Mom's Pantry Blog is just under two years old, a virtual toddler in this big old Facebook world. 

Like real life toddlers, we're learning as we go, sometimes making great strides overnight, sometimes a little unsteady on our feet, and unjaded enough to try again at least once. 

I started out on this journey wanting to create virtual backyard fence, where I could share recipes back and forth with my friends, and although they signed up, the sharing portion never really happened.

However, I'm not one to throw in the towel easily, and I kept posting, and slowly, one by one, Mom's Pantry grew. Someone liked something. Someone shared something. Someone commented. Someone else brought a friend. When we hit 100 subscribers I was ecstatic and humbled all at once. We kept blissfully progressing, as our membership number rose, sharing recipes we loved. 

About six months into this journey we shifted from sharing recipes from other pages, to sharing our own. Which quickly led to the creation of two full length volumes of cookbooks compiled from my personal collection of recipes from family and friends and the development of our website.

Many of the names and faces have changed as we've progressed, but we are grateful for each and every single person who contributed along the way to the patchwork quilt of energy that has become Mom's Pantry.  It goes without saying that we could never be who we are now, without everyone we've met along the way.

Somewhere around November 2013 things changed for us, as Facebook changed their way of doing business with fan pages like ours. While we were still doing what we think we do best - sharing great recipes,  and coordinating fun interactive projects, Facebook had ideas of its own and introduced something that would limit the exposure of pages like ours, who have worked hard to build our following.  In order to continue to reach the entirety of our subscriber list,  it was suggested we had to purchase ads. otherwise our reach would be limited to approximately 10% of our readers. With our ads estimated at $1500 each, it was impossible to even consider going down that road.  

Instead we've tried to circumvent the impact by creating options for our readers to remain in touch with us. 

• Newsletters
• Monthly Digests
• Our Latest Recipes page
• Additional Cookbooks

One of the biggest highlights for me was our 2013 Christmas Cookie Exchange where we came together with our best holiday cookie recipes, so we could raise money to help families in need during the Holiday Season. We now offer the project as a hard copy book so we can continue raising funds to assist even more families in 2014. We plan on doing a 2014 version as well.

Now, as we approach our 2nd anniversary, we continued to grow despite the hurdles and barriers in our way.  Our membership list is now sitting around 154,400 wonderful people, but what matters most to me, is that we continue to make new friends each week, while holding on tight to some dear friends that have been with us since the beginning - giving us both roots and branches. 

You see -- for us, success isn't about numbers, dollars or reach - its about impact and finding our purpose. When I hear that something we've shared has helped or inspired someone, then I'm happy. Mom's Pantry isn't just about recipes and cookbooks - its about family -- yours and mine. It's about getting back to our roots, feeding our minds and souls, as much as our stomachs. It's about realizing that together we are stronger and together we can make things better not only for us, but each other. 

We all come from different walks of life -- stretching from the USA and Canada to Great Britain, South Africa, the Middle East, Europe, and many many other places. Some of us can afford to buy whatever we like at the grocery store, and some of us have to pinch every penny. Some of us are empty-nesters and others are raising young families - but there's no mistaking the fact, that we're all in this together. 

To celebrate our 2nd anniversary I am going to coordinate our biggest project yet. With my naive toddler mindset, I am going to pin all my hopes into it working, as we continue on this path together. Stay tuned for details. It will involve YOU to create something special for US, a special memento of our journey together so far. 

Mr Mom and I are fairly new to gardening, and since we have a very small backyard, and we currently rent our home, container gardening seemed like the perfect way to go. We've concentrated heavily on herbs this year, although we do have sweet and hot peppers, snap peas, zucchini and cherry and full sized tomatoes too. I'll share how those are doing in my next update. We're also re-growing green onions and lettuce. 

Choosing what to plant in terms of herbs was easy - I grow what I use.  Here's this year's line up after 3 weeks. I sure hope they look this healthy after the hot summer sun arrives.

I wrote this for my son when he graduated high school and was preparing to head to university. 


