Simple cooking and smashed avocado toast

By Elizabeth Prata

My parents had money and I grew up with some of the finer things of life. One thing that was popular starting in 1963 was Julia Child's new cooking show. She was personable, relatable, cheerful, and brought explanatory French cooking and other styles to the housewife in Peoria (or East Greenwich). My mother loved to cook and was a good cook. She experimented with new recipes on us kids. We also ate out at restaurants a lot and we were encouraged to get whatever we wanted on the menu. Growing up I tasted dishes like or had suppers like Lobster Thermador, Japanese cuisine, frog's legs, caviar, Baked Alaska, gourmet cheeses, and the like. I was so grateful for the expanded palate my parents allowed me to develop and the interest in world cuisine I"d gained.

What I've been enjoying here in Georgia is learning about simple food, hearty food, and different food, than I have previously been used to. Yes, the South has a cuisine all its own! Plain, hearty farm cooking is also terrific.

There are two older ladies who had or have cooking shows on Youtube or Facebook I want to introduce you to. Clara Cannucciari, a dear lady at the time who was near 90, and who has passed on now, became an internet sensation 12 years ago with her grandson's productions of her Depression Cooking channel. She shows how to prepare dishes they ate during the Depression while telling stories of what the times were like. She was charming and her stories were simple, like her cooking, but powerful in the starkness of her first-hand retrospective.

Joyce Woods of Momma's Easy Country Cooking on Youtube does the same as Clara with her Depression cooking- show how to make simple, down home Georgia dishes popular with families. She's also an older lady and tells her local history of the dishes as she's creating them.

Simple, ya'll. I like both kinds of cooking - the fancy French cuisine Julia introduced to us, and the simple but hearty foods from Clara and Joyce. Check them out!

Momma's Easy Country Cooking Channel

I had never heard of pear salad until attended my first Southern Baptist Covered Dish supper, but this simple salad is so yummy!

Momma's Easy Pear Salad

Clara Cannucciari Depression Cooking-

Here is my breakfast of late. I had oatmeal every weekday morning last school year, then changed to Groats every day during the summer, but I think my body got tired of the grain-type of breakfast. I switched to an egg and that seems to be tiding me over better until lunch. I think having an egg on toast or even a sandwich is a bit heavy so I am trying an alternative. Smashed Avocado Toast, except the avocado isn't smashed and I don't have any toast. Now, hang with me here.

I mentioned before that I like Charra's Tostadas. They are 6-inch, no fat, low carb baked tostada shell. For a snack, I enjoy a couple of them with tomato and cheese and a bit of hot sauce, broiled, making two large nacho chips. Well of late I've been trying them with a scrambled egg on top! Super! This morning I was too lazy to even scramble the egg and instead I fried it on my griddle. I had an avocado about to go overripe so I halved it and then decided I wanted "Smashed Avocado Toast- with Egg." But I don't have toast, just the chip. If I smashed it, I'd smash the chip. So let's call this recipe "Gently Cubed Avocado on Tostada- With Egg."

I fried an egg and cut it in half. Voila, here is one of the two chips I ate for breakfast:

As Julia would say, bon appétit!