Light snow has covered up paw prints in the deep snow accumulation from last Tuesday. The scenery is refreshed.

Sue brought Great Northern Bean soup and biscuits yesterday. Easy for me to eat from the container she brings it in. She used a recipe which always interests me. How can you go wrong with beans unless you neglect to soak them overnight. Sue added onions,ham and carrots. My mother just used a ham hock which made the taste less sweet.

The only time my dad cooked for us he heated beans while my mom had surgery. He meticulously chopped a fresh tomato to accompany the dish. It still suits my taste when I can find a real tomato. After I was married he showed me how to make "goulash" . It contained spaghetti and hamburger with canned tomatoes. What made it good was the bacon grease you used to brown the onions and meat.

When we were growing up on Caroline Street in the city we had food which we ate until it was gone. Friday was breaded cod with spaghetti. Other dishes like pork liver fried until it was hard. Round "steak" pounded and fried until it chewed like leather. Fresh green beans with new potatoes. Cabbage cooked until it was brown. Chicken and dumplings. Fried chicken.
Side dishes included mashed potatoes and gravy.

My mother never taught me to cook. She was The Cook. The first time she and my stepfather visited in Albuquerque I served ham with a glaze and he complimented me on the glaze. She didn't like that one bit. It was her recipe and he had been eating it for years with nary a word of praise. She snarled at him. He had already insulted her cooking by suggesting she use lemon Jello for pie filling instead of her time consuming recipe using fresh lemons.

These critters scampering around the yard should appreciate their life. They would have been cut up and smothered in gravy when I was a girl.