Dear Son –

When you were a toddler and you wanted a cookie, you tugged at my pant leg and looked up at me with those baby blue eyes I fell in love with instantly, and I gave it to you.

When you were a teenager and you wanted the latest gadget, and the batting of the blue eyes didn’t work as well as it used to, so you resorted to an intense campaign of “Please, Mom”‘s until I gave in.

All of your life, when you have wanted something I have been there, to prod and nudge and to help you achieve it. But now, things must change.

You are an adult now, no longer on the cusp, but walking in man sized shoes, and chasing man-sized dreams. I could, in all actuality, still prod and nudge you, but I’ve come to realize that by doing so I am denying you one of life’s most valuable lessons — self discipline.

I suppose, in my defense, I thought that somehow if I created the path for you, and made it easier for you to walk down it, that it was helping you, but I realize now, that was the wrong thing to do. I must let you forge your own path, at your own pace, and along the way you must face both the consequences of your mistakes and the triumphs of your victories.

You have to want, what you want, bad enough to move mountains to get it. I can only move the mountains I face, and not yours.

And so I step back, and watch you with pride and a little trepidation as you set out.  Do I know where I’d like you to go with your life? Sure. But are your dreams the same as mine? Probably not, and that’ s they way it should be. I love you beyond all measure, enough to let you falter along your own path. I love you enough to let you fly, and enough to allow you to stumble from time to time. Remember, there are no mistakes, only lessons  and you will do just fine. I look forward to seeing where you go, to visit and celebrate with you when you achieve your wildest dreams.

I love you, infinitely.

Mom

I am female. A woman with a plan. A communicator. An organizer. A dreamer; easily distracted by rainbows,  fluffy kittens and pretty flowers. Methodical. Deliberate. Emotional.

He is male. A man of few words. Impulsive. An explorer; easily distracted by lights, bells and whistles. Logical. Map Hater. Improviser of the Highest Order.

But, make no mistake about it — we love each other. A Yin to each other’s Yang. A carefully crafted  2 piece jigsaw puzzle.

I lean firmly towards OCD, and he falls resoundingly over on the ADD side of the fence.  I will create a painting, he’ll frame and hang it, and then I’ll follow behind him adjusting the tilt until its perfectly level.

He’ll get an idea. Within seconds I’ll find a link showing how to get it done. He can’t find a photo in his folders that he needs for a story. I do an instant search of my google records and find the copy he sent to me last year, within seconds.

Although we’re both creative, our personalities are like night and day and I guess, since opposites attract — that its just how its meant to be.

I tend to be a Pollyanna, and he’ll admit to being a cranky curmudgeon.

I hate being late with a passion; would rather stay home than arrive minutes after scheduled. He, no matter how hard he tries, struggles with getting to work on time because he usually gets distracted by something as he’s going through his “getting ready for work” routine every morning.

I start a conversation with the intent of getting the information I set out to find. He can get tongue tied, with worrying about what he’s getting boxed into committing to.

Sure there are times when we step on each others proverbial toes. I like to know where I’m going so I can plan on how to get there and sometimes can miss some of the wonders along the way, unless I make myself look to the side from time to time, instead of fixating on the horizon. He is more tentative in his decision making, sometimes looking as if he’s standing still, when in reality his indecisiveness can cause him to fly by the seat of his pants.

There are some that would consider us oil and water, I happen to think we make a great vinaigrette.

Communication is key to understanding my over-emotional reactions to his seemingly haphazard manner of getting things done. Hopefully he’ll learn strategies to make a few well laid plans now and then, and I’ll learn not to sweat the small stuff so much and relax a little more.

We are fortunate enough to share the same end goals, we just differ in what map, if any, to use to get there.

Hold my hand baby, and I’ll keep you steady on the track, and you’ll keep my feet flying just a few inches from the ground, to make it fun along the way.

How Mr. Mom made it alive to his 50th birthday as a bachelor is beyond me. After leaving home as a young teen, he spent the next few decades surviving primarily on take-out food and frozen fish sticks. Hardly the diet most robust Texan men survive on. But somehow he did, and for that I'm most grateful.

