Cooking with Kaye: One Sister, Two Cups of Chaos, and a Dash of Tabasco
...here we go...
During a hilarious phone call this morning, I asked my sister Katy the question that may come to define our latest Substack experiment:
What have we done?!
The call was to fact-check the amount of Tabasco sauce in the Olive Tart recipe—one of Mom’s secret specialties we’re sharing in our new column, Kaye Gammack’s Secret Sauce. Turns out, no, it is not supposed to be a half-cup. I repeat: not a half-cup of hot sauce.
Enter: Richard, Hero of the Household
Richard, who does 95% of the cooking in our household (and 100% of the math), was helping me figure out how to double the recipe. Not only does he handle our meals and give Dudley the dog his anti-seizure meds twice a day, he’s also the one who noticed the eyebrow-raising amount of Tabasco listed.
From now on, Richard will be our in-house recipe proofreader. Consider it a public service.
Had we published it that way, and some of you dear paying subscribers actually made it… well, let’s just say your guests might still be breathing fire. Katy felt awful—as our official family recipe archivist, she took it personally. But I told her, “Hey, don’t worry. This’ll make people laugh.”
Too soon old, too late smart…Kaye Gammack
Now, I have one story about publishing a recipe in print, and it was a disaster. I’ll share that at the end of this column, so you’ll know this isn’t my first culinary catastrophe. But it is why I decided to make the Olive Tarts myself yesterday.
All Signs Pointed to "Don't Do It"
So why did I think printng recipes again was a good idea? The red flags were flapping like tea towels on a clothesline.
One of them came courtesy of Iowa Writers’ Collaborative restaurant reviewer and actual food authority,
.If you don’t know Wini, trust me—she’s who you want reviewing your dinner, not me. Wini spent nearly 30 years as a food writer and editor for Meredith Corporation. She’s smart, precise, and has never accidentally weaponized an Olive Tart, to my knowledge.
We’ve also got another real-deal food expert joining the Collaborative this week —someone who actually judges food at the Iowa State Fair. So if you’re looking for recipes with culinary credibility, don’t worry. It’s en route. Check out
’s column, Grandma’s Recipe Box.But We Did It Anyway
As for Katy and me? We’re doing this column for fun. Which, as of this morning, involved more funny than fun. And now, thanks to a major benefactor who would probably not be happy if I disclosed her name, and seven other brave paid subscribers, we have raised enough money to offer three scholarships to the retreat. This is very cool. If you know of someone who could really use a retreat to work on their writing projects this September, send them my way:
When we started this project—digging through boxes of Mom’s handwritten recipes—we thought, this could be a fun way to honor our mom, and do something together. And, like so many, we need a bit of relief from the pressure-cooker of daily news.
So, we thought we’d share a few family favorites, raise some money for scholarships to the Okoboji Writers’ and Songwriters’ Retreat, and maybe—just maybe—make you smile along the way.
Flashback: The Younkers Tea Room Disaster of 1989
The last time I ran a recipe in print was in 1989. I was writing a daily feature column for The Des Moines Register, and on one particularly awful day in my personal life, I stared at a blank screen, paralyzed, wondering how I was going to fill 8.75 inches of news hole.
A reader had sent in a recipe for the legendary Younkers Tea Room Rolls—a delicacy capable of inducing nostalgia-related emotion in anyone raised within 100 miles of downtown Des Moines. I typed it up, hit send, and left the office thinking I’d solved my deadline crisis.