My mother-in-law is a Kitchen Goddess. If you wish to fit her properly into the pantheon of Kitchen Goddesses, you would call her Our Lady of the Comfort Food and Divinely Decadent Desserts.

This woman can produce a pot roast that leaves vegetarians for miles around sobbing themselves to sleep at night in frustration at their loss. Her desserts are the gold standard, proof positive that Sugar Is Love. Just walking past one of Norma's cheesecakes is enough to induce a diabetic coma.

And me?

Um, well let's just say that Paul didn't marry me for my cooking abilities. When Amanda over at the source of all the world Koogle goodness was looking for advice on how to clean burnt-on lentils from the bottom of a cast iron pot, well, I mentioned that vinegar would work because it's a mild acid, eh.

It works especially well on things burnt into stainless steel pans. Don't ask me how I know this. I just do.

Once when I was cooking a Chinese stir fry in a wok I'd placed directly into our woodstove (you can lift off lids on our stove) I forgot to close the air drafts to compensate for the fact the wok would let extra air into the stove, make the stove burn hotter. The wok went to red hot metal in under a minute. Our home filled with blue, eye-stinging smoke as the sesame oil, hot pepper paste and the chicken in the wok burned black. The smoke detectors went mental.

Paul emerged from the shower, took one look around at the chaos, and over the scream of the smoke detectors said, "Oh, supper must be ready."

Hrmph.

To this day, if the smoke detector goes off even from something as simple as burnt toast (yes, I burn toast) then I'll hear the "supper must be ready" line. The man has a VERY cruel streak for someone who purports to be a Buddhist, don't you find?

Yep, some people love to cook, are born to cook. I'm not one of them. My mom-in-law can read a recipe and know right off if it's good or not, and often figures out little tweaks on the spot that will make it better.

Me, I just doggedly collect recipes that work. I do have an unexpected gift for making curries, but assume that's an aberration, one of those idiot savant situations, you know?

It's a good day for me when I remember when I'm measuring salt, herbs or tongue searingly hot spices to not pour said ingredients from their original containers into the measuring spoon with the measuring spoon held over whatever I'm cooking. No, it is a wise idea to do the measuring off to one side and THEN dump your seasoning type stuff into the pot. Trust me on this.

Oh, and if you happen to accidentally pour too much salt into something that you're cooking because by some freakish accident a giant spurt of salt hurled itself from the box into your pot (and how the heck did the box of salt end up over your cooking pot, huh?) ? well, you scoop what you can from the pot, and then you cut up and dump a potato or two in because the potato will absorb salt. Just fish the tater hunks out when your dish is cooked.

Don't ask me how I know this. I just do.

It's nearly noon, I can hear the kids stirring. This afternoon we're going to be making a modified version of Rebaked Potatoes from the Enchanted Broccoli Forest cookbook for tomorrow's Thanksgiving dinner, a broccoli casserole and if we have time some of my grandmother's peanut butter cookies with milk chocolate chips added. Ellen mentioned once in her diary she had made them that way and it sounds too yummy not to try.

In the meantime, I'll leave you with one of my mom-in-law's Desserts o' Death, a.k.a. Norma's Swedish Cream.

2 envelopes unflavoured gelatine
1/4 cup cold water
1 pint whipping cream
1 cup sugar
2 cups sour cream
1 tsp. vanilla

Sprinkle gelatine over water and let it stand five minutes. Heat the heavy cream, but don't bring it to a boil. Add the gelatine mix and sugar to the hot cream, stirring until it is dissolved and then let the whole shebang drop to room temperature. Add the other ingredients, pour into tiny dishes such as fruit nappies and chill until set.

This is hideously rich stuff, folks, a little dab'll do ya, eh. I like to top it with slightly tangy fresh fruit. My mom-in-law tops it with her eye pleasing mix of strawberries, blueberries, raspberries, and blackberries which have been frozen with enough sugar to make small children ricochet off walls after two bites.

Jess still has the scars to prove that, eh.

--Marn
P.S.--I went for a drive along the river while the kids were sleeping, but I'm afraid our overcast weather means I can't really give you a true picture of how rich the colour which blankets our mountains is. This is the best I can do.