My father enjoyed teasing and a few simple pranks. One story from the early years of my parents’ marriage shows a bit of his unique sense of humor. I don’t remember my father ever telling the story, but my mother told it several times. Not long after they were married, they were discussing favorite meals and he commented that he loved chicken and dumplings. Wanting to please him, she searched for recipes and made chicken and dumplings for dinner. She asked him how he liked the dish. He responded, “This is pretty good. The dumplings aren’t quite like my mother makes, but it isn’t bad.” Wanting to please him, she continued to search for new recipes for dumplings. He responded to each attempt with a similar answer that the dish tasted good, but the dumplings weren’t like the ones his mother made.

They were living in California in the early months of their marriage and traveling back to their parents in Montana wasn’t a possibility due to gas rationing. When the war ended and they were finally able to return to their home state they paid visits to both sets of parents. While they were visiting his parents, my mother asked Grandma Katherine for her dumpling recipe. Grandma responded with a strange look on her face that she had never made dumplings and didn’t have a recipe.

The gig was up for my dad. He had to confess that the whole dumpling story was made up and that he enjoyed chicken and dumplings enough to keep the story going just so mother would keep preparing the dish.

I’ve repeated the story many times and, according to several experts, the stories we repeat the most are the ones that are most likely to be exaggerated and not completely accurate. Thus I don’t know the absolute veracity of the story. In a way it doesn’t matter. The story has become one of my cherished memories now that neither of my parents are alive.

I know that my father enjoyed our mother’s cooking. Another time he went to a bake sale and purchased the cake the mother had made and donated to the sale. She was upset about it and told him so. He was surprised that his action upset her. He thought she would be pleased that he was proud of her and enjoyed her baking. Since he purchased the cake, it had done its part of raising funds for the cause. She, on the other hand, found the incident embarrassing. “People will think you bought it to keep others from tasting it,” she said.

In the end, it worked out for both of them. I can remember numerous occasions on which she baked two german chocolate cakes - one to go to a bake sale and the second to be served in our home. We all got a bit of the results of her baking.

I was thinking about my parents last night because Susan made chicken soup with dumplings for dinner. We have developed our own specialties in our 50 years of marriage and Susan is definitely the more experienced soup creator. There are several dishes I prepare that we both like, but I have never had much practice preparing soups. Since Susan makes so many tasty soups, I’ve sort of left that part of cooking to her and focus on other recipes that she is less likely to prepare. I like her chicken and dumplings. Furthermore, I can’t remember my mother’s chicken and dumplings. I know she made the dish from time to time, but I don’t have any distinct memories of how her dumplings came out. I think they were quite similar to the ones Susan makes.

Susan reports that she makes dumplings according to the recipe on the Bisquick box, except the recipe is no longer printed on the box - at least not on the box of the reduced fat version that we keep in our pantry. Like many other recipes, you have to do a quick internet search to find them. I still can’t get over the fact that you can purchase a package of Nestle’s Toll House Chocolate Chips and not find the recipe for Toll House cookies on the package. I don’t mind looking up the recipe, but it seems like the cookies are the main reason for purchasing the product. At any rate, Bisquick dumplings are a simple combination of the mixture in the box with a bit of milk. Thought I don’t think I’ve ever done so, I’m pretty sure I could come up with a passable version. The Betty Crocker website with the Bisquick recipe for dumplings has a link to a complete recipe for chicken and dumplings, which is pretty simple since it includes not only the prepared baking mix shortcut but also the use of a carton of prepared chicken broth in place of cooking down your own broth.

It is interesting to me that we don’t use many of the old recipes that we got from our parents. Over the years we have adopted our own cooking and eating styles and for the most part don’t consult recipe books for everyday cooking. Besides we have shifted our style of eating and preparing food over the years. Back when we had children at home and later when we prepared meals for our parents, we were more interested in convenience and often used prepared foods as part of our menu planning. These days ready access to fresh ingredients year round and an increasing harvest of home grown foods, combined with more available time, we find that we cook from scratch more often. In addition, we are slowly learning to prepare more modest quantities when cooking. Having served as cooks for a church camp in the early years of our marriage, we used to have the best success when preparing foods in large quantities. Then we would freeze leftovers and serve them until they were consumed. Now, we are learning to prepare the quantity we need for a meal.

We still have leftovers from time to time, but usually they are consumed within a day or so of the original cooking. I’m hoping, however, that there are a few dumplings left over for this evening.