My friend's son had to bake something for cooking badge for Scouts. He decided to make Brownies. She was in and out of the kitchen, when her daughter asked " What in the world is Brian doing in here." He had his hands in the bowl of batter mixing it up. She asked, "what are you doing". To which he promptly replied, "Mom, the directions said mix throughly by hand". We have always kidded about mixing by hand!

My dad (gone to heaven many years ago, now) was a prince among men. One thing he always did was praise my mom's cooking and told her after after meal how good it was or how it hit the spot or it was the best she ever made, etc. (Mom WAS a really good cook.) When I was learning to cook and bake, he did the same thing with me and always ate everything I made, even when it wasn't so good. He even ate foods he didn't like just to "set a good example" for us kids.

Well, not long after I was married and moved away from home, my mom had to have some surgery done. While she was in the hospital, my teenage sister decided to make dinner for my youngest sister and my dad when he got home from work. So she called mom in the hospital and asked her how to make spaghetti. Mom told her to use a certain cookbook and follow the recipe for Spaghetti and Meatballs, but she didn't have to make the meatballs, just make a meat sauce and told her how. Well, that's what she did. Only mom didn't think to tell her not to use the bread crumbs that were supposed to go in the meatballs, so my sister dumped the crumbs in the sauce and cooked it all together!

You can imagine how thick and yuckky it must have been, but daddy, God bless him, ate it all and told her how good it was! She didn't realize what she had done until days later when she asked mom why the sauce was so thick and grainy.

She is now a gourmet cook and makes the best spaghetti sauce!