When I think of my mother-in-law's cooking, I think of potatoes, pancakes and goose. believe that Myrtle was basically a good cook, but not with anything involving these three items. When she came to live with us at Pulaski, she seldom volunteered to do any cooking.

Peeling potatoes was her favorite chore. When it was time to fix supper, she would cheerily announce, "I'll do the potatoes." There was no stopping her. She really wanted to peel the potatoes. Myrtle was good at it. The peelings would roll away from her paring knife in thin curls. She wasted very little. You could use her in a training video. She peeled potatoes that well. There was one problem. She peeled lots of potatoes, perhaps about five pounds at a time. That was too much for three adults and one baby for supper.
"Oh, we'll have some to warm up tomorrow," she would announce. Right. We had boiled potatoes for supper that night and then American fries until the remainder spoiled. I have never been a big fan of American Fries. Those are cold cooked potatoes, fried with a little bacon grease and onion. Don't forget the salt and pepper. You can only eat them for so many days in a row. I refuse to do them now. Today, cold cooked potatoes are candidates for either potato salad or au gratin potatoes. Back then, my potato salad was awful and I had never heard of au gratin potatoes. Enough said.

How can you screw up pancakes, you ask? Easy. My husband used to brag on her pancakes with milk gravy. "It was so good," he said. I urged Myrtle to fix them one morning. She did. Her recipe had pancakes made of flour, baking powder, salt and milk (no egg). Her recipe for milk gravy eliminated the baking powder from the above recipe for pancakes. She poured the milk gravy over the thin pitiful pancakes. It was awful. Even Pug wouldn't eat it. I guess it was a dish you have to develop a taste for or not have anything else to eat.

The goose was for Christmas dinner. We had a hard time finding a fresh goose in area meat markets. Myrtle bought it. She had a plan. Myrtle had always wanted to cut up a goose, chicken style, boil it with carrot, celery and onion and then dredge it in flour. It would be browned in lard or margarine. She thought it would be a delicious way to fix goose. So, we skimmed the grease off the broth and dredged the pieces. Fried, they were stringy, greasy and strange tasting. She never suggested goose for a holiday dinner again.

There are many styles of cooking. Grandma's chicken noodle soup and blood sausage come to mind. Myrtle grew up in a poor family with lots of kids. Potatoes would fill them up. What a treat to have pancakes and milk gravy for breakfast. To give her a little credit, perhaps she forgot a step in the breakfast treat. It had obviously been a long time since she made it.