Feature Friday—Kathy Matthews

I met Kathy Matthews through blogland. Her blog, Oregon Gifts of Comfort and Joy: The Online Diary of a Central Oregon Grandmother has just about everything in it from family to food to crafts to meme’s to pictures and slide shows.

Kathy was featured in The Newberry Eagle and interviewed by a reporter, Wendy Korn about The Art of Blogging. Kathy has some 40 blogs! Yes, 40! Read The Art of Blogging and find out more about Kathy and her blogs.

Kathy also likes to cook and so it was a likely fit that Kathy is my Feature Friday for my food blog. You can check out other foods too that Kathy has made. I have her Split Green Pea Soup in one of my previous posts.

I’m a bit of a card freak, so when I spotted some of Kathy’s home-made cards, I had to purchase a few. And let me tell you, they are much cuter in real life. You should check out the blog that features her cards.

If Kathy lived here in Missouri, I have no doubt that we’d meet to do crafts or cook or make cards or just to chat. She’s a super sweet gal with a gigantic heart and I’m so glad that I’ve gotten the pleasure to know her.

Now enjoy Kathy’s Easy Chicken Cacciatore for the step-by-step directions to make this splendid dish.

Kathy's Easy Split Pea Soup with Ham

A friend I met in Blog World posted a blog about her Easy Split Pea Soup with Ham. I asked Kathy if I could use it as one of my posts for Lynn, What's for Dinner and she graciously granted me permission.

Head on over to Oregon Gifts of Comfort and Joy and get the juicy details of her soup (to go directly to the pea soup use link on Easy Split Pea Soup) and all the other delights of her blog. I haven't tried her recipe yet, but now that the weather decided to turn cool again, this seemed like a good day for some homemade soup!

Of course I have to tell some tales of my experience with homemade pea soup. I only hope no offense is taken.

The first time I remember having homemade pea soup was at my Aunt and Uncle's (on my dad's side). I'll leave the names out. My dad, and of course Ruthie (little sister) and I would go to different relatives for dinner when my mom was in the hospital—which by the way was extremely kind and as a little kid I'm sure I didn't appreciate the work involved—so a big thank you to them all.

I don't think kids are big fans of homemade soups, especially pea. Because I'm a eater of any kind of food, it didn't bother me too much, but I know my little sister was mortified to think she had to eat it. My aunt had a big smile on her face, "I made pea soup!" (Like that was going to thrill us.) My dad truly was thrilled. I ate it, but I felt bad for Ruthie because she didn't eat it and I wondered why a grown-up would serve something like that.

The next experience with pea soup involved Ruthie and me again. We had been living at our stepmother's home for a while—not really sure how long—but we noticed she kept things in the fridge for a LONG time. Like moldy long. We'd open up the door to see if there was anything good to eat and found dried up macaroni and cheese with fuzz growing on top or some other thing that was indescribable. She'd never cover anything with plastic wrap, so the food would take on all the flavors roaming around in the fridge and get hard and crusty.

Stepmother served pea soup. Not exactly thrilled but Dad boasted how she could make something delicious out of anything. It was evident as we spooned through the soup to find all the things that had been in the fridge—mold and all. Who'd know with the color of the pea soup.