Happy Mother’s Day! How many of you learned how to cook from your mother? Arlene loved telling stories about helping her mom in the kitchen as they made all kinds of wonderful, delicious things. In this show from 1995, she shares memories of her mom and makes an easy meal that you could make for a mom, grandma, or another special lady in your life. Recipes include easy swiss steak, chocolate eclair pudding dessert, and a scrumptious garlic cheese loaf. Yum!
Mother’s Day isn’t just about parents. We’ve all had amazing women who have loved and mentored us. Arlene and Paul didn’t have any children, but Arlene acted like a mom to millions of TV viewers. This Mother’s Day, why not take the time to thank all those people who have been “like a mom” to us over the years?
Note: We couldn’t find the exact salad recipe seen in this episode, so we included a favorite salad recipe from another special lady, Arlene’s Mother-in-Law.
Easy Swiss Steak
Ingredients
- 1/2 cup flour
- 2 tsp garlic powder
- 1/4 tsp black pepper
- 3 Tbs vegetable oil
- 1 lb cube steak, cut into 4 pieces
- 1 medium onion, quartered and sliced
- 1 green bell pepper, cored and sliced
- 1 can stewed tomatoes (15 oz, no salt added)
- salt (to taste)
Instructions
- In a bowl, combine flour, garlic powder, and black pepper. Pat steak pieces dry with paper towels, then dredge in flour mixture. Make sure both sides are evenly coated, then shake off excess.
- Heat oil in a skillet under medium-high heat until hot. Brown steak pieces on both sides, about 3-4 minutes a side. Add onions and peppers and cook until onions are tender, about 5 minutes.
- Add stewed tomatoes and simmer, uncovered for 15-20 minutes or until steak is cooked through. Serve with hot noodles, rice, or mashed potatoes. Enjoy!
Chocolate Eclair Pudding Dessert
This dessert comes together in a snap and everyone loves it!
Ingredients
Filling
- 1 box whole graham crackers (16 oz)
- 2 boxes French vanilla instant pudding mix (3.5 oz each)
- 3 cups cold milk
- 1 container whipped topping (16 oz)
Icing
- 3 Tbs butter, melted
- 2 Tbs cocoa powder
- 2 cups powdered sugar
- 2-3 Tbs milk
- 1 tsp vanilla extract
Instructions
- In a 13×9" glass dish, line bottom with graham crackers (you may need to break some pieces to make them fit).
- In a bowl, whisk together pudding mix and 3 cups milk until dissolved and combined. Gently stir in whipped topping until everything is light and fluffy.
- Layer about half of the pudding mixture over the crackers, then cover with another single layer of graham crackers. Cover with remaining pudding mix, then top with a final layer of graham crackers.
- In a medium saucepan over low heat, combine butter and cocoa. Stir until dissolved. Remove from heat and stir in powdered sugar, milk, and vanilla. Stir until smooth. With an offset spatula or butter knife, spread icing evenly over the top layer of crackers. Chill entire dish in the refrigerator for 2 hours or more. Serve cold. Makes 12-15 servings. Enjoy!
Garlic Cheese Loaf
Ingredients
- 1/2 cup butter (1 stick)
- 1/4 tsp garlic powder
- 2 rolls refrigerator biscuit dough
- 1 cup grated sharp cheddar cheese
Instructions
- Preheat oven to 400 degrees. Grease a medium sized loaf pan.
- Melt butter in a saucepan and stir in garlic powder. Place cheese in a large bowl.
- Peel apart biscuit dough then cut biscuits into quarters. Dip pieces in butter, then roll in shredded cheese. Layer into the prepared bread pan.
- Bake in a preheated oven for 25 minutes or until crispy brown. You may need to turn down the oven if the top browns too quickly. Makes 6-8 servings. Enjoy!
MIL’s Wilted Lettuce Salad
An old-fashioned recipe for a sweet and sour salad.
Ingredients
- 1 bunch leaf lettuce, cleaned and broken into pieces
- 1 small onion, chopped
- 6 strips bacon
- 1/3 cup vinegar
- 1/3 cup sugar
- salt and pepper
Instructions
- In a large salad bowl, place lettuce and onion. Set aside in refrigerator to crisp.
- In a small skillet, cook bacon until crisp. Remove, drain and crumble. Lower heat and add vinegar. Continue to heat until boiling and add sugar. Lower heat and stir until smooth. Pour over lettuce just before serving. Salt and pepper to taste. Makes 6 servings. Enjoy!
