Marie Cookpad

  Many years ago, when I was still a child, my mother came down with the stomach flu. I could not have been any older than 6 or 7 years old, but it still is very clear in my mind and I know my age because of the house we were living in at the time.   It was left to my father to cook for us, my mother was that ill.  The only thing he knew how to cook was fried eggs.  And so  . . .  we had fried eggs for every meal that day.  Sometime during the night afterwards . . .  you guessed it . . . I got the stomach flu myself.  It was many, many years before I could ever face a fried egg again.  In fact, it has only been in recent years.    One thing Easter always meant in our home was that there would be plenty of eggs to be eaten up.  Mom used to blow some of them out for scrambled eggs for those of us who couldn't abide fried eggs, and then the others would get fried eggs.   Always served with butter fried slabs of salty ham...

  This is a recipe I meant to share with you yesterday but with all of the upset of Todd's fall and everything, I never got around to it. Normally I would make a better presentation of it as well, showing you what you can serve on the side, but again with Todd's fall, that just didn't get done! Nevermind, its the pie you are here to see.  And this is one heck of a tasty pie!  Its a great example of making something delicious from what you have at hand to use!   I love the crust for this.  It uses a fat combination of lard and butter, along with flour, baking powder, onion salt and milk.  Normally I would use all milk, but we are rationing to make our milk last longer and so I used half milk half water, and you know what?  It was every bit as delicious as always.    It is a lovely tender and flaky crust, and the onion salt gives it a bit of a savoury flavour that works really well with the fillings.   I had leftover chicken from my roast...

  We had some baked ham leftover from the holidays the other day and so I decided to make a delicious casserole with them.  We were all sandwiched out! Mom always made sweet and sour ham with her leftover ham, but we weren't feeling much like that either.   Plus I had some fresh noodles whose sell by date was looming.  I hate waste and so decided to take advantage of both these things and make a tasty casserole.   It was pretty basic, and I did use a tin of cream of chicken soup.  You could however make a basic cream sauce, flavouring it with a bit of chicken bouillon if you wanted to.   I am not a soup snob and I do use it from time to time, especially when I am wanting to make a quick and simple casserole.   I also had some cheese leftover from the holidays, Cheddar and red Leicester  So I used up some of them as well.   They have very similar flavours so you could use all cheddar if you want to.  Both are hard cheeses and the red...