APPLE-CHERRY-ALMOND UPSIDE DOWN CAKE
Lots of the old cookbooks I turn to for Kitchen Comfort inspiration include recipes for pineapple upside down cake. I longed to do something different,
As soon as the coronavirus pandemic had us sheltering at home, I began thinking how people in our country have endured terrible difficulties before — and survived the hardships imposed. Throughout the last century, our parents and grandparents (and their parents) survived world wars, the Great Depression, rationing, and the polio epidemic. Times were scary and tough then; it’s up to us to learn from their survivor spirit now.
Pondering that, I began plowing through my grandmothers’ tattered cookbooks, as well as numerous recipe boxes, packed with yellowed, fraying clippings and handwritten note cards. What a treasury of simple recipes that sustained them and their families during those hard years. And while I revel in the wealth of comfort to be mined there, I realize that the recipes need tweaks to suit today’s palates. They made do with what they had; cooks of their times used few spices and even fewer dried herbs then, but we have so much more available to us now. Making easy adjustments, I shared this with my friend and editor, Erin Booke, at The Dallas Morning News, and began writing my Kitchen Comfort series for the DMN food section in April.
The point: Those who weathered those difficult times long ago inspire us now. Their reassuring food gives us hope. Breaking bread with those you love is powerful, and I believe that as we cook and eat together with more awareness, we can find we’ll make it to the other side of our challenges, too. Here’s where this kind of cooking has led….
Lots of the old cookbooks I turn to for Kitchen Comfort inspiration include recipes for pineapple upside down cake. I longed to do something different,
When this Kitchen Comfort recipe series began, a friend urged me to create an updated Tuna Noodle Casserole. Tiffany is a Tex-pat, a Texan living
If ever we need comfort, it’s now. Perhaps as unsettling as the onslaught of the pandemic and all that it has brought us is the
As soon as I told my sister I was embarking on this food makeover quest I call Kitchen Comfort, she urged me to find our
Red, yellow and green stuffed peppers served with seasoned, grilled home-made sourdough. Searching for old family recipes for this reliable comfort dish, I found a
Among the cookbooks my mom has collected since the 1950s, several fall into the genre I call “church lady” — the compendiums of every casserole and
The original recipe for Oatmeal Cookies in my grandmother’s recipe box was clipped from a 1950s issue of Parade magazine. The page has browned with
Developed in the 1950s, Hidden Valley Ranch Dressing eclipsed other dressings — French, Green Goddess, and Thousand Island — to become the ubiquitous condiment for
First up is an update of a 1928 recipe from my dad’s mother’s The Woman’s Club of Fort Worth Cook Book. I used fresh mushrooms
A dig through many worn newspaper clippings found in my grandmother June’s recipe box, jammed tight with yellowed recipe cards and fragile newsprint pieces, revealed
In my grandmother’s recipe box — brimming with her handwritten recipes and The Dallas Morning News food section clippings from the 1930s through most of
In my grandmother’s 1928 cookbook from the Fort Worth Woman’s Club, the Banana Pudding recipe consisted of just three sentences: “Arrange alternate layers of sliced
My two grandmothers loved cooking, and the gifts they left me were some of their favorite recipes. My grandmother Pauline Naylor (my dad’s mom) left
Here’s an update of my grandmother June Granger’s Beef à la Stroganoff recipe. She must have used it frequently, based on the well-worn edges of
One of my mother’s cookbooks is called The Pride of Texas: A Collection of Recipes from TFWC Clubs (Texas Federation of Women’s Clubs); published in
As soon as the coronavirus pandemic had us sheltering at home, I began thinking how people in our country have endured terrible difficulties before — and