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And we are doing the food studies. So when growing up, did you have a favorite dish that your family prepared for you for any occasion?

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I guess one of my favorite dishes then and now is macaroni and cheese. And you'll probably get that a lot. I just love macaroni and cheese.

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And my mother was not a great cook. Most dishes she could not prepare with macaroni and cheese recipes. What made it so special?

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Very cheesy. I love cheese. I love anything with cheese in it. To this day, I cannot make macaroni and cheese like the ones that I

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like. I can't make it. But it was just cheesy and gooey and crunchy, kind of, not a little crunchy, just very cheesy, kind of like that.

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When she was making it, what did it smell like in the house? Oh, gee. What did it smell like, Leslie?

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You're trying to do what I do to my students. I teach English. I don't. Use your five senses like you can smell it. Just very kind of a mellow sweet smell.

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It just kind of permeated the whole house. It was good. Who was the best cook in your family? Your mother wasn't that great of a cook.

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I grew up in my grandparents' house. And my grandfather was the best cook in the house. My grandmother would burn the water, literally put a pot of water on the

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stove and go, get busy, get dressed for work or whatever and boil it down to nothing. My grandfather was the cook in the house. What did he usually make? Well, he made

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stuff that I didn't eat, like ham hocks, you know, those kinds of things that weren't very appetizing to me. But he also, on Sunday mornings, we would go,

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the church was right across the street from us, so we'd go to Sunday school and come back and maybe later go to church, but after Sunday school he would

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have pancakes or waffles that he had made in one of those old waffle irons. And so I remember that about what he used What are some of your favorite memories or

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family times that you had around, like I guess you could go off on Sunday mornings? Was it like every Sunday morning did you do that?

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Pretty much, we had something, you know, we had big breakfast every Sunday morning. We weren't very much, like he and my grandmother would eat together and then our

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family would eat together, except like on Sunday mornings. And then also Thanksgiving, you know, the family would get together. Turkey is still one of my favorite dishes.

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People from my church just brought me dinner a couple of days ago, and they brought me turkey breast. I still have it out there. I just make turkey sandwiches.

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So, of course, Thanksgiving would be all of my favorite foods. Turkey, macaroni and cheese, sweet potatoes, vegetables. I wasn't too

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crazy about vegetables then. Now I know the importance of them, so I've learned to develop a taste for them, but apple pie, I mean

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the traditional American things, that's what I like to do, yeah. Was it usually your whole family, like extended family, or did you keep it to

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your immediate family? We had quite an extended family, so there would be people coming in and out of the house all day. My mother had six brothers and sisters,

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and most of them had children, so, you know, I had cousins, and then my, you know, we just have a large family. My grandmother had a lot of

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brothers and sisters, and they had children, and they had children, and they all lived around the same area, so, family was just in and out all day.

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When you were growing up, do you remember where you guys had to go get food or was there a special place that you, like your favorite place to go?

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The store was called the A&P and I don't know whether that's what the Acme is now, but it was the A&P. My mother would not shop anyplace else with the A&P.

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They had the best needs, they had the best this, they had the best that. And one of them, I think the store where we went most was where

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MBNA's flagship building is now right here on Ogletown on 273 and 4. That's where it was, right where their building is now. That was one of the

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ones that we used to go to all the time. There was a little store on Cleveland Avenue. It wasn't, but you didn't go there and buy meats and stuff. You could

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go there and buy popsicles and pretzels and potato chips and stuff like that. But grocery store was the A&P. Do you guys used to go to the

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place on Cleveland by yourselves, or with the whole family? No. That was just, like I said, we could

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go there and get my grandfather smoked. No. Either my sister or I were sent there, and mostly me, because I could run real fast, and I could get to the store

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and back faster. Plus, my sister would stop and talk to everybody along the way, and I wouldn't, so they knew that they could send me and I'd get back quickly.

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Was there something that you despised when people, say when your grandfather or your mother was cooking it, that you just were dreading when she was thinking that

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you needed to have to eat it for dinner? Oh, there was something that I couldn't even be in the house with to this day. Liver makes me sick to my stomach, even

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if it's cooking. And I probably was seven or eight years old before they finally realized, we can't give this girl liver. I mean, I would throw up. It was awful.

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It wasn't just a dislike, it was almost like an allergy. So, no, I did not, did not, did not like liver.

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And my mother loved it. What was your small kitchen? The table was in the middle of it.

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It was probably a square. That's probably how it was shaped. Stove was over here. Sink was over here. Some cabinets. There weren't any built-in

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cabinets. So they were just like those metal. Well, no, they were cabinets, but what are they called? They have them now. They would be

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like pantries, but they're not built in, you know, so that's what we had. It was just a small kitchen with a linoleum floor, and the table was

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really the center of the kitchen. Is that where you guys would eat your meals? Except for at Thanksgiving we'd eat

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in the dining room. That was the only time we ate in the dining room. Other times we just passed through it. You

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guys used that for holidays as well, like besides Thanksgiving and Christmas? Yeah. Oh, no, we never had big Christmas dinner.

