When the heat source is wood or coal embers, use a long-handled wire popper. Put only enough corn in popper to cover bottom. Shake gently to get tender puffy kernels.

When popping on your kitchen range, use a large kettle or deep skillet. Add about 2 tablespoons of vegetable oil or shortening. Don't use butter or margarine. Add ½ cup popcorn to hot skillet. Cover and shake gently and constantly over medium heat. You can hear when the popping stops. Remove from heat to a large bowl and add salt. 1 cup unpopped corn makes about 5 cups when popped.

I like coconut in just about anything sweet. This is an easy quick recipe that is cheap to make. Do you have all your ingredients measured out before you make a baking recipe? It is wise to do so even if you have made it a dozen times before. Forget any ingredient and the recipe will suffer for it. There is nothing worse than to start on the process of stirring up a batch of cookies and finding you only have one egg when you need two or three. It is also wise to measure everything out in their own dishes so you won't add too much milk for instance.

This is a good dish to make for a Sunday after church potluck, or for any occasion when you are short on time. Put it together the night before, refrigerate, and bake the next morning while getting the family ready for church. Since the casserole is chilled, it will take a little longer to bake than the time given below.

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.