Tiffany's Table: Mom's cooking lessons

"Dinner is ready when the smoke alarm goes off."

Tiffany's Table: Mom's cooking lessons

Tiffany Kjos' family Betty Crocker cookbook is held together with fat rubber bands.

Tiffany's Table: Mom's cooking lessons

Tiffany Kjos tries a carrot cake recipe with her mother, Barbara Kjos, whose handwritten recipe for a family-favorite carrot cake disappeared. With a mixer absent, everything - mixing, grating, creaming - was done by hand.

Tiffany's Table: Mom's cooking lessons

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Tiffany's Table: Mom's cooking lessons

The carrot cake recipe from bettycrocker.com, with some personal adaptations like lemon zest, resulted in a pretty, delicious cake.

Tiffany's Table: Warm memory can be best of ingredients

When people are gone, we often regret having not spent enough time with them. That's one regret I don't have when it comes to my Grandma Alice, who died several years ago.

Tiffany's Table: Warm memory can be best of ingredients

Tiffany's Table: Warm memory can be best of ingredients

Tiffany's Table: Totally cheesy

If you prefer your veggies swimming in cheese, here's the recipe for you. My mom found the instructions for making Cheddar Chowder in "The Complete Cheese Cookbook," by Kraft Kitchens, around the time the book was published in 1973. We've adapted it to include a heftier dose of vegetables an…