Let's face it. Bar cookies are the easiest to make. This recipe has some of my favorite ingredients: raisins, sour cream and spices. You can use dried cranberries instead of raisins, if you like. Try it.

There have been times I needed a package of coconut macaroons to make a dessert recipe. If you do too, this is a good one to save you a trip to the store.

I like sweet potatoes about any way you can fix them. In fact, I buy a 20 pound box of sweet potatoes every fall from a man who brings them up from the Carolinas and parks in front of Janet’s Hair Salon in beautiful downtown Maynardville. It takes me all year to finish that box. I am always looking for new ways to fix them. I come up with this recipe the other day. It is a variation of a rutabaga recipe I tried. They are spicy but not like a pumpkin pie. Try them and see what you think.

Do you have some bananas hanging out at your kitchen counter? Are they a lovely shade of yellow flecked with brown? They are ready for these cookies. Don't throw them out.

This is one of the few “roll-out” cookie doughs that I use. How else am I going to get the fancy shapes I like so well at holiday times. It makes a big batch and is frosted, too.

Apple pie. Apple pie. Custardly, creamy apple pie. Only a few apples in the fridge? All this pie takes is three pie apples. Then it only takes a pie shell. If you have some dough in the freezer left over from your last baking bash, rescue those apples and make this pie. If there is not quite enough apples, that's ok. Maybe throw in a few raisins. Notice that there is no cinnamon in this apple pie.

One of my favorite songs is an old bar song. It is amazing how many people know that old ditty. Religious folk know it, too. That surprised me at first. It shouldn’t have. Not everyone has a religious conversion as a child. Some, like me, find our Lord at a later age.
I delight in humming a few bars to see what reaction I get. The change is immediate if it has been part of their youth. The song was a staple on all neighborhood bar jute boxes. At least in the area where I grew up

I try most every yeast bread dough that comes along. These doughnuts are especially good. They are light, airy and melt-in-your-mouth yeast raised doughnuts and stir together quickly. They don't need kneading. That is a plus. Try them.

Biscuit mix makes stirring together a biscuit dough easy as pie. It makes a fine coffeecake as well. Crushed pineapple is one of my favorite go-to fruits to bake with. Stir up this for your next Sunday morning breakfast.

I prefer recipes for anything chocolate to be made with cocoa. I always have a box of cocoa on hand, chocolate not so much. This recipe makes 2 1/2 cups. Enough for the gang.

This is a fancy carrot salad. Of course i call anything fancy if it has marshmallows in it.

In the summertime, fresh from the garden, Mother would stir up a cucumber and onion salad. She never put sugar in her dish. I do. She combined vinegar, salt and water with the sliced cucumbers and onions. Mother never used sour cream in anything. We didn't have a refrigerator back in the day.

I started school eighty-six years ago. I was four years old. We lived in a tenant house on the farm owner’s land. Dad earned forty dollars a month milking cows and working in the fields. The Great Depression was well under way. Farm work was the only job Dad could find. He had worked previously as a lineman, setting poles and stringing telephone wire. Most country people didn’t have phones until them.

Apples make a delicious coffeecake. This recipe only takes two. What a good way to use up those two apples withering away in the fridge crisper drawer. Peel 'em and use 'em.

2 large green cucumbers
1 cup sour cream
2 tablespoons lemon juice
2 tablespoons cider vinegar
1 teaspoon salt
2 tablespoons fresh chives or 2 teaspoons dried chives

Eggplant is one of those veggies you either like or you don't. This recipe reminds me of a pizza. I suppose if you added a few slices or pepperoni, you could call it an eggplant pizza.

Occasionally I find onions in a five-pound bag at a reasonable price. Then it's time to make some of my onion recipes. Delicious served with liver or hamburgers.

I bet you have never heard of this combination: cabbage and noodles. Surprise. It tastes great. Of course you can gussy it up with leftovers, such as crumbled sausage patties or links, crumbled hamburger patties, crumbled small slice of meatloaf. 2 or 3 tablespoons cottage cheese , etc. One of these can be added when the noodles are included in the cooking process.

There are a number of ways to prepare and serve summer squash and zucchini. It can even be frozen for next winter's use. Here is a good casserole. Try it and see what you think. Hopefully, it will be pave a place in your recipe box.

Okay, that crumbled- rusted -fender Edsel was history. We were tired of hearing the lame jokes about Edsels. Most of them were not very nice. We needed a new car. This time we would stick with a well-established brand. Our adventure down the side street of "New! New! New!" was over. Dad had been smart enough not to get sucked in by the hype over the Tucker car. We should have learned from his experience that "Buyer Beware!" was more than just an idle threat. But Dad was gone to his reward and we were slow in wising up.