Transcript
- Hello and welcome to At Home today. We’re so glad you could be with us, and let me say that today we’re honoring some very, very special women in all of our lives. We’re honoring our mothers. Today’s our Mother’s Day program. I know it’s a couple of weeks early, but because of some programing changes with our telethon, our fundraiser coming up, we wanted to be sure that we got this program to you, so that you would be able to plan for the next couple of weeks just what to do for that very special lady in your life. You say, well, Arlene, you don’t know if my mother was good to me or not. No, I don’t, but the person that gave you life and the one that nurtured you as a child, they’re important people. If they’re the same people, that’s fine. If you’re adopted, then you have double things to be, people to be appreciative of. I wanna tell you that whatever you do, do something special for your mother. Um, my mother’s been gone for about six years now, and I miss her everyday. I was going through some of the dishes. This little dish my mother had in her cabinet. This was purchased for her for 15 cents. Now, this is a lot of years ago, folks. This is we’re talking, believe it or not, and I just thought that when I looked at this dish, how many times as a child there were ministers, preachers, missionaries, evangelists, or just good friends, or someone that mom and dad just invited to come home for that Sunday dinner have had their hands on this dish and passed it around the table. Mom would put pickles or olives or some small little, maybe celery stuffed with cream cheese. This was that special dish. I treasure this because my mother’s loving hands many times prepared the food that was in this dish. At the end of the program, you’re going to see the dishes that my mother used for over 50 years in her kitchen every day and they’re pink. Isn’t that ironic that they would be? But today we wanna honor mothers and we’re going to be preparing a meal that if you’ve never cooked before, or if you’re not a whiz in the kitchen, you would be willing to try to prepare for your mom. It’s easy to call and make reservations and take her out, and that’s fine, but there’s just nothing quite as nice as doing something from your heart, putting a little of yourself into it, and saying, hey, Mom, I prepared this for you. Maybe you and your dad, or maybe you and the kids, or whoever, whomever. Please, just think about what you could prepare, and make a day so special for Mom. Don’t forget those wonderful Mother’s Day cards that we’ve been looking at here, and how about a special gift? Imagine what it would feel like coming home from church on Mother’s Day, and she would find there’s the gift with a beautiful card that has your sentiments, and then a wonderfully prepared dinner that only you could do for her. Imagine how she’d feel? I thank God for my mother. I thank God for mothers who’ve had influence over people in the world. You know they say the hand that rocks the cradle really rules the world, and for a lot of years that was very, very true. Another woman in my life besides my mother, my own precious mother, was my grandmother, my paternal grandmother, my dad’s mom. You see a picture here on the screen now. This is Mary Bobak. She was a special lady, a loving, gentle, wonderful lady, and ah, she was a true mother to my father, and just instilled in him so many beautiful attributes of life. There’s my mom and dad together just, I guess shortly before Mom passed away. Precious people and it’s just so wonderful to be able to honor them, and that’s something that you can do. So today we’re gonna honor mothers. If yours is still alive and still here with you, you put your arms around her everyday and you hug her, and you tell her that you love her. And if she’s gone, you stop and reflect that day, and remember how wonderful it was to have a mother just like her. We’ll be back in just a minute to begin today’s special tribute to moms. Stay with us. Here’s today’s special hint. Here’s today’s At Home hint. Use a clean, plastic squirt top mustard bottle filled with icing to decorate your cake. It works nicely. If you’ve got a helpful hint that you’d like to share with us, we always want to hear from you. Send your hint to, At Home Hints, CTV, Wall, Pennsylvania, 15148-1499. Well, we’re back and the first dish that we’re preparing today is called Easy Swiss Steak. What we use here for this particular dish is cube steak. When you go to the store, ask them to please make sure that you can get the leanest cube steak. It kind of looks like a hamburger patty, but it isn’t. It’s steak that they put through a tenderizer, break down all the fibers, and it is very, very good tasting if you get the lean ones. If you get some that has gristle and fat in it, then that’s not good, so I suggest that what you do is go to Foodland, and ask them could you please give me some good cube steaks. You need two pounds and what this will do, two pound will serve about four people, all right? And you have flour, about a cup of flour. Three teaspoons of garlic powder, and some pepper. You mix that up. You take the pieces of beef and you drudge them in the flour. You put a couple