Last week we buried my beloved 96 year old grandmother. Of course we all talked of the many joys she brought to our lives-and food, not surprisingly, was one of the biggest. She was best known for her cream pies and her noodles. On the day ofter her service, my aunt Shirley, my cousin Kevin, and I made chicken and noodles for the family. Aunt Shirley was responsible for mixing up the noodle dough, Kevin rolled and cut the noodles, and I stewed the chickens and made the gravy. Like most women of her time, she had no recipes, she would just eye-ball the ingredients-a pinch of this and a fistfull of that and everything would just come together.

Since aunt Shirley was making the dough, she used aunt Betty's recipe (that would be aunt Betty Crocker).

3 eggs, whipped

2 cups flour (approximate)

Salt

Mix the ingredients thoroughly and let the dough rest, roll out the dough using plenty of flour and turning the dough often until the sheet of dough is very thin. Cut the dough into thin strips, and let the noodles dry-aunt Shirley lets her noodles dry overnight, but we didn't have that much time.

I stewed 4 chickens, picked the meat and let the broth simmer and concentrate. Drop the noodles into the boiling broth, the excess flour clinging to the noodles thickens the broth as the noodles cook and swell slightly, add the picked chicken to the pot and season with salt and pepper. We always serve chicken and noodles over mashed potatoes-this seems a bit starchy, but it's the way we love them.

I'm including a picture of my uncles, her son and son-in-law while they snoopervised our work to make sure they turned out like grandma's.