Comfort Foods

When my sisters and I were coming up, my mom would cook every night. It was a rare, and I mean a rare occasion when we went out for dinner. From time to time, I will be reminded of some of the "odd" things that we ate at home. Last night I opened a package of graham crackers and thought about how my mom would put icing between two of them and stack them on the cake taker. We loved them. My variation is to put marshmallow creme between them. It is fat free and less sugar. Another item was something my dad called "slipperdowns". It was cooked elbow macaroni with a jar of tomatoes mixed in and a chunk of butter. I say "jar" instead of "can" because my mother canned everything that wasn't nailed down. The reason for the name was that this food was so soft that when we had sore throats, the food would just slip down, no swallowing needed. She made this a lot when we were sick. I love slipperdowns and so does my vegetarian daughter so that is a handed down recipe! We always had a garden so we ate a lot of salads but an odd thing she did in the winter time was to take a head of lettuce that she bought at the grocery store and just cut it into six (4children and 2 parents) slices, put a slice on each salad plate, and we would put french dressing over it. That seems odd now, but we didn't know it was odd back then. When I got drinks ready for last Sunday's meal, I thought about how we drank a lot of green kool-aid. Not sure why except that I think Dad liked it. Some of her foods cannot be replicated which is a shame. I will never have another raisin or cherry filled cookie like she made, or have the crispy fried fish that she breaded with corn meal and cooked in the iron skillet but it is slipperdowns for supper tonight!


I wasn't sure about scrapping this page as some people may think my husband is making fun of a beggar, but anyone who knows him, knows he was just trying to make a weary group of fellow travelers laugh after a long day of walking in Israel.