Friday Friend Recipe #137 - Sweetie Dogs

Friday Friend Recipe #137 - Linda's Sweetie Dogs

Making my way thru my Friday Friend Cookbook, one recipe at a time.

What is the Friday Friend cookbook: I have about 50 of my closest friends and family on an e-mail forum which I called the Friday Friends (from all over the county). At first, most of them didn't know each other, (they knew me) but over the past 18 years, we've answered and shared silly--and serious---questions, exchanged Secret Santa Christmas gifts, had a dieting contest in which we paid a $1 a week and that money went to a scholarship fund for a Friday Friends son's memorial scholarship, and we went on a great vacation for my 52 birthday.

AND, we contributed recipes for a cookbook.

I was looking at the cookbook the other night and I said, "I should make every recipe in here for my blog."
The Handyman--who knows me better than I know myself (this happened to be a question on the Friday Friend forum once---does your spouse/partner know you better than you know yourself?)--said,  "you'll never, EVER do that."
WELL---maybe I'll show him!  Maybe I will.

Which brings me to this... recipe #137

Linda's

Sweetie Dogs

Little sausages in a tangy sauce are welcome at anybody's appetizer table.

Especially mine.

SWEETIE DOGS

Linda Ornelas

Walla Walla, Washington

2 packages cocktail links

1 jar grape jelly

1/2 cup mustard

Melt jelly in saucepan, over low heat.  Stir in mustard, add links.  Cook 10 minutes over med. heat. Serve warm using a crock pot or candled serving dish.

This is my cousin Linda's 5th appearance in the Friday Friend Cookbook Countdown.  You can see all her recipes and stories here--just click!

Stories...stories...stories.

I have trouble thinking up new stories--even if I have tons of memories. But when I have to put pen to the paper, nothing comes to mind.  It's weird, I know.  It's like a writers block.

So let me just tell you this about my cousin....

Well--first let me meander a bit.

I read a book today called "Home Cooking-A Writer in the Kitchen" by Laurie Colwin.  I loved it as it brought to mind so many memories of family and kitchens and food.

Let me quote from the book:

No one who cooks, cooks alone.  Even at her most solitary, a cook in the kitchen is surrounded by generations of cooks past...

I had a friend  who was making a mustard sauce this past Easter and she was talking about it on Facebook--how her mother would not look kindly on black pepper when one was supposed to use white pepper in the sauce and how some of the family loved the sauce, some not so much. But, one of her nieces who ate dinner with them on Easter, commented that "it smelled like memories".

Isn't that the truth about food?!! -- no one cooks alone--more often than not I am surrounded by generations of cooks past that are members of MY family.  And it always smells like memories!

When the Handyman and I got back from our honeymoon, I invited my parents and his parents over the very night we returned--to watch us open our wedding gifts (we had left them for after the  Honeymoon), and I made a dinner--my very first for company.

I chose a dinner that Linda would make and that I loved.

She used to bake chicken and pour a cream of mushroom sauce over the top of it and sprinkle it with Rice Krispies!

It was so fancy!  Linda used to make it every time she came to visit us, and I LOVED it.

I wish I had a picture of it.  I haven't made it or thought of it in years.

 Food trends come in cycles and rice krispies sprinkled on a baked chicken has been out of style for a while I guess.

But it is a great memory for me.  I loved to watch her cook and loved to eat the dishes she fixed.

It smells like memories......

She was 13 years older than I.  I followed her around and did everything she did.

She probably hated me back then.

Linda and I with our grandfather.  Neither of us look like we wanted to share!

And that is recipe #137.

Out of 294.

157 to go!