FOOD FEATURE
Fall Treats W
hen summer starts to cool off and the smell of fall and spiced pumpkin permeate the air, my heart turns to autumn aromas and hockey, Thanksgiving and Christmas menus. I love to cook for family and friends whom I love!
It Starts with Mom Was your mother a wonderful cook who taught you everything she knew? You are lucky! My mom was a wonderful seamstress who taught me everything she knew about sewing. It got me in trouble at school because she also taught me shortcuts that we weren’t invited to use! Mom’s strength wasn’t in cooking because, let’s face it, when you have neither | 32
By Robin Armitage time (with six kids) nor money (she was a single mom most of the time), it’s difficult. I used to joke that I learned to eat fast because if there were six kids and seven pork chops, I always wanted the extra one. I was only partly joking. We were never allowed to invite a friend for supper because there wouldn’t be enough.
Enough to Share I think that it was my dream as a child to always have enough to share and I vowed to learn to be a good cook and baker! Luckily, we’ve almost always had more than enough groceries to gladly encourage my boys’ friends to join us (sans hats at the table.) We’ve been privileged to share an extra room for lost boys, then foreign students, and now we billet Red Deer Rebels hockey
players. We love having guests for dinner and it’s common at Thanksgiving to have 40 people or more gathered around the fully extended, hundred-yearold kitchen table, along with the large dining
