simplicity of putting goulash ingredients in the slow cooker in the morning and coming home to a delicious meal after work.

In the month since we’ve been empty-nesters, Derek and I have tried a couple of cook-and-eat meals from the grocery store. They failed to impress.

“This just doesn’t taste the same,” he said, after sampling store-prepared pork chops.

Maybe the most important ingredient in a “classic Mom meal,” is that it’s homemade and filled with love for the family it feeds.

Diet cola sloppy joes

1 pound extra lean ground beef

1 medium onion

1 ½ tablespoons all-purpose flour

1 cup diet cola

⅔ cup ketchup

2 tablespoons apple cider vinegar

1 tablespoon Worcestershire sauce

2 teaspoons dry mustard

Brown beef and onion in large skillet. Drain well. Stir in remaining ingredients as listed. Mix well. Cover and simmer 30 minutes.

Serve on hamburger buns topped with shredded cheese and diced onion.

Note: This is supposed to serve six, but I always double it for our family.

Cindy Hval can be reached at dchval@juno.com. Hval is the author of “War Bonds: Love Stories from the Greatest Generation” (Casemate Publishers, 2015) available locally at Auntie’s Bookstore, Barnes & Noble locations and on Amazon.

Columns

Made with Love: Kitchen Memories

Cindy Hval

During the holidays my house smells like sugar and spice and everything nice. The aroma doesn’t come from scented candles; it emanates from the shortbread, sugar cookies, three kinds of fudge, and two loaves of Amish cinnamon bread I’ve made.

Shortbread and sugar cookies

The cinnamon bread cools in my mother’s aluminum pans. Last month, I wrote about the memories those pans hold for me and invited readers to share their stories of memory-laden kitchenware.

Below you’ll read about everything from pie tins to rolling pins, as readers reminisce about recipes, traditions and warm memories made in the kitchen.

Tom Peacock said his mother and grandmother were “pie goddesses.” It seems he inherited their skills, along with her flour sifter and Spode Christmas dishes.

“I baked my first pie (cherry) when I was around 12,” he wrote. “I picked the cherries from the next-door neighbor’s tree, pitted them with Mom’s old-school pitter, and the pie turned out nicely.”

From there he progressed to banana cream, pecan and blackberry cream pies.

“I did get to bake side by side with Mom, especially in her later years. The last few years before she went into assisted care, I did most of the Thanksgiving cooking using the skills I learned from her,” Peacock said.

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Every baker knows you can’t make a good pie crust or sugar cookies without a quality rolling pin. John Kafentzis and his family use an irreplaceable one.

“A rolling pin from my grandmother is still very much in use at our house,” he said. “It was carved by her grandfather from a single piece of maple around 1920. It’s substantial. The family joke is that it was carved from the last tree in Kansas as that’s where they lived at the time.”

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Pier Sanna’s mom was a pastry chef and taught Sanna to make everything from croissants to wedding cakes.

“After her death in 1980, I had first dibs on her bakeware – 50-plus-year-old cast iron pizza pans and cookie sheets. Try finding those at Williams Sonoma,” Sanna wrote. “Every time we use her bakeware, we suspect she is standing next to us smiling and resisting the urge to supervise.”

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Jan Erickson uses a braising pot that her grandfather gave to her mother on her wedding day in 1947.

“I remember wonderful roasts, ribs, and so many favorite dishes coming from this pan,” Erickson said. “My grandparents did not have much money, but they splurged on this pot for my mom. Granddad told Mom that this pot would last her through her entire life. It surely did!

“I know my daughter wants this pot when I’m done with it, so it will continue in our family for years to come.”

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Many of us revel in holiday baking traditions. For example, Leslie Olson Turner’s mother embraced her Norwegian roots when it came to Christmas cookies, making spritz cookies, berlinerkranser, rosettes, almond crescents and krumkake. Turner has continued the tradition, using her mother’s cookie press and rosette irons.

“I reserve the holidays to kick in my own version of a baking frenzy,” she wrote. “The krumkake iron I now use I inherited from my Aunt Sonja. It’s identical to the one my Mom had used – made of heavy-duty cast iron. And while I could have bought an electric one, it just wouldn’t have been the same.”

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Michael Paul also continues cultural traditions. His great-grandmother was born in Hawaii to Portuguese immigrants.

“The Portuguese brought with them many new foods, including what is today known as Hawaiian sweet bread. Each Christmas, Nana Schultz would bake sweet bread for everyone, blessing each loaf with a cross and a tiny piece of garlic in the center of the cross as it went into the oven,” Paul wrote. “Today, I am just about the only one left in my family making this bread and the pickled pork also served at Christmas time.”

