Anyone who knows me knows of my taste for black walnuts. When my kids were small and money was tight, I would load the three youngest ones in the pickup. After a fall's hard freeze, we would head for my favorite walnut trees along country roads. Each child would have his or her own pail. “Pick 'em up as fast as you can,” I would yell.

Sometimes, neighbors took offense with our picking up the walnuts, even if the walnuts were out in the roadway. We did get run off occasionally, but it didn't take long to fill the pickup bed with the ones we could get.

I like corn salsa. It is best made in the summertime with fresh vegetables. Red tomatoes in the winter don't taste as good as tomatoes fresh from the garden. That goes for sweet corn, too. We like sweet corn freshly cut from the cob and fried with butter, salt and sugar. Oh well, that is another dish. For this salsa, canned whole kernel corn can be used as well. I learned to appreciate red onions while working at Arby's in Halls. I was introduced to jalapeno peppers when we moved to Tennessee. Before that, I only used the yellow hot banana peppers.

This is a good cookie recipe for those who are gluten intolerant. It is a little tricky to make, but even at your first attempt if the cookies break up when you take them off the cookie sheet, they will still taste good. Add ½ cup chopped walnuts or pecans for added flavor.

I should have written about this cake back in the spring when daffodils were in bloom. It’s called “Daffodil Cake” because of its white and yellow color. But why can’t we call it a “Chrysanthemum Cake”? They are yellow, too. That would be in keeping with the Autumn season.

Have you ever heard of a Daffodil Cake? It is not an angel food cake. It has egg yolks in it. It’s not a chiffon cake either. It doesn’t have any oil. Nope. It’s in a class by itself.

How do you like your omelets? Mother never made one as I remember growing up. Eggs were either fried or hard-boiled. With no electricity or ways to keep food cold and a well stocked chicken coop, my family ate a lot of eggs. Mother never heard of omelets back in the day. Dad liked his eggs only one way, fried with the yolk soft and on buttered toast. Mother had no reason to fix eggs any other way.

When as a child you first learned to cook, what was the first recipe you tried? For me, it was cookies. It is hard to mess up a cookie recipe. Pies can be tricky and cakes have a multitude of things that can go wrong. Cookies are more forgiving. You might have had your mother squeeze the lemon for this recipe, but that would be the only hard part. Or for your first time making cookies, your mother could stir up the dough and then let you prepare the cookies for baking.

I like molasses. I remember when I was first married and living on the farm, Dad would sprinkle molasses on the milk cows' grain. They loved it. I was curious. The molasses was clean, so I tasted it. It had a better flavor than that you bought in the store back then or nowadays, for that matter. There was no reason not to use it, so I did. We ate a lot of gingerbread and molasses cookies until the molasses ran out. Of course, I didn't tell anybody where the molasses came from. Why bother? Nowadays, don't be concerned. I use Muddy Pond Sorghum when I can find it.

How do you like your eggs scrambled? There are several ways. If it is springtime and your chickens are laying like crazy, eggs will be on your menu often. If you are living on a limited budget, eggs can be stretched to feed your family. It's all up to you what you add to them. If you add a cup of medium white sauce, cream of mushroom soup or cream of chicken soup, the eggs will stretch further. Breakfast, lunch or supper, you have it covered.

6 eggs
1/2 cup water or milk
3/4 teaspoon salt
Dash of pepper
3 tablespoon butter or bacon drippings

Frozen biscuits are now available at most grocery stores. They are good, but I can make better. Freezing regular biscuit dough has never worked for me, but Angel Biscuits are another matter. My recipe makes a big batch, more than enough for breakfast. I like to freeze some of them for another day. We all know that hot biscuits often make the meal.

Now that school has started, school lunches are in the spotlight again. If your kids carry their lunches, this is a good crisp cookie that won't break up before lunch.

Are you looking for something different to serve at your next get-togther? Something that doesn't require taking out a loan on the car to afford? This is such a recipe. Everybody likes cheese. Everybody likes toast. Here you have it, a good party dish.

Put the pot of rabbit on the kitchen table. Add a pile of small plates, some paper napkins and long handled forks. Back in my drinking days I would have added cold beers, but today with my Christian lifestyle, it's iced tea for me. Enjoy.

My mother made the best chili sauce. I use her recipe, but you know how it is, two cooks can use the same recipe and it won't taste quite the same. Maybe it's nostalgia working on me, but her chili sauce tasted so good.

I know chili sauce is a condiment, but I like it on mashed potatoes. I have eaten it that way since I was a kid. Place a good pile (I mean heapin’) of mashed potatoes on your plate. Slather it with gobs of butter. The bed is ready. Add a generous topping of homemade chili sauce and dig in! Mashed potatoes and chili sauce is good eatin'.

Every pantry has a package or two of macaroni and cheese dinner in there somewhere. It is the good beginning for a quick supper. I remember that when I worked (it hasn't been that long ago) I needed a quick dish for supper. If I had a pound of ground beef defrosting in the refrigerator and I could find a package of mac and cheese dinner, supper would soon be on the table.

Years ago when I had a big garden, I tried to “put up” as much as I could. It seemed that if I had a full cupboard of home canned fruit and veggies, the winter would go well. If my cupboard was meager, the winter usually meant hard times for my family. It happened often enough to warn me to be prepared.

My husband liked sliced tomatoes. When it came his time to serve in World War II, tomatoes were out of season. In those days if something was out of season, it was unavailable to most folks; not like today. Fresh fruit and vegetables are flown in from exotic places such as South America and India. Restaurants, back then, did serve what were called hot house tomatoes. They were grown in greenhouses. Such tomatoes were a pretty red, but flavorless.

Anyone who knows about Stuffed Cabbage will understand what Unstuffed Cabbage is all about. There are several ways to fix Stuffed Cabbage but only one way to do Unstuffed Cabbage. The great thing about this recipe is that it is easy to prepare. There is no boiling the cabbage, separating the leaves and then filling each one with a ground beef and rice mixture. Nope. This one is easier. Just shred or chop the cabbage and start in.

Most of us have a pound package of bulk pork sausage hiding in the freezer somewhere. If you do, that is the beginnings of a good casserole. I don't consider this recipe a breakfast dish. It is more like a weeknight supper.

Talking about sausage, I remember twenty years or so ago buying bulk pork sausage from someone over on Texas Valley Road. No boughten sausage tasted as good as that one. When I think of pork sausage, theirs comes to mind. Of course, stores sell their own bulk pork sausage in the meat case. That is good, too.

I remember when I worked full time in a sewing factory. My mind would wander while sewing. After you do the same stitching over and over, it doesn't take all your attention to do the job. My mind would wander to wondering what I would fix for supper that evening. My kids were in the lower grades in school and came home about the same time I did. They had a long bus ride.

It has been said that the name for this favorite food of mine came about when some fishermen, surrounded by their hungry dogs, told them to wait. “Hush you puppies. We will have something for you in a little while.” They supposedly fried up some cornmeal in the grease the fish has been fried in and fed it to the dogs. Makes a good story.

My mother would be horrified if she saw all the food we waste today. She had a knack with left-overs that was almost an art. I guess today it's a lost cause. I still get a guilt trip if I toss good food out to the critters, just because there isn't enough for another meal and the refrigerator is getting covered up with left-overs.