Cooking from scratch

As the two regular (?) readers here know, I have been cooking more and more from scratch this year.  At some point (after I wash the pickled beet brine stain out of the tablecloth I made) I need to pull out all my favorite cookbooks that have scratch recipes in them and take a pic for posterity or some such ... but sometimes I just wing it.  Both my parents began to teach me to cook back when I was still too little to reach the stovetop or counter without pulling the stepstool over - about 6 or 7 years old, I think.  I was short for many years though, but probably that early.  Yes, my mother had her cast iron skillets even back then, and still refuses to pass them on while she is still above ground.  She also refuses to even let me borrow her 1968/72 edition Betty Crocker cookbook which opens to my two favorite recipes in it.  I can remember the ingredients, just not measurements and back then I still measured on most things.

Yesterday, I made up a loaf of bread like usual, and it rose and had just the perfect consistency which is often a function of temperature and humidity levels in addition to ingredients.  Today I have two projects going: homemade ketchup where I used up the last of the pomegranate vinegar, and pasta sauce.

homemade ketchup in the little crock pot

homemade pasta sauce on the stove

Yes, there are already splatters from stirring and other dishes ... I cook in a real kitchen and not some gussied-up TV sound stage.  It's easier for me to wait until I am done and things have cooled to wipe up the splatters and drips.  The saucepot on the stove is at least twenty years old, as well ... I bought it at a garage sale way back when.  I'd say I have more than gotten my 25c worth out of it.  Or was it 10c?

Garden and chicken updates soon.