Leah Edington

Despite the fact that Leah Easley Edington’s four children like very plain food and her husband, Walt, eats a lot of taco soup and baked sweet potatoes, she loves to cook and try new recipes.

She likes to read recipes and usually does a lot of substituting to make them the way she wants. An example of that is a Rice and Collard Green recipe she recently saw, that she changed to asparagus. She loves to experiment when she is making a dish to take somewhere, but her “go-to” recipes are strawberry cake and lasagna. Favorites of her cousins, she takes the strawberry cake and lasagna a lot of places, and says they are “quick, easy and good.”

Although Leah tries to get her children–11, 9, 7, and 3– to eat more healthy and more green vegetables, she loves a good cheeseburger and her mother’s fried chicken. Her kids like baked chicken, but nothing spicy.

Christmas is probably Leah’s favorite time to cook. Being a third grade teacher at Vardaman Elementary School, she tries more new recipes around the holidays since she’s out of school then. This Christmas she made candy coated pecans, chocolate covered toffee, apple pie and strawberry pie. Leah learned to cook from watching her mother, Edna Easley, who was always in the kitchen. The first thing she ever made was biscuits, and still makes them flat and crunchy, including this year for their Christmas morning breakfast.

The Easley family gets together for a meal at all the major holidays, including a hog roast in July. They gather at the old homeplace, and “we are packed in like sardines,” because there are usually about 80 in attendance. In addition to the holidays, “there’s almost always somebody retiring or graduating or getting engaged” that they have a party for.

Leah remembers eating molasses with biscuits with her Big Mama, Ruby Easley, at the old house, and her father, Robert Lee, enjoys making sorghum molasses for the family. His brothers help out with that, and their preacher, Bro. Chris Duncan, is learning.

3-Layer Strawberry Cake
1 box yellow cake mix
1 box strawberry Jell-o
1/2 box frozen strawberries
Follow directions on cake mix. Add package of strawberry Jell-o. Mix with 1/2 box of strawberries and juice. Grease and flour three-round pans. Divide batter in pans. Bake 350° for 25-30 minutes. Allow to cool on cooling rack.
Frosting:
8 oz. cream cheese
1/2 stick butter, softened
1/2 cup confectioner’s sugar
1/2 cup granulated sugar
1 small bowl whipped topping
Strawberry juice
Red food coloring (if desired)
Cream butter and cream cheese together. Mix sugars and about 3-4 Tbsp. strawberry juice left from the box. Add 4-5 drops of red coloring if desired to make the icing pink. Fold in whipped topping. Spread frosting between each layer, sides, and top. Garnish with fresh strawberries if desired.

Leah’s Easy Lasagna
2-8 oz. bags shredded mozzarella cheese
2-8 oz. cottage cheese
2-24 oz. jars Ragu (any kind, but I like tomato, basil, garlic or garden vegetable)
8-10 lasagna noodles (follow directions on package)
1 1/2-2 lbs. ground chuck, browned and drained
Brown and drain meat. Mix meat with Ragu. Spread half the meat mixture in the bottom of a 9×13 casserole dish. Place a layer of lasagna noodles over meat mixture. Spread cottage cheese over noodles. Sprinkle one bag of mozzarella cheese over cottage cheese. Place another layer of noodles over cheeses. Spread remaining meat mixture over noodles. Sprinkle second bag of mozzarella cheese over the top of meat mixture. Bake at 350° for 45 minutes or until brown and bubbly.

Croutons
(Aunt Jackie Easley)
6 slices of bread, cubed
4 Tbsp. butter
Dashes of seasoned salt, garlic salt, red pepper, and lemon pepper Melt butter in a large skillet; add seasonings. Add bread and coat all over. Spread in large flat pan and bake at 325° for 10 minutes. Turn off oven and let set in oven several hours until dry and crisp. Delicious toppings for salads!

Rice Casserole
(Aunt Jan Easley)
1 cup white rice
1 can beef consomme
1 can French Onion soup
1 stick butter
1 can sliced mushrooms
Garlic salt to taste
Melt butter. Mix all ingredients together and pour into an 8×8 casserole dish. Bake at 400° for 30-35 minutes. (Ingredients can be doubled for a 9×13 dish.)

Banana Pound Cake
(Edna Easley)
1 yellow cake mix
1 cup mashed bananas (better with very ripe bananas)
1 pkg. dry vanilla pudding
4 eggs
1/4 cup oil
3/4 cup water
Preheat oven to 350°. Mix all and pour into Bundt or tube pan. Bake for 45 minutes to one hour. Leave in pan.
Pour-over sauce:
Boil together one cup sugar, one stick butter, 1/4 cup water. Prepare sauce and have ready to pour over cake as soon as it comes out of oven. Let soak at least 20 minutes before removing cake from pan. This sauce makes the cake very moist. You can omit the sauce, and the cake is a lot like banana bread.

Baked Coconut Pie
(Grandmother Rachel Denton)
1 1/2 cups sugar
3 Tbsp. flour
5 eggs
2 tsp. vanilla or coconut flavoring
1/2 stick margarine
2 cups milk
2 pkgs. frozen coconut (reserve a small amount for the top of pies)
Melt margarine and add flour. Mix in eggs, sugar, and milk. Partially cook in microwave. Add vanilla or coconut flavoring. Next mix in coconut. Pour into pie crust. Place pie tin in Pyrex dish before baking. Bake at 350 until brown.
Meringue
5 egg whites, 1/2 cup sugar
Beat egg whites well until fluffy. Gradually add sugar as you mix egg whites. Spread meringue onto baked pie. Sprinkle reserved coconut on top of meringue. Brown in oven until coconut is toasted. Makes two pies.