Cook of the Week: Restricted food plan doesn't stump former military wife
For the first time in decades, Karyn Lunsford of Elgin, can finally get a good night's sleep.
Her husband, a veteran who served two tours in Korea and three in Afghanistan has finally retired. Add to that the recent retirement of her son, also a veteran (three tours in Iraq and Afghanistan) and Karyn feels like celebrating. For Karyn that means cooking up a storm.
Karyn has loved cooking ever since she was a little girl standing next to her mom in the kitchen. After traveling around the United States and Germany with her military husband, the family got stationed right back in Chicago and for Karyn that meant being able to cook again with her mom. The two women would page through her mom's vast cookbook collection and then cook the entire day. Karyn also helped whenever her mother entertained — she remembers one summer when the men in the family went fishing on Lake Michigan and returned with more than 25 pounds of salmon.
“We decided to have a party! We smoked one of them in a steel drum cut in half, and made the rest with different stuffings. We had a lot of fun and made a lot of food!” she laughs.
Whenever her son and his wife visit, he asks for his favorite dishes: biscuits and sausage gravy for breakfast and the taco casserole.
“This is a taco casserole that my mom has made for a ka-zillion years,” Karyn says. Her husband loves her meat loaf — a stuffed creation, loaded with flavor. She shares these recipes with us today.
Essentially, Karyn likes to dabble and experiment when she cooks.
“Some of the dishes just come to me, or it could be something someone else made. I add or subtract whatever I don't like. For the food I make for church, I start off with a base and then add some of this or some of that and what it is, it is.” Karyn likes to doctor up her potato salad or chicken salad using unusual spice combinations.
This year Karyn has been recruited by her church to oversee the jam making for its annual Strawberry Fest on May 2. Visitors to Bethlehem Lutheran Church will enjoy homemade strawberry shortcakes and have the opportunity to buy strawberry jam.
When her granddaughter was diagnosed with multiple food allergies, Karyn trolled the grocery stores for acceptable ingredients and experimented with them to create delicious meals. Coincidentally, Karyn recently learned she's allergic to several foods, so she's back to researching foods and combining flavors to suit her new restrictions.
“I definitely look for flavor now. I'm always looking for spices to add to everything. It is very different.” Though her husband's menu is not restricted, she finds that he doesn't mind the changes she has had to make.
“He likes my new chicken Marsala better than the old one! He doesn't mind the gluten-free noodles and I find ways around the dairy-free. He's eating more vegetables! But he hates that I can have sugar all I want — he can't,” she laughs. One of his favorite dishes however, her stuffed shells, just can't be reproduced for her diet. One dish she's determined to re-create is the infamous pretzel-Jell-O salad.
“I've got the gluten-free pretzels and can use marshmallow fluff instead of the whipped cream … I'm going to figure it out!”
With her new restricted diet, Karen has lost 20 pounds and is feeling better than she has in a long time. Of course, getting a good night's sleep can't hurt.