Potholder Soup - Adventures of a New Cook

Between college and marriage, I shared an apartment for a few months with a girlfriend. When I first moved in, she suggested we 'share' the kitchen duties.... one week she'd cook and I'd wash dishes, the next week I'd cook ..... After 3 days of my first week of cooking, Doris changed the chores list to "she'd do ALL the cooking, I could do the dishes". It was my first indication that I REALLY could not cook! Actually, I thought I could, until I realized that all the cooking I had done growing up had just been carefully explained step-by-step "prep" work prior to the actual cooking.

A few months later, I became engaged and prepared to leave our apartment and go home to get my wedding organized. Bob & I took Doris out to a farewell lunch at which she gave me two cookbooks as a gift -- which should have been a warning to Bob of what to expect!

The books were The I Hate to Cook Book by Peg Bracken and Betty Crocker's Dinner for Two Cookbook. Believe it or not, I STILL have both cookbooks, which proved to be of tremendous help as the recipes were simple and easy to follow

I'm newly married -- we're living in our 'beginner' furnished apartment. Bob comes home for lunch. The dishes and pots & pans furnished do not match and are a mish-mash of 'whatever'.

I'm fixing Lipton Onion Soup for lunch with a grilled cheese sandwich. How hard can that be? Bob's setting the table and the soup is 'simmering' when I lifted the lid to give it a stir, replaced the lid (which did NOT fit the pan), leaving the potholder on top. Instantly, the lid 'flipped over' and tossed the potholder into the simmering soup before I could grab it. I immediately 'fished' it out, but not before it had boiled some of the 'dye' out of the potholder. You see, it happened to be a potholder hand-made by my great-grandmother using crochet thread made in the 1930's or 1940's. I'm sure the 'dye' back then was not non-toxic. We did give the onion soup a tiny taste just to see, but it tasted terrible and we were convinced it would probably 'poison' us, so had to toss the soup out.

The story, as told over the years, acquired the name "Potholder Soup".

One day I decided to surprise my husband by serving a vegetable with dinner that was something other than the "peas, corn or carrots" which were the ONLY vegetables I ate.

I carefully shopped for a 'different' vegetable and came home with a nice fresh head of broccoli. Never having cooked it, I looked it up in a cookbook, carefully cooked it, and served it with dinner with the remark "Look, honey, I've made you something special!".

Bob took one look and said "what is this silage?" Not knowing anything about broccoli, I had cut off all the heads (like you'd do with the tops of carrots) thinking they were what you threw away -- then cooked only the STALKS! Bob thought it was pretty funny!

My next "mistake" in my early days of learning to cook came with trying to make an ordinary dish a little different. Hot dogs had become a 'standard' and you couldn't goof them up too much. But plain hot dogs can become boring, so I decided to try something I'd heard about - hot dogs with cheese, wrapped in bacon. Sounded good, and not too hard.

I got out the package of hot dogs and some slices of cheese. I didn't realize you need to split the hot dog and put the cheese inside, so I 'wrapped' the cheese slice around the outside of the hot dog. Now for the bacon - I wrapped the bacon around the outside of the "dog and cheese", then realized I didn't have any toothpicks. So I 'tied' the bacon around the hot dog. [I've been teased many times over the years by hubby that if I only knew "physics" I wouldn't attempt some of these things]

Time to cook. I put the 'prepared' hot dogs on the broiler pan and stuck them in the oven to cook. As they cooked -- you guessed it -- the bacon "untied" itself and fell off, the cheese all melted off in a blob, and I was left with - once again - a plain hot dog - and a messy broiler pan to clean! Hubby's 'stories' are getting longer by the episode!

Like most men, Bob was not fond of casseroles, but there was one we had regularly and he really liked, because to him it wasn't a 'casserole', it was a Shepherd's Pie - American version with little resemblance to the true English dish -- or even to "Cottage Pie", the beef version.

Our 'kids' grew up eating "Shepherd's Pie", which, at least in our version, was simply hamburger, onion, and cream corn - all topped with mashed potatoes and baked - very quick and easy. One day my daughter (who also wasn't much of a cook at first) decided to make it for her new husband. She even called me up long-distance to get the recipe. So, she successfully cooks the Shepherd's Pie and serves it to her hubby who said "what is this - you know I don't like corn!" Daughter immediately burst into tears, and hubby shut up and ate every bite without a further complaint -- and even ended up liking it!

All the 'teasing' I endured in my long quest to learn to cook culminated in me winning a RECIPE CONTEST sponsored by a local newspaper. I know submitting a recipe wasn't the same as 'entering a COOKING contest', but winning 1st. Place and having the recipe and my picture printed in the newspaper DID make me feel somewhat victorious in the kitchen afterwards.

That winning recipe, submitted below, became a favorite of my family and friends over the years. And the funniest part of all.... it wasn't an original recipe - I clipped it out of the food section of a Miami newspaper many years earlier.

P.S. The Recipe Contest was for ANY recipe, NOT for an original...

2/3 cup beer
1/3 cup salad oil
1 teaspoon salt
1/2 teaspoon garlic powder, or 1 clove garlic, minced.
1/4 teaspoon pepper
1-1/4 lbs. flank steak, scored
12 slices bread, toasted
2 tablespoons butter or margerine
5 medium onions, sliced
1/2 teaspoon paprika
1 cup dairy sour cream
*****************************************************************

Day before serving, combine beer, oil, salt, garlic and pepper. Add meat, turning to coat, and marinate overnight in refrigerator.

Drain meat and broil 3 inches from heat about 7 minutes on each side, or until done to your liking.

Melt butter and cook onions and paprika until onions are tender.

Trim crusts from 6 slices toast and place on 6 serving plates. Cut remaining toast diagonally in half and place 1 toast triangle on each side of trimmed toast slices.

Cut meat in thin slices diagonally across the grain. (You should get about 24 slices.) Use about 4 slices meat for each sandwich and top with the onion. Crown with dollop of sour cream.

*Makes 6 sandwiches.

*Adjust portions according to your preferences

+++Served simply with a salad, this is a very filling meal.

It was Chris' first birthday ... my first time to bake a birthday cake. I chose Angel Food as I thought sweet cakes with rich frosting might be too much for a one-year-old. I had an Angel Food cake pan, which I had yet to use, and the cake was a cake mix. Didn't seem too hard, even for a non-cook like me. I was right. The cake came out just fine. Chris was going to get just plain cake to eat, but his dad and I thought we'd like a little "something" on ours. So I made a chocolate whipped cream topping, which came out perfect! I put the topping on the cake and proudly presented my "masterpiece" to hubby .... who immediately burst out laughing. Seems as though I had 'frosted' the cake upside down! Well.... nobody told me you turned an angel food cake over before frosting or serving! I thought it was the same shape as the cake pan!

*Christopher - age One

OK - time for Chris' 2nd Birthday. Forget the angel food cake flop. I made just a plain ordinary chocolate cake mix - baked in 2 round layers - came out fine and I frosted them perfectly. Even let 2-year-old Chris lick the beaters!

Now.... I decided to "Write" his name and Happy Birthday on the top with waxed paper cones and colored frosting. All that went perfect, until.......... I'm half way through and Bob calls in a teasing tone from the other room "Try not to 'goof' it up this year!" I 'replied' in kind and finished what I was doing. Looked at my 'handiwork' and what did I see ----

HAPPY BITHDAY, CHRIS!

Bob had interrupted me right after 'writing' the I in birthday; I lost my place and left out the 'R" Well - it 'tasted' fine!

Enough is enough ............ for Chris' Third Birthday, we BOUGHT a bakery cake, decorated with a choo-choo train!