We're in the thick of rainy season in Central Wisconsin.  The temperature is 70 degrees on a Monday, and by Wednesday it has plummeted to a high of 35.  As if this isn't hard enough on a person's body, a week and a half ago we travelled out of state.  Whenever we're exposed to new people and places, our immune system kicks in to ward off any intruders.  Well, most immune systems to that.  Mine leaves the door unlocked and the key on top of the doormat in plain sight.  Once I am sick my body can fight off the infection, but that it allows me to be so ill in the first place... So I think I had the flu last week.  If it wasn't the flu, then it was without a doubt the worst cold of my life.  I'm not exaggerating.  I had a low grade temp all week, my throat felt like it had daggers in it, congestion was in my chest early in the week and then filled my sinuses by the end.  Not only was this respiratory, but the virus seemed to burrow itse...

I'm not much of an alcohol expert, so I have no idea what this drink should really be called. I tried to look up other Whiskey recipes in the hopes of finding something similar with no luck.  I'll go through the steps of making this with you, but I want to warn you ahead of time that I'm convinced there's a reason this isn't a known recipe: unless you have a glass of whiskey and add a splash of the juice mix, it's really not that great.  But I want you to still make this because it makes for the most amazing Adult-Only popsicles!  You can always make these youth friendly by omitting the booze. Sensing that this recipe would be overwhelming for just my husband and I, and especially since alcohol and I don't get along, I decided to halve the recipe when I prepped it.  Imagine the photo above with twice as many lemons if making the full recipe. To start, I placed the orange juice concentrate in a bowl of warm water to speed along the thawing process....

I just finished organizing Lala's recipes into categories: drinks salads dinners desserts There's more to it than that but for the sake of simplicity, this is where I've left it.  There are more than 300 hand-written recipes, and at least as many newspaper and magazine clippings featuring timeless classics, food that only a nuclear family post WWII would prepare and serve, and everything in between.   Today I felt like making something using simple ingredients, and did not want to run to the grocery store to pick up something random and not already in the pantry or fridge.  This three ingredient recipe for Shortbread couldn't have been more perfect for the day. Given that I'm down to my last two sticks of butter, I decided to halve this recipe.  If we had company on the horizon, or were attending a function where I was asked to bring a dessert, I would be certain to make a full recipe, or even double it. In the video above, the bu...

Our family has a recipe for buttermilk pancakes that has been handed down through the generations.  It's tried and true, old-fashioned (although it never goes out of style), and are hands-down the best pancakes ever.  Growing up, I would never order pancakes when we went out for breakfast.  At friends homes, the pancakes their parents made paled in comparison with what my Grandma Lala, and later my Dad could make. When my husband and I were dating, I took him home with me to the suburbs of Chicago to meet my family.  We were students at the University of Iowa.  Since this was a few hours drive from our campus life, we stayed overnight.  In the morning my Dad, true to form, made his World Famous Pancakes.  I knew this guy (his name is Andy, but this post isn't about him, it's about the recipe) liked me, but I think those pancakes sealed the deal. Yes, I promise to one day share the World (as in Southcombe, Bundy, Lipschutz, and/or Lynch kitchen...

I have to admit, this recipe isn't any different from other meat loaf recipes I've seen.  If anything, it's less complicated as it's written, so I went ahead and tweaked it.  The reason I chose this recipe for dinner tonight is that the small note paper is paper clipped to another sheet of paper that says, "FAKE GRD MEAT".  In all the other recipes from Lala's box, if notes are paper clipped together, they belong to the same recipe.  Born in 1906, it's likely she rarely (if ever) used Fake Ground Meat in her cooking.  This peaked my interest, and so my family ate meat loaf for dinner.  There's snow at the end of April where we live, so grilling burgers was out of the question anyway. After making this and serving it to my family, I realize a couple things: There's nothing as good as comfort food This is the best meat loaf I've ever made My husband said it reminded him of our early years.  He would come home from work and I...

My apologies go out to anyone who has been chomping at the bit for me to post a new blog.  I realize it's been a long time since my last entry.  Life sometimes has a way of getting ahead of me.  I'm sure you've been there as well, where there are only 24 hours in the day but if there were 30... One of the projects I was involved with in the last five months was helping my parents clean out their long-time home to ready it for the real estate market.  When I say help, I mean in a very limited capacity as I live in another state, and that THEY did the bulk of the work.  Considering that my Dad was in hospice less than two years ago and my Mom has knee troubles, cleaning out the family home of 48 years was nothing short of a miracle, some may say "miracles" is their legacy.  And speaking of legacies, my Paternal Grandmother has left her recipes for us in a box that is 12"x8"x8".  It's filled with hand-written recipes spanning much of the 20th ...

A long-time customer of Caught Red Threaded recently shared the most beautiful words about the products carried, stating "you infuse each thing you make with magic al powers".  I was flattered but also questioned how such a thing is possible.  After three days of pondering this notion, that I could possibly make something better than it already is simply by having been the one to produce it, I extended this notion beyond Caught Red Threaded. I've been a parent for more than a decade.  The same hands that produce essential oil blends and lavender eye masks once rocked babies to sleep.  I feed my family healthy, home-made foods each day.  I carefully select the ingredients from the grocery store, farmers market, or our garden when the weather is warmer.  While I type, there's challah dough proofing in the oven, made from scratch with these same hands.  If I can take a couple ingredients, give them time to marry and grow, and bake them into an enti...