My mother was born a twin in Pennsylvania. Her father had a mill where he ground grain and sawed shingles. While he was not a farmer, he kept chickens and had a large garden and planted fruit trees.

While I don't have any written recipes of her mother, Della Mott, I am sure that most of my mother's cooking repertoire was learned from her.

Mother was efficient at cutting out unnecessary frills and reducing expense in recipes. This was the Depression Era. She was a plain cook so I never learned to appreciate fancy cooking. She became very nutrition conscious after I was suspected of being diabetic at six years of age. I never heard of deep fat frying. I never ate white bread until my sister started dating her future husband and he would bring a loaf of white bread with him when he came to dinner!

She was an at-home mom until, when I was in the fifth grade, she went to work. She still did most of her cooking from scratch. We never went out to eat in a restaurant, and pizza was unknown.

I have her lined composition book, yellowed and ragged, that she filled with recipes clipped from newspapers and magazines as well as handwritten ones. She spanned the eras from all natural foods to the age of fast food.