How about a biscuit with that stew?

Among the gifts we received when we got married in June 1971 was a little cookbook...

and a beautiful enameled cast iron cooking pot...

Even though I was not a budding Martha Stewart when I was living at home, I was not totally naive about what went on in the kitchen. I did help my mother (and father, too) prepare food for the family--in fact she said I made a better pie crust than she did--but I didn’t really know how to cook for a husband.

The little cookbook became very useful indeed. There was a great recipe for a dilled potato salad for two, and four meals from one recipe of meatballs, and various desserts.

The cookbook and the cast iron cooking pot are among the few gifts that I still have and still use. The cookbook is indeed well used and looks it, its pages are very stained with the evidence of many meals prepared from its pages. The pot is also rather well used, especially the inside which I am reluctant to scub too severely for fear of damaging the enamel..

One of our favorite recipes from the cookbook is a simple beef stew that I often cooked in the cooking pot. I still make the stew -- not as often as I used to because beef is so high; but in fact, I cooked it not all that long ago.

Although Richard and I eat lunch together at the kitchen table like proper people are supposed to do and exchange scintillating conversation, we eat dinner in bed and watch TV. Each of us has a TV tray on our side of the bed to put the plates and drinking glass when we aren't holding them.

On this particular night in question, Molly Wolly Doodle all the Day was stretched out on her spot at the foot of the bed.

About half-way through the bowl of stew, I decided I wanted some bread, and so I put the bowl down on the TV tray and went rummaging in the freezer for some bread. I could not find the bread but I did find a freezer bag of biscuits that I had made a few weeks earlier was doling out to us for Sunday morning breakfast. I thawed one and came back in the bedroom to see our dog standing at the edge of the bed, in front of the TV tray, and Richard informing me that she had been licking my bowl.

I could see where she had licked some of the stew gravy off a chunk of carrot, but everything else looked untouched, so I thoroughly washed the carrot, but before I could resume eating my stew, the telephone rang. So I sat the biscuit down on the bed (on the bed!!!) and took the bowl with me to answer the phone (I had learned my lesson about leaving the bowl within the reach of the dog, indeed I had). While I was talking to my friend, I could hear Richard start to laugh in the background, and when I got back to the bed I saw that all that remained of my biscuit were a few crumbs on the bed, and the dog was prepared to lick those up as well.

I guess I was not the only one to enjoy the meal…