tablespoons of oil in our pan. For time-wise, this is why we’ve gone ahead, because we want this to cook for you. Then you brown it on both sides in the oil. That’s where we are right now. That’s what we have here, is our several pounds of our cube steaks and they’ve all been nicely browned. Now what we’re gonna do is we’re gonna take a couple of onions and we’re going to just, we’ve cut them in quarters, and then sliced them. We wanna add that into our skillet. Next we’re gonna take a couple of green peppers, and we’re slicing those. I’m just adding them. My mom used to make Swiss steak. She could make the best Swiss steak. Have all this fresh vegetables in it and a good tomato flavor. All right, now we have the peppers and the onions. Now what we’re gonna do is take a couple of cans of stewed tomatoes and these already have all the seasonings and flavorings, and we’re just gonna put that over top of our steak. Aha, does that sound good? Does it smell good? You know it does. And basically, just push that down. That’s gonna cook down now. We’ll lower our heat, because we don’t want this to cook too fast, but it’ll cook for about 20, 25 minutes. We’re gonna cover it. Let me lower this just a little bit. We have to keep it going, because it has to have, has to maintain the heat, but we don’t want it to cook so fast that it cooks up all our vegetables and the meat would not be well done. Basically that’s all. We’re gonna boil some wide noodles. We’re gonna serve that over wide noodles. Some people serve it over rice. Some people serve it over mashed potatoes. Whatever you think your mom would like. The noodles is very easy because you can boil them the same time that you’re making the Swiss steak. Now what we’re going to add to this wonderful dinner is a garlic cheese loaf. This is a bread that we’ll be using. This is really interesting. Let me get them out of the refrigerator before I can show you how to prepare them. This is made from refrigerator biscuits. What we’ve done is taken some refrigerator biscuits, and we’ve opened them, two rolls of them, and you need to melt some butter in a sauce pan or in a bowl and have about a cup or cup and a half of grated cheese. This is sharp cheese, okay? And you take your little biscuits. You have your scissors nicely sterilized, and you cut them in fourths just like that. Have a bread pan ready right here. This has already been greased. We’re gonna add some garlic powder to our melted, oh, about a fourth of a teaspoon, maybe a little bit more depending. If you like more, add more. And we’re mixing up just like that. Now we’re gonna take these cubes of refrigerator biscuits. That’s all it is. You say, but Arlene, how come you don’t make everything from scratch? Well, you can, but why sacrifice not making something, because you don’t know how to make something from scratch? If these prepared things are there and you don’t have the time, why wouldn’t you use them? The outcome is what you’re achieving here. Your mom being able to sit down and have some bread that she said, do you know that my Mary made that loaf of bread. Just look how good that is. That’s that garlic bread, just look. Well, I mean your mother would be so proud of you. So don’t worry about it. Well, I didn’t make it from scratch. Well, that’s okay, that’s all right. When you have time, you’ll learn how to do that and it’ll be fine. Now, I’m gonna put some cheese. After I get my first layer, you can either roll these individually in the cheese, but I think what I’m gonna do is sprinkle when I get the first layer done. Sprinkle the cheese over it, because I don’t think I could get my cubes in there to begin with. I think we have a small container here. But this will just season them very well. You can see it’s not a hard process at all. You could probably do this ahead of time, and you could even rewarm it the day of. Like if you wanted to bake this maybe the day ahead of time and then just put it in the freezer, or wrap it real well and put if in the refrigerator. Whoops, okay, let’s see. Now this is gonna take you a little time to do this, so allow for it. And ah, it makes you feel good when prepare things for someone who has been so good to you. If you stop and thought of all the meals that your mom has prepared for you over your lifetime, just think about that. Well, that would be, I mean you could hardly believe it, could you? And we’re saying today, just make something special for her. I think how your mom’s gonna feel so special because you cared enough to do this, or your wife’s gonna feel that way. I don’t wanna leave the men out who are, you say, well yeah, but she’s not my mom. No, she’s not, but she’s the mother of your children. If they’re little and they can’t do something, then why not help her out? Why not help them out and make the gift and the card from the kids and from you? That means so much to women. I think a lot of guys don’t realize how important the little things that they do for their wives, how important that is to us. We really, I mean that’s so special to think that even though you’re busy, you have a vocation, you’re working, that you would stop, and take the time to do something special. That just means everything