SLUMGULLION AND GAZINTA

There was some corn left over from last night's meal and Les asked, "Remember corn fritters?" I answered, "Yeah, but I never made them; Mother always made them." He asked, "What goes in them?" I replied, "Corn, eggs, cracker crumbs, kinda like making salmon patties, I think." He said, "Let's look on the internet." We couldn't find a recipe which we felt matched our memories exactly; we chose ingredients from several different recipes. The resulting corn fritters were tasty, but not LIKE--or as good as--we remember our mother's.

LEFTOVERS? We never had leftovers! We had another adventure the next day! The day after Sunday dinner roast, we had HASH (which I liked better than the Sunday roast). One time we had a bumper crop of carrots and Mother fixed cooked carrots as a side dish. Yep, we didn't eat all of them; the next day it was CARROT COOKIES. To this day, we'll say, "You better eat that broccoli (or cauliflower, or ANYTHING else!) or it'll be cookies tomorrow!"

My pernickety brothers wanted to eat ONLY the legs from the fried chicken. Mother would tear apart the wings and swear that one of the parts was "baby chicken legs"! Every time I see hot wings, I say, "I like the baby chicken legs!"

Some of our other culinary delights include:

GAZINTA SOUP: everything leftover in the refrigerator GOES INTO (GAZINTA) the soup!

SLUMGULLION: none of us can agree on the exact ingredients in this one, but I believe Mother's version was a concoction of rice, tomatoes, and corn, with chili seasoning. The dictionary definition is "a cheap, unsubstantial stew". All of the online recipes for slumgullion call for macaroni, tomatoes, and ground beef. Les said, dismissively, "Hell, that sounds like goulash!"

TURKEY CARCASS SOUP: I continue to make this delicious soup with the leftover carcass, but the term itself seems to freak out people.