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Christmas was the day to kind of just go visit other people, you know. go see what this kid got, go see what that, you know, by the time you got home you had picked up food

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at kind of everybody's house, but. Was there a special meal for Christmas as well or? No, I mean like, no, nothing in particular. I mean it wasn't, there was no big

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Christmas dinner was ever repaired in my, in our house, you know, with other people's houses. Really and literally, I learned to cook in school

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because when I was in junior high, we had mandatory cooking classes. Nobody at home tried to teach me before then, so we had mandatory home ecs, so you learn to cook

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that way. Plus, I was kind of a career Girl Scout, and one of my hobbies was collecting Girl Scout badges, some of which, and across a wide spectrum. So some of them were

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involved cooking. So I just go on my own. When I had a question, I'd ask my grandfather. But for the most part, I

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learned to cook from books. My philosophy has always been, if you can read, you can cook. So I just kind of followed directions.

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When you had like family genders, did you ever help out? Did you really help your grandfather make meals or what was used as a child asked to do that?

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That was more my sister. Unless it was, I always, at some point I became the baker in the family. So I think for one of my badges was baking

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or something. And so after that, anytime anything had to be baked, I did that. Who fished your cake to eat? Oh, cakes. I was the cake baker for a long

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time, even after I got married. It was only, oh, gee, after my kids started growing and I had

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gained a lot of weight and wanted to lose some of it that I decided I can't bake any more cakes because if I bake them, I'm the only one who eats them, so.

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What's your favorite one? Oh, yellow chocolate frosting. It's been many years since I've made one. And the other thing, I don't know whether

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you have a question that speaks to it. My grandmother used to sponsor a lot of things through the church and we used to have like festivals in the church festivals or I

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don't know what you call them festivals in the yard of the church and we also used to have block parties along we lived I don't know how well you know Newark but we lived on

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the corner of 896 and Racine. Street, right where that meets. And we used to have the block parties. We'd get Ray Street blocked off and have block parties. And my mother,

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and eventually me, my sister, and I would make these sloppy joes that we'd have. I mean, sloppy joes were like our

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favorite, I think, I can't remember if we had french fries, we'd have potato chips, we would just be, you know, we'd just get a, my sister would

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play the music because she had every record, still has every 45 that was ever produced, and she would play the music and we'd dance, it was just like a dance,

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and a food festival, and you know, we'd have these, maybe two or three per song, as teenagers, you know, I don't ever remember this,

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not having anything-to -do syndrome. You know, we always kept ourselves busy somehow. But and then the festivals at the church, there would be fried chicken, potato salad, and

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Did everybody help with making those, or? Yeah. Different people brought different things, yeah. And what

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did your family usually bring? My mother was pretty good at making potato salad, too. And my grandfather could fry chicken, So,

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but a lot of it was just, was cooked at the church also. You know, the ladies of the church would get together and make it. And then another community thing that we used

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to do that, it wouldn't seem like it was about food, but it really was about food. And what we really need to get back, I want to do something on the churches

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in the community, because they really were the heart of the community more so than the Elks Lodge, which is what that book seems to say. I'm pointing

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that way because my book is over there. But all three churches, and they were all different denominations, but there were three

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churches, and between us, everybody in the community went to one of those churches. But every summer, we would rent, we would get buses,

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old school buses, And there probably would be three or four of them, and that was like the whole community. And we'd go

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up to Hershey Park every summer. And, of course, Hershey Park had picnic grounds. I mean, it was an amusement park, but the big thing was

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getting your picnic back basket packed. And as soon as we got there, we'd all go and eat, and that was like the big thing. I mean,

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it was all about the food. We'd eat halfway going up there. You know, we packed sandwiches, we packed fried chicken, potato salad, deviled eggs,

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and it was like the whole community just got together. This was one thing that we all did as a community, because some of the things that the church, it might

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have been just our church doing it, but like the block party, everybody came to. Those church picnics, I mean, anybody who ever went could tell you right now. I

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mean, the first thing they'd probably tell you is about those picnic baskets, because it's just you know you had to have the biggest fanciest picnic basket who had the

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best coconut cake and and you could just go around to everybody and get something you know once we got to the picnic ground so that was so much fun what was your

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favorite thing to have in the picnic basket cold fried chicken and deviled eggs i love that yeah yeah so that was good What else did you usually, or

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what would you go try and find from other people's baskets? Well, my cousin Betty made good coconut cakes, so I'd go get

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some coconut cake from her. Probably mostly desserts, other people's fried chicken, you know, taste of a variety of fried chicken, and if I had run

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out of deviled eggs on the way up the road, go get somebody else's deviled eggs. So it was, you know, we all pretty much had the same things in our baskets, but it

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was just like, let me try so-and-so's cooking, you know. It was just so much fun. I wish we still had stuff like that. Yeah, we don't either. We don't do anything

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that comes close to it. The churches never do anything together, all three of them. What do you guys do as an individual church now?

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As an individual church now, we have a lot of too many dinners. We'll have like an 11 o'clock service and then sometimes a service that starts at 3.30. So rather than

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have people go home and maybe not come back, they'll have dinner in between services. and they'll usually develop a menu and then ask for people to bring various dishes.

