Love to eat? I sure do! This page is dedicated to food and diet information and to culinary adventures in the Gray-Leckrone household. ENJOY!

What's Cookin'?

What's MOmmA COOKING now?

When my kitchen timer goes off, my kitties run into the kitchen with me, hoping for a treat. They obviously know that the timer means food.

They don't always get what they bargained for, however. When the furry little vultures beg, I'm likely to toss them a clove of garlic or a chunk of raw onion. "Momma!" I usually get an indignant look, but I figure if they're begging, they must want some. (Please don't actually let cats eat onions. Mine hate them, so I have no fear-- but onion, raw or cooked, is bad for your kitties.)

At the top of the "more than he bargained for" list, our Thanksgiving turkey chased Rom out of the kitchen this year. Yes, I swear, it was dead at the time. I was making a Black Turkey, for the second Thanksgiving in a row. This turkey is very tasty, but is a lot of work and must be basted every fifteen minutes. The recipe includes instructions for getting "drunk off your butt," which I ignore because I can't hold my liquor, and the list of ingredients is longer than my resume. One of the instructions is to use cheap wine to baste the bird if you run out of basting liquid. Well, towards the end of the cooking time, I opened the oven to baste, and saw that the bottom of the pan was looking kind of thick. So I popped open the pot on the stove and, lo and behold, it was empty. So, leaving the oven open with the turkey pan sitting squarely in the middle of the rack, I turned to a box of VERY cheap wine to get some basting fluid... and heard a terrific crash behind me. I turned around and saw Rom's tail in the air as he fled for his life, and the turkey pan lying on its side on the floor. I stood frozen, my mouth hanging open, staring at the delicious gravy spreading across the floor of my kitchen.

Now, some people have assumed that Romulus was responsible for this catastrophe. Not I. Momma's bad-ass tomcats are not dumb enough to climb into the oven for some turkey. It's hot in there. They will wait until it is on a dish and beg. That is how mighty hunters get turkey. My husband and all of our guests, who were busily salivating in front of a very bad sci-fi flick, came running into the kitchen to see what was the matter. My husband's first words were "Dear, are you all right?" Of course I was. I was on the other side of the room. It was my poor little kitty who'd been dozing in the chair near the oven who should be checked for cardiac arrest. Our friend Jason said "Is East of Chicago Pizza delivering tonight?" and I threw him out of the kitchen.

The good news is that the turkey itself never hit the floor... just all of the gravy. Avery mopped up the mess and I finished the bird, which was a little dry after losing ALL of the liquid from the pan, but otherwise good. The meat was so tender that the bones had poked out through the top of the carcass when the pan hit the ground, but we didn't really care how it looked. The moral of the story is, if you make this recipe, warn the cats to stay back and don't turn your back on the bird.

As time goes on, I'll be adding recipes to this page, like the one for my pasta sauce.* I use all sorts of cookbooks and sources for my cooking, but I'll warn you-- the dish that makes it to my table is usually not the same as the one the original recipe described. And I hope you like plenty of garlic.

A note on abbreviations:
c= cup
T= tablespoon
t=teaspoon

So far, kitties have chased Momma into the kitchen.