It wasn't long after we met that I discovered a different side of him, that took me a bit aback. Although he'd never done it, he was interested in learning how to cook. I must say I was pleasantly surprised and since then, we've had some great times sharing the kitchen island together.

We have had lengthy debates on what is an appropriate heat level for Texas chili, and after I talked him into buying his first slow cooker, I've broke in him on how to make easy, but tasty soups in the crock pot. Eventually, I even taught him to make cornbread. I have some work to do yet, because despite his great advances in learning some cooking techniques, he still considers boxed mashed potatoes his specialty vegetable.

There is one particular recipe, however, that he has taken to with greater gusto than most, even to the point of offering to make it for his Mom on Mother's Day.

Now, let me back up.

This is the man, who, when asked to bring salad to a family dinner during his bachelor days, stopped at a corner store on the way over to their house, to grab something from the produce department. As he proudly handed his mother the plastic bag of "lettuce", she instead found a head of cabbage. Needless to say, they didn't have a salad with that holiday meal.

His lack of skill identifying vegetables continued to demonstrate themselves, when one day, as I assisted him over the phone in whipping up a batch of crock pot stew, he became very upset to find his potatoes had turned orange after they'd been cooked. Turns out the yam display was beside the potato display. He painstakingly took each offending piece of vegetable out the next day, replacing it with cooked piece of lily white potato, but word quickly got around to his mother about his latest produce faux pas, and cemented his reputation as an ill-fated wannabe culinary expert.

Eventually I turned my attention to helping him create desserts, in particular a sugar-free cheesecake pie that I liked to make for my father up in the Great White North. 

While I was way up there, and he was back in Texas, I gave him a mini lesson over the phone on  how to make the pie, and much to both of our surprise, it turned out quite well for the first time. 

Needless to say, he was cocky with pride, and a few weeks later he insisted he was going to make one for his mother for Mother's Day. I am sure the family was worried, and I could tell he was nervous too. The morning of Mother's Day, he asked if I would help walk him through the steps once again, over the phone. Sure, I told him.  When he'd finished and had let it set, he began to complain that it didn't look as good as the first one he'd made. I asked him what was wrong with it. "It's kind of lumpy" he lamented.  I asked him to take a picture and send it by email so I could help him, thinking perhaps he hasn't whipped the cream cheese as thoroughly as he said he had.

The photograph that showed up in my inbox a couple of minutes later was sad looking. It definitely had lumps. A lot of them. I went over each step of the recipe with him, trying to figure out what went wrong. The cream cheese had been smooth when he had finished beating it, he insisted, but when he'd taken the Jello mixture out of the fridge it wasn't a clear yellow like the last time.

A light bulb went off in my head. I asked him to read me the label on the package of Jello.

I wasn't surprised to hear him say "Jello lemon flavored instant pudding". He was mortified, he'd just made yet another culinary mistake in advance of another family dinner. He raced to the local store, repurchased everything he needed and we repeated the steps, this time with the right ingredients.

His mother dropped me an email later that night, telling me how surprised everyone was with how great the pie tasted. I am sure they were just as relieved as they were impressed.

Now it's his new specialty  and he offers to bring it to every family dinner, and his mother has even submitted the recipe to her church cookbook. 

He's now brave enough to change up the Jello flavors, as he's mastered the art of  making the smoothest sugar-free cheesecake pie this side of the Mississippi. And, like any true artist, he takes a photograph of each of his masterpieces, before they disappear from the pie plate, just to keep the memory.

Meet Mr Mom! I've promised you that I'd get Mr Mom to write about his frugal ways, and I've done that and something one step better. I've given him a corner of the site just for him "Mr Mom's Tales from the Kitchen Sink" He's an excellent writer and is working on his next piece now titled "So Sous Me!"  

Here's his debut piecel Enjoy!

I’ve been reading a lot of Anais Nin lately, in particular her Early Diaries Vol  3.  She fascinates me.  I find genius her ability to share her ideas, observations and emotions with her words.

There was a particular passage that I happened upon recently that made so much sense, and I believe in it lies the crux of the answer to all that ails us — from a global perspective right down to our relationships with partners, families and friends.