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So you end up cooking anything because sometimes they'll tell you, you know, bring whatever you want, or sometimes they'll say, well, the choir members bring this,

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and the ushers bring that. So if you're a choir member and they tell you to make sweet potatoes, you bring them whether that's your best dish or not. So we do a

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lot of that in the church now. When you have any choice, what do you usually bring? If I make anything, sometimes fried chicken.

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I actually do make pretty decent sweet potato puffs, so I'll make those. One time my husband took macaroni and cheese, because he made it, I didn't make it.

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So that's pretty much what I bring. Sometimes vegetables, green beans, I've done that. Okay, the thing that I probably wasn't allowed to have it more often than

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I should have, but ice cream, I mean, I was a very, very tiny kid, I mean, like underweight, when I was, gee, up until the time I got married, but

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ice cream used to make me freeze, that's where I'm going, because I mean, I'd eat it and I would freeze it. Even in the wintertime, we had these, our heating grates

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were the kind that were in the floor. And if I, I don't care if it was cold outside, I would sit over the grate with a blanket around my shoulder

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and eat the ice cream so I wouldn't get too cold. But I love that cream. Still do. What was your favorite flavor? Oh, vanilla, just

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plain vanilla. And butter pecan. Great together. That store on Cleveland Avenue. And actually, it may sound derogatory,

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but the people who owned it were white and it was in a black neighborhood. So we used to call it the white store. So we'd go, yeah, that's most of the

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time. Well, my mother would get the half gallons, but we would go to the store almost daily and get knee-high soda, no, my mother got the knee-high soda pops.

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They used to get delivered in a case. great knee-high soda pops, best things in the world. But we'd go there and get sodas, ice cream sandwiches, ice cream cones on

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a daily basis. And then the ice cream man would come by all summer long, and we'd always get ice cream in the summer. But there was always ice cream. My grandmother loved

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ice cream, too, so I got it, honestly. That's fun. Yeah. When you were little, what was your chore? Like, when everybody was sitting down for

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dinner, what was your chore? Setting the table, clearing the table, and washing dishes. Did it all, set the floor, just cleaning the kitchen.

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My grandmother's philosophy was adults don't do those things because that's what kids are for. Did you bring that on to your kids?

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No, because by the time they came, I hated dish washing so much because I actually, well, I'm still not very tall, and my sister is very tall, and she's older

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than me, so she started washing dishes before I did, but one day, she did not, maybe a couple of days, she didn't wash the dishes, and I probably was six years old

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or something and got tired of it and pulled up a chair and washed the dishes, stood up on the chair and washed the dishes, got soaked and wet, hated it, but everybody

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said, oh, she can wash the dishes from now on. So I was washing dishes and getting soaked. And by the time I was grown, I hated washing dishes. So the first thing I did

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when I got married was get a dishwasher. So my kids never had to wash dishes. I don't mind stacking a dishwasher compared to having to wash dishes by hand.

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So I didn't pass that on to my kids. What would you say your kids would ask you to make them, or even when they were growing up, what was

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their favorite thing about you? My kids love hamburgers. I don't know why. They love hamburgers. My older son's favorite dish is

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tuna casserole. He loves that. That's probably what they would ask for now. One

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memory that I have surrounding the New London Avenue School, which is now the George Wilson Community Center, we used to, you know, there were six grades in that school,

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like two to a, one classroom only had one grade and the other three had six grades, had two grades in them at a time. I was in, my first grade class, we just, was just first

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graded there and then second and third were together. Then when I moved to third grade, third and fourth were together, and then 5th and 6th were together. But in between

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the 3rd and 4th grade class and the 5th and 6th grade classes was a library, which at lunchtime would be used as a cafeteria. So there were ladies who would come,

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ladies in the community who would come, and I think there was a kitchen in the basement where they would cook, or maybe they brought the food, and they, I didn't

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necessarily like it, but this particular dish, but the dish that I remember from that school, eating at lunchtime. A lot of times we brought

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our own lunch, but, you know, sometimes we would eat what was there. Macaroni and cheese and stewed tomatoes. I remember that.

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I can taste it today. Those macaroni and cheese. And I'm not crazy about stewed tomatoes, but with macaroni and cheese under it, it was kind of good.

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And probably if you ask anybody who went to that school, they remember that dish. It's a very clear memory. What made it so to stay?

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I don't know, those ladies were pretty good cooks. Just about everything they cooked was good. But again, for me, it was that

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cheesy macaroni as the base, I guess. And for someone who didn't particularly like stewed tomatoes, I don't know what it was about their stewed tomatoes.

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My mother wasn't a good cook, so it just wasn't anybody else tasting good to me. Oh, just seasoned well. You want to,

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whatever you have, whatever you want to maybe incorporate. Oh, the other thing, another thing that we used, that we did, my grandfather,

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and talking about my love for ice cream. He had one of those old-fashioned ice cream crabs in the backyard. He used to have every, there were some summers

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there when like every other week he'd have people get all these bushels of crabs and all the neighbors and everybody would come and cook these crabs and sit in

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the backyard and eat crabs. He couldn't do it in the house. It was a mess. That was fun. It was the

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summer time or spring.