I have a recipe for Mincemeat Fruitcake. There was a time when the amount of spices in your mincemeat showed off how much you could afford. Not me. I buy the cheaper store brand. There is no meat in mine either, just green tomatoes. The Puritans would have liked mine. It is booze-less. I am always looking for a way to save money. Meat and candied fruit are expensive. Green tomatoes aren't.

What is the easiest and cheapest nut to gather? Walnuts, of course! When my kids were in grade school, I would drive along country roads looking for walnut trees that had dropped their nuts. I figured if the nuts fell between the farmer's fence and the roadway, they were fair game. Most of the time I was right. Other times, with the farmer screaming and running after us, I hurriedly loaded my kids in the truck and sped off.

I met David and Mary Nevin when I became involved in the Union County United Way a number of years ago. David taught school here for several years. They have since moved into Knoxville. I think about them often but seldom hear from them anymore. Our paths don't cross like they used to do. Doesn't that happen with a lot of people we know? Time marches on.

I like chicken. When I was growing up, chicken was for special occasions. When we needed one for a meal, Mother went to the chicken coop and selected a non-laying hen. How did she know which was which? Easy. She would catch one and lay two fingers between the hip bones just below the tail. If that space was wide, she was a lying hen. If it was narrow, her laying days were over. She would be the star of that Sunday dinner.

What did you have for breakfast this morning? Sausage gravy and biscuits? Ham and eggs? Lucky you! What did I have for breakfast back in the Great Depression days of 1934? It wasn't that, for sure. Did I have cornflakes and ice cold milk? Or Frosted Flakes? Or one of the many boxed cereals on the Food City shelves today? I wouldn't have known what you were talking about.

What do you do with overripe bananas? I make banana bread, banana pancakes or banana cookies. I have good recipes for all three. Let's talk about bananas.

In the early years of my marriage, in the 1940's, Egg Salad was all the rage. Every lady in the neighborhood had a favorite recipe. It was cheap to make. In a farming community everyone had chickens, so we all had eggs.

I enjoy cooking and do a fair bit of it. One of the recipes my wife and I like is Homemade Baked Fries.

Potatoes are loaded with potassium and when I was on dialysis a few years ago I was on a low potassium diet. One trick we used to lower the amount of potassium in potatoes was to soak them in water. While this did not remove all the potassium, it did allow me to have some potatoes while on dialysis. Come to find out later, soaking potatoes in water for two hours is a key step in making homemade fries.

There are pears and there are pears. By that I mean some are more desirable than others. There are winter pears, Kieffer is the one that comes to mind. They are small and hard as a rock. They are called winter pears for a reason. You must wait until after New Years to eat them.. only then will they be softened, but they are still small. By the time you peel them, there is not much left. I never could understand why anyone would want to grow winter pears. I guess there was a time in the dead of winter, when fresh fruit would be a luxury.

I hope most of you already have on your calendar Open House on September 30 from 2:30 to 4:30 at Historic Oak Grove School. Just in case, I'm including an invitation just for you!
In researching and preparing for the restoration, as well as, the open house, I discovered that Bertha Cox was the school cook, and she was a good one. Students loved her Raisin Squares, and if you come to Open House you should get to sample some of these cookies. Just in case you want to try a batch, here is Bertha's recipe:

Bertha Cox Raisin Squares