These folks are the last of our “from-scratch gals,” so to speak, and it’s been going on right under my nose for ever so long, but that fact hit me like a ton of bricks, I don’t mind telling you, just the other day.

You see, I’ve been guilty (I actually have a guilty feeling) of picking up a chocolate cake mix. I think of that yummy chocolate cake recipe I have, so really quick and easy to put together, or that red chocolate cake, so moist and yummy. Those box mixes never turn out like that.

All of you “from-scratch gals” know just what I’m talking about. Another thought: Look how the grocery stores, the buildings themselves, have had to expand, aisles and aisles of just box and package mixes. And the thing that we should get the biggest jolt from: The stuff that’s in those boxes that’s not even in those yummy recipes, the additives, are really un-good, even harmful in some respects.

Why would I even think of something like this for a column? Well, one of my daughters handed me this package of gravy mix, saying “I know you like mashed-potatoes and gravy.”

I boiled potatoes for salad, set one or two aside, and made that little bit of gravy, just for a treat — oh so salty, none of that flavor that’s in my gravies from all of the drippings off the roast, the meat frying in the old iron skillet, off the chops or chicken, you know what I mean.

Those mixes are also so expensive. We know also they are here to stay. We need to preserve, to hang onto, to pass on down to our sons and daughters and grandchildren, those really special recipes, teach them, tell them.

Maybe one day long down the road it will all come back, that yearnin’ for real home-cooked food.

Remember now, it’s not advisable to tell everything you know, but it certainly is best to know everything you tell.

— Aunt Norie, P.O. Box 265, Tonganoxie, KS 66086; auntnorie@att.net.