Uncle Walter
I don’t think I had an Uncle Walter. I did have a lot of great-uncles on my Dad’s side–his father came from a family of 17. My mother had a second cousin named Walter I think.
But none of that really matters.
Like a lot of other people, I have been looking through stacks of ‘stuff’. Two shelves contain a collection of cookbooks, most of them bought as fund-raisers from various organizations, some as mementos of a place I’ve been. Reading these cookbooks–and hunting for something new to cook—one of the few things to add variety to this current bizarre time has been entertaining.
The older cookbooks seem to be meticulously edited with clear directions and good formatting–i.e. the ingredients do not continue onto the back of the page. There are no references to convenient items such as boxes of cake mix or cornbread or cans of pie filling or Cool Whip. Breads use cake yeast not instant yeast in packets.
One of the newer ones listed as 2 lemons as ingredients for a spinach pie along with three bags of spinach, salt, an egg and some cornstarch and a dough recipe. The spinach was to be washed and cooked; then all the other ingredients including the lemons (no directions regarding what to do with them—juice them? cut into wedges? zest them?). Other recipes in the book were equally lacking in directions. Did the writers assume I would know what to do or were directions deliberately excluded as to retain personal pride in cooking skills?
I did find this very simple recipe for Uncle Walter’s Fried eggs in a Swiss cookbook.
Start with melted butter in a fry pan, break two eggs into the butter, break the yolks and spread over the whites, cover with a slice of Swiss cheese and cook until the cheese melts.
This breakfast stayed with us for the best part of the day.
And I figured I needed to squeeze those lemons and zest them for the spinach dish.
Sylvia Weir Art 