in the world to us. So you know, just let’s be thinking about that when it comes time for Mother’s Day this year. Let’s think about something special. If you’re married to a woman who likes to get out in the country, and maybe wants to get out of the kitchen, well take her on like a little excursion. You know, pack a picnic. Right after church, get home, pack that picnic, and why not, you know, load her in the car, and say I’m taking you out and have a picnic. What if it’s raining? Well, if it’s raining, you know, you find a little some kind of a canopy somewhere and just break out a picnic for her, why not? Don’t always do the norm. Do something that’s very different, something you haven’t done before and surprise her. My mom was this kind of a woman who, you know, her children, her family, her kids were everything. She and my dad pastored a church for many, many years, and her whole life was devoted helping other people, and doing for other people when perhaps there were times when she needed things done herself, but she always put everybody first before herself. And ah, you just don’t forget people like that. And you think, you know, I don’t, I don’t, if you, when you have your mother, you don’t know what you’d do without her, and I used to feel that way. I’d think, boy, I don’t know what, what am I gonna do if something happens to her. But I know that just the same as it was with my father, it was with my mother, the Lord really sustains you at a time when you’re at your most severe loss, and I appreciate the faithfulness of God in that area. But today we’re celebrating the mothers that we have all enjoyed. My mother had such a way with council. She would never inflict what she thought on you, but if you asked her, she did not hesitate to tell you what she thought. And she could tell you in a minute if she thought that what you were doing was not exactly right, and she didn’t hold back. In every decision, every bit of council that she made had a basis in the word of God. That’s why she was such a wise woman. Because she didn’t just tell you what she thought to make you feel good or feel bad or whatever. She did what she felt, she said what she felt that God wanted her to say, because it was scriptural what she had to say. All right, we’re gonna put this into a preheated 400 degree oven, and we’re going to bake it for about 25 minutes. So we’ve got our oven on, and we’re gonna bake it for 25 minutes. So we’re gonna be right back in just a minute with the continuation of our Mother’s Day special dinner. We’ll be right back.
- Well, we’re back and now we’re going to make our dessert for our Mother’s Day special dinner, and this is called Eclair Dessert, and this was summited to us by Beverly Higgins. Thank you very much, Beverly. We appreciate it. What we’ve done here is just taken our 13 by nine pan, and we’ve lined it, greased it and line it with, you have to buy one box of graham crackers. It’s really important to do that. While we’re talking, before I explain that. It’s two boxes of French vanilla instant pudding. French vanilla instant pudding, three cups of milk, and we’re just going to combine that and let that thicken up because it takes a little while for that to thicken. And ah, this is one of those quick and easy desserts which I’m always looking for. I like quick and easy. That’s one of my favorite things, because who has time to labor, and labor, and labor, and labor? If you do it’s fine, but if you don’t, you don’t. Okay, back to the graham crackers. We’ll probably put about four layers of graham crackers. So we’re making our pudding, and to that I’m going to add either a whipped cream or Cool Whip. Now today I’m going to be adding some whipped cream that I have here, but you’d want a large, one of the large boxes or containers of Cool Whip. Dream Whip works fine, any of that, that’s all fine. And we’re just going to fold our Cool Whip or whipped cream into this pudding mixture, because that’s what’s going to go on the top of this. And I would like the girls to get the stuff for the icing, please. If you have that together, good, okay. You know, we do these programs, it’s amazing the things you have to remember . And sometimes we’re good at it and sometimes we forget. But there’s an icing that goes over this. And so after we assemble. Okay, and we’re going to fold this, very easily fold it. Come on in, Sandy. You can get the ingredients while we’re working on this. This is Sandy and she, usually see the top of her head like you are now, well, she’s helping us out today. She’s a great help to us. And we’re just gonna fold the Cool Whip or the whipped cream into our French vanilla, and this is gonna go as one of the layers on our, it’s called an Eclair Dessert. And if you know what an eclair is, then you’re gonna enjoy this, because the Eclair Dessert is cold and graham crackery, and has chocolate over the top. So you’re gonna wanna put a spoon about a third of this over the graham crackers. Now you’re gonna wanna make this ahead of time because this has to chill. So it’s important to do that. And just make sure you cover all the graham crackers, okay. Does this kinda put you in the mind of a banana pudding, Bill?
- [Bill] Yes.
