Serious Eats - seriouseats.com

For more recipes and food history/research of the same era (or any era, for that matter), go to http://www.foodtimeline.org

Absolutely fascinating site.

As long as you're in air conditioning, there's nothing wrong with soup to go with all the sandwich suggestions. Why not shop for fruit at a local market and make a lovely fruit salad for the 2 of you along with some muffins?
Steaks, a couple baked potatoes and a deli-packaged salad (comes with dressing). Most groceries have ready made food which can be pretty good. Might be more expensive than cooking from scratch, but you can buy only what you need and it's cheaper than restaurant meals, no leftovers and easy clean-up.

Have a safe trip and great time!

Don't forget game - venison, rabbit, etc. Also gulaschsuppe, kartoffelsuppe, warm potato salad w/bacon, french fries cooked in beef tallow (do they still do that?), and of course the strudels and pastries and cakes. Oh, how I wish I was back there!

A staple in our family is creamed eggs over toast. Just make a cream sauce (white sauce, Bechamel, whatever you want to call it), slice your hard-cooked eggs into it and let it set for a while to blend the flavors, then spoon it over crisp toast. We serve it with a green veggie and a salad. It's good!

To make Goldenrod Eggs, keep out 1 or 2 of the hard-cooked yolks, seive them and set them aside. Cook some asparagus and lay several spears on the toast, pour on the creamed eggs, and sprinkle some of the seived yolks on top. Yummy - looks pretty on the plate, too.,

The soup is not reconstituted before using. Use it straight from the can. Just follow the recipe instructions as given and you'll see how it works out.

For P-squared:

The recipe calls for 3 c. + 2 Tbls cake flour OR 2 3/4 c. all-purpose flour. Best results are obtained with cake flour - the cake texture is much finer, very velvety and very tender. It won't have a coarse crumb like all-purpose flour would give it.

A wedding cake from 15 years ago. Each luscious cake layer encased a 1" layer of cheesecake topped with raspberries. So each layer was cake on the bottom, cheesecake on top of that, raspberries on top of that, then another layer of cake. Then it was assembled into a traditional wedding cake, iced and decorated. I don't know how they did it, but It was absolutely the BEST, MOST DELICIOUS cake I have ever eaten, and believe me, in all my 70 years, I have eaten lots of cake!

Thanks so much for the advice. I guess if something sounds too good to be true, etc. etc. Guess I'll give Target a try. I've been paying $4.50 too, and it kills me every time!

It used to be that homemade stuff was always better than store bought, but once you get into chemical-based convenience foods (the few we do like), duplicating it at home just isn't the same

Thanks again!

Has anyone just used cutured sour cream thinned with a little milk? I've often wondered if that would be a good sub for buttermilk.

Yes, veal stew is wonderful - serve with dumplings or spaetzle or egg noodles.
Also, a one-pot BBQ Veal is good, too (serve it over rice). I have an easy recipe I can post, if you like.

I would not make a from-scratch cake that did not use cake flour. All-purpose flour yields a heavier, denser cake with a coarse crumb.

Also, a red velvet cake is not a devil's food. Red velvet has only a very small amount of chocolate in it and is not a real chocolate cake.

What makes a devil's food cake have a reddish tint is the chemical reaction of the baking soda with sweet milk, not sour milk or sour cream or buttermilk.

Ina Garten's recipe is a good one. However, it is not a devil's food cake. Actually it is the old, old Black Magic Cake from the back of the Hershey's cocoa can years and years ago. (So's the frosting.) That's OK. Ina never claimed to have invented it herself. It is a very good chocolate cake, but not a devil's food.

I would heartily recommend Rose Levy Beranbaum's recipe. There's another excellent Devil's Food recipe, but I have to look it up. Should have done that before I started this. I'll get back to you.

joyyy-
Yes, I have thought of volunteering but I would be no good in the medical field and it seems that is all I would qualify for. I tried to volunteer in our elementary school as a reading assistant, story reader, math and science tutor (or assistant) for older students and was told that the school district's insurance wouldn't cover me. I have my own private health and accident insurance but they wouldn't accept it. I tried to volunteer to help teach English to non-Americans who just want to learn the language for their own use or to help with the naturalization process and I was told that I had to have a degree to do this. I don't have my degree. I never finished my Bachelor's. I was really surprised as I expected these organizations to welcome anyone who could help, especially a volunteer. I would gladly have taken a test to show my proficiency but I guess that didn't mean anything either.

I tried volunteering at the local food bank, but because of arthritis I couldn't be on my feet as long as was necessary to be of much help. There always seemed to be something in the way, so I finally gave up. I did do a couple of small jobs at our local Y getting out mailings and sorting Toys for Tots at Christmas, but a lot of this I could do sitting down. It worked out well, but didn't last long. So that's why I bake a lot for the grandkids, and keep busy making quilts and doing other handwork and, of course, entertaining myself on SE. Thank you so much for your interest.

Jo-wang,

Glad you are having fun - that makes the stress and hard work worthwhile.
Try to find something to laugh at every day. It really does make everything easier to handle.