He still uses his grandmother’s metal measuring cups and Nana Schultz’s recipes.

“There’s no telling how old those recipes are. They came ‘around the horn’ from Portugal in the late 1800s,” Paul said.

Sometimes, the most practical items are treasured.

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“After my dear mother passed away, going through her things there was one kitchen item, in particular, that was the golden ticket – the jar opener,” Julie Hoseid said. “Since I did most of the help for her, I rewarded myself with it, however, my sister and I are discussing shared custody.”

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It seems pie-baking stirs up many memories.

“I’m not sure how old I was when Mom taught me her pumpkin pie filling tweaks, but I remember her setting me up at the kitchen table the first few times because I was too short to reach the countertop,” Carol Nelson wrote.

When Nelson married her, mother gave her the LustreCraft stainless mixing bowl, the pie plates that ensure an evenly baked crust, and her rolling pin. But it was her mother-in-law that gave her a never-fail pie crust recipe.

“Fifty-one years later, both moms have passed, but each time I take out my pie plates and the now-stained recipe card, I think of them, and their gifts of love to a new bride.”

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Gail Justesen said her mother was known as one of the best pie-makers in Whitman County. When her mom was out of town, a teenage Justesen decided to step in and bake two pies for a pie social.

“The first two I cooked too long: the crust was brittle, apple filling overflowed. The next batch, the crust was raw and the filling soupy,” she recalled.

But Justesen kept trying – making seven pies in all before she had two that were pie social-worthy. Her dad didn’t mind gobbling up the mistakes.

“My friends moan when they think of making pies and usually cave to the store-bought pie crusts. However, I love to make them and am so thankful for the ‘pie genes’ I received from my mom,” said Justesen.

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I’m not the only one with aluminum bread pans. Lisa Meiners treasures four that belonged to her mother.

“My mother passed away Aug. 1, just four months shy of her 100th birthday,” Meiners wrote. “She raised six children in Alaska and was a wonderful cook and baker. We always had homemade bread. Four of Mom’s bread pans moved with her from Alaska to Washington. I’m the only one of her five daughters who bakes bread regularly, and now have the honor of owning those bread pans that were used to bake loaves of love every week.”

So readers, as you sit at your holiday table this week, I hope you’ll enjoy more than just delicious food. Sometimes sharing memories and traditions with those you love is the most satisfying feast of all.

Columns

Baking with Mom

Cindy Hval

The lightweight aluminum pans aren’t beautiful. Scratched and slightly dented, they’re certainly nothing you would find at Williams Sonoma. They aren’t even nonstick.

Nevertheless, my freezer is filled with pumpkin bread, chocolate zucchini bread and beer-cheese bread, all turned out by these stalwart pans.

When my mother moved into a retirement community, it fell to me to sort out her kitchen – choosing what I wanted, what my siblings and their children might want, and what would be left for the estate sale.

Mom’s four kids are all long-married with established homes and kitchens, so most of her goods weren’t wanted or needed by any of us.

But the loaf pans that had churned out countless batches of banana bread – well, I knew I would use them, and I have.

I don’t have any cozy memories of Saturday baking with my mother. The kitchen was her domain, and I wasn’t invited to learn by her side. It could be that I wasn’t interested in spending my Saturdays mixing and measuring. Honestly, I don’t remember. But I must have learned something by osmosis because I’ve spent the past 35 years feeding copious amounts of family and friends.

Mom wasn’t stingy with her recipes. My cookbooks are filled with her handwritten notes for gingersnaps, pie crust, snickerdoodles and other tasty treats. It’s just that we never baked them together. In fact, when my sons were young, and I was working, it was my mother who baked weekly treats for them – a way to lure them to Grandma’s house for a visit and a hug.

She still misses baking. Still wakes up with a start thinking she’s left something in the oven too long.

Recently, I showed her a photo of the pans.

“Do you remember where you got these?” I asked. “I know you’ve had them since I was tiny.”

But her memories are clouded now. Dates and times blend and blur.

No matter.

On Thanksgiving, I’ll welcome her to my table set with her harvest gold cloth and the lovely Noritake china my father bought for her in Japan. I’ll lay out her silver flatware that I used to polish every holiday as a child. It seems some chores are yours for a lifetime.

I’ll roll out her pie crust recipe with her red-handled rolling pin and fill the crust with fragrant apples, cinnamon and cloves.

And perhaps after all these years, it will feel like I’m finally baking with Mom.