“How strange our marriage, where union is based on likeness and accord. We begin with similar roots; we both feel deeply, and think continuously; we have moods and dreams and visions — and then the similarity ceases, for the result of these, the effects outwardly, the actions and manner of living, are strikingly different. Thus we begin by understanding each other. We meet in a feeling or thought. In acting, we branch out, each in his own way, but we do not lose each other. We criticize and explain each other, we reason, we seek to influence each other — we understand even when we do not approve.”  Anais Nin

We have all been at each other’s throats for so long, trying to prove we’re right, and trying to make sure we’re heard, that  we rarely take the time to do the same for the other side of the dissenting opinion. Our defense mechanism has a well oiled trigger finger, and its only served to create further division and polarized opinions.

When making an attempt to truly understand those we are in conflict with can change everything and is a sign of true respect. There is an ancient Arapaho proverb that states the concept in its simplicity  -  ”When we show our respect for other living things, they respond with respect to us.”

We do not live in a world made of clones, but rather we are a diverse, culturally rich and diverse planet with much to learn from each other if only we’d open our hearts and minds more, and our mouths less often. The same concept can be held true for our most intimate relationships. Would you really want to raise of family of clones, or grow old with a clone of yourself?

To achieve peace, on any level, mutual understanding and respect are essential.

That's just plain wrong!" 

The intensity of his voice caught me off guard. 

I'd been working on a new story and he'd been sitting across the room on his own laptop supposedly working on an English essay. 

I looked over at him and saw that his attention had been captured, as per usual, by the TV in the corner of the room. I'd stopped watching it earlier, after the program I'd been wanting to see ended and I had forgotten to turn it off. 

What could possibly on this late at night that would capture his attention, I wondered. 

One quick glance solved the mystery.

An infomercial.

Not just any infomercial, but in particular -- the advertisement for The Magic Bullet. A mini, multi-functional blender/food processor. 

We watched together in silence for a few minutes as an uber-enthusiastic couple sprinted around their kitchen making everything from soups, to salads, to entrees to dessert in mirror seconds to a rather odd group of people 'gathered' around the counter. 

I have to admit, despite the obviousness of their efforts, I could see how everyone would be swayed by their hard sell, after all who wouldn't want to be able to make a meal for four in six seconds. 

Let me correct that, everyone but my son.

There are many times as a parent that you doubt whether anything that you do is making an impact. He proceeded to erase any doubt I might have had.

"What's wrong about it?" I asked him. Obviously I was one push away from dialing the toll-free number to get one of these handy things for my very own.

"It shouldn't always be about doing things fast. Don't they understand that making the food is more important for other reasons?"

"You mean the journey rules over arriving at a destination?"

"Yes!" he said.

I smiled because his enthusiastic reply to my summary because it appeared to be as intense as mine are when he gets what I'm trying to share with him. The tables really are turning on us more often, I thought.

Although I do the majority of the meal making, he's always enjoyed being underfoot and helping out since he was a toddler. He started early by learning how to press the crisscross pattern in peanut butter cookies and from there, there was no stopping him. Now he grows a tiny container herb garden each spring and harvests and dries his efforts for use during the winter. He can grill a great steak with his secret combination of spices and herbs. He loves to make spaghetti sauce from scratch and he's learning how to make bread. 

A couple of weeks ago a friend found a small butcher block kitchen island for us. It cost us less than half of a Magic Bullet. Its added a new dimension to our relationship. We have stood across from each other and chopped harvest vegetables for a stew on the first day of Fall, made banana bread on rainy afternoon, and tossed a green salad for the steak he made for dinner. 

And we've talked. 

We've shared our day, made plans of things we want to do over the winter and even talked about current events on the news. As much as we've always connected, we've connected more. 

Sure its pretty dang amazing to see Fettuccine Alfredo made in mere seconds or the ease at which the Magic Bullet chops, dices, blurs and stirs.

But what's even more amazing is a child being able to see past the glitz of a million dollar marketing blitz with his own understanding and what's more valuable than convenience.