- I think so too. Now the other thing that we would do with this is we will definitely have a salad, and I have a salad that’s very easy. You’d wanna do that. You’d also want to have with the fresh bread that we’ve baked. You’d also want to do a um, some kind of a special beverage. Maybe a spritzer of some kind. Just think up some special different types of things that maybe your mom likes and you’ve heard her say, oh, that tasted really good. I really enjoyed that. And you know, maybe she hasn’t had that for a long time, so why not make it for her for her special Mother’s Day? If it’s spaghetti, make her spaghetti. This is just some ideas. Of course you don’t have to make what we make. We hope you would, but just in case, you know, that you can’t, that’s okay, doesn’t matter. Okay, but just the important thing is to do something special for mom, all right? Here we go with another layer. Gonna spread about half of that on, and you can see it does thicken up. Because you’re gonna put this in, and let this chill for about two hours. Once we have the icing on it, and also, here we go, more crackers. I think we have enough for three layers, like I said, of crackers. And I don’t think this would work as good with the graham cracker crumbs. I think you would want to be sure to use the whole crackers, okay. And just keep putting them out. You say, this takes a lot of time. Yeah, it does, but that’s okay. You know why? She’s special and it’s worth doing it for her because she is special. This is you mom. You only have one mom in your life, and you wanna treat her special. Okay, now, the final bit of pudding. This look good? And you know that when this gets cold, this is gonna be incredible. Incredibly delicious when this gets cold. Okay, now what I wanna tell you about the ah, because I’m not gonna have time to make it. I wanna tell you about the salad that we’re doing. You’ll see it at the end of the program. It’s a great salad because it’s got regular lettuce and romaine lettuce in it, some crumpled bacon, fried bacon, and you drain it and crumble it. And it also has croutons and green peppers and cheese, and then you put a sweet and sour dressing on it. And I’ll tell you what. You will like that. And you just assemble it like you would a tossed salad. It’s very tasty, very delicious, and something that I know your mother would really enjoy. Don’t have to worry about, oh, how do I make the salad dressing? Don’t worry about it. Just buy some that you have bottled, thank you. We’re going to melt, see, we melt some butter in a sauce pan and then we add some milk, a couple of cups of powdered sugar, and some vanilla, and that will make our icing for our Eclair Dessert. This refrigerates for two hours like I said. And there you have it for mom. We’re gonna make our icing, and we’ll be right back in just a minute. Here’s how you can get all of the recipes you’ve seen today.
- [Announcer] To receive the recipes presented on today’s program, plus many more great recipe ideas, send your best donation and a stamped, self-addressed business sized envelope to At Home, CTV, Wall, Pennsylvania, 15148-1499. You’ll receive Arlene’s heartwarming newsletter, Enjoy, featuring an entire month of At Home recipes including today’s mouthwatering dishes. Be sure to include the Enjoy issue number with your request.
- Well, here we are at our Mother’s Day special dinner, and I hope we’ve given you some ideas today of some things you could prepare for your special mom. Let me show you. Here’s our Swiss steak. You can see it’s nice and tender, and the peppers are still tasty and the onion, and we’ve added some noodles. Told you we put some nice wide noodles with that, and our salad that has crumbled bacon and some cheese, and romaine and head lettuce. We’ll include those recipes, even though we didn’t have a chance to tell you about them. Here’s the garlic cheese loaf. Doesn’t that look wonderful? Yummy, yum, ah, smells great, and this is the Eclair Dessert. Chocolate on top. Remember, this has to chill for two hours. Hope you noticed that these dishes are not the normal dishes that we have on At Home. I have to show you that this was a set of dishes that my mother used everyday. These were her everyday dishes, and they tell me that when brother was three years old, I think he’s 56 now, my oldest brother, they bought these at the Sears and Roebuck in the East Liberty part of Pittsburgh. This was service for 12. Beautiful vegetable dishes, and I mean complete set and it was $29. Now does that tell you that that was a few years ago? I think so. But you know, these are memories, and I hope that you’re making memories with your parents and with your mom. I hope that this time that you spend together is very special, and you know, don’t wait till just Mother’s Day to tell her how important she is to you. Tell her every day. Doesn’t take anything to say, Mom, I love you. I know if my mom was here, I’d be telling her. I always did before and I would continue to do it. Moms are special people. They’re gifts from God. They will always have your best interest at heart, and they’ll look out for you. When other people will tell you something else, your mom will tell you the truth for the most part. So you listen to her because she’s got words of wisdom. You know, I’m amazed at how smart my parents got, the older I got, because their wisdom was not always appreciated. But I’m thankful that even though my mom’s gone, God’s added other women to my life who’ve taken up their, never take their place, but taken up that role of wisdom and help for me, and I thank God for them. Honor them today too. Most of all, be sure to join us the next time, because it just wouldn’t be the same without you here At Home. We love you and Happy Mother’s Day.
- [Announcer] Fresh produce provided by Jordan Banana, wholesalers of fresh fruit and vegetables in Dravosburg, Pennsylvania. Appliances provided by Dacor Distinctive Appliances. A reflection of your good taste. Groceries provided by Foodland, where the answer is always yes. Cornerstone Television wishes to thank all our faithful viewers whose consistent prayers and financial support have made this program possible.
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