As a child working alongside of my grandmothers and my mother, I learned from them many of the frugal ways that helped during The Great Depression. You never forget lessons like that. Now so many years later, I want to pass some of the things I have always fixed in my own kitchen. These are simple things, cooked for hungry people. They are not fancy, and they are meant to save money in a tough economy.
About the Author: My name is Anna Patterson, and I grew up in Texas spending summers in Arkansas at my Grandmother's house. Eventually my family moved to Arkansas and I have lived there since. I started cooking when I was five years old. I have been cooking all of my life and actually worked as a cook many times from frying up hamburgers as a short order cook to cooking for about three hundred people three meals a day in nursing homes. I was able to work my way through college this way and ended up teaching and writing. But my love of cooking has never waned, and I wanted to help others with my knowledge in this area. So the cookbooks were born. This book is all about desserts, something which I felt a desire to do a separate book on. I hope people enjoy this. I am married and my husband, Bill, and I share an interest in painting and art. He has always been supportive of my interest in writing. We moved into a unique house a few years back, in fact it is over one hundred years old and has a history to it which we found intriguing. It was built for a couple who was going to be married all of those years ago. We found that romantic, and since I write romance, it seemed to give the house special meaning for both of us. I was a reporter in the state of Arkansas for a number of years. I also went back to college and earned my degree in education. Then I taught for two years and substituted for many years. I was asked by a small town newspaper to go back into newspaper writing so I did. Eventually I turned to novel writing completely. During my time at the newspaper and previously to that, I had seen published many examples of my writing, both in news stories and in features. I also began to take pictures. All of these won me awards from the Arkansas Press Association in feature writing, in-depth reporting and in page layout and many areas relating to newspapers. We always have an interest in ceramics and porcelain doll making and for many years had a huge kiln for this hobby on the back porch. I learned to love making dolls and ceramics from a Great Aunt. I am happy to say, I have always been interested in many things at once, and these interests often appear in my books. Because of my love of cooking, I have published cookbooks as well.