Wow. A seventeen year old boy who sees the value of family meal preparation and working side by side, planning, sharing and creating?

Now that's magic.

When I was young, we often had what my family referred to as Railroad Dinner. It was a go-to meal when money got a little thin before the next payday. Usually it was pretty simple, a pound of ground beef, an onion, a can of tomatoes, and some sliced potatoes.

Tonight I made my own version, needing to use up some brisket we had an abundance of. I added a few extras and came up with my own version of that old sentimental favorite.

Railroad Dinner Deluxe

Layer the following in the order presented in a deep oven proof casserole dish (with a lid)

1 lb lean ground beef, uncooked
1 to 1 1/2 cups leftover brisket or roast
1 onion, chopped
2 celery sticks, chopped
3 pieces of uncooked bacon, chopped
1 large can of baked beans
1 cup small carrots
4 potatoes sliced and layered on top
salt and pepper
1 can diced tomatoes (or Rotel) (optional)
1/2 cup shredded sharp cheddar

Cover and bake at 375 for 1 1/2 to 2 hours (until potatoes are fork tender)

Come sit a spell, and have a cup of tea with me, while I share some thoughts that crossed my mind today.

Inspired by a friend's Facebook picture post, about a week or so ago, I brazenly attempted to make my first batch of kolaches. She assured me it was easy, and provided a fool-proof recipe, however I was seriously lacking one essential ingredient; patience.

According to the directions, I was to make the dough, and allow it to double overnight in the fridge. Ack! Overnight? I had no time for that! I wanted my kolaches now. After waiting for about five hours I succumbed to temptation and my own needs, and took the dough out of the fridge and began to prepare them for the oven. The only trouble was -- the dough wasn't quite as ready as I was. As I made the required indentation in the middle, it quickly resisted and continued to rise, covering over the indent, and pushing out any of the sweet filling I tried to place in it. I pushed a little harder, and when it still resisted, I did the best I could and popped them in the oven anyway. My results were less than perfect, and although they tasted like kolaches, they didn't rise to their full potential. The less than lustre end result, wasn't the fault of the recipe, my friend, or any other external circumstance other than my impatience, and inability to let things take their natural course.

I find the often, we tend to treat people, the way I treated my kolaches. We demand they act, react and perform according to our expectations and needs, when in reality, what they really need is a little bit of patience, and time to progress to the state of readiness on their own. We often push people into the heat of the fire, because we decide it's time, despite their shouts of resistance, when in reality if we had just shown compassion, unconditional love and yes...patience, they would have had a better chance of succeeding, and reaching their full potential. 

We need to be gentle with our fellow human beings, just as we need to be patient with kolache dough. Everything will happen when it's meant to, and we don't have to try and control so much, that we end up ruining a good batch over something as silly as a battle of wills.

Anyhow -- that's my food for thought for today. The above picture is my success story after a lesson learned the hard way.  Here's the recipe again - and be sure to add a little patience into the ingredient list :)


Kolaches

Yield: 2 dozen

2 pkgs yeast
1/2 cup warm water

1 cup sour cream, warmed
1/2 cup sugar
1 1/2 tsp salt
1/2 cup butter
2 eggs, beaten
4 cups flour

Streusel Topping:

1/3 cup butter (melted)
1 cup sugar
2/3 cup flour

In a small bowl, dissolve yeast in warm water, and set aside.

Mix sour cream, sugar, salt and butter in a bowl. Add beaten eggs, and flour. Mix with dough hook, or by hand. Place the dough in a greased bowl, covered, and refrigerate overnight. Dough should at least double.

Heat oven to 350F.

Roll dough into 1 1/2 or 2 inch balls and place on a cookie sheet, about an inch apart. Flatten dough with the heel of your hand and let rise another 10 minutes.

Make an indentation in each kolache with your thumb (I suggest making this a bit more exaggerated than a normal thumb print) and fill with your favorite filling. (Lemon, cherry and cream cheese are all popular, I chose apple)

Sprinkle with streusel topping, and bake at 350 for 15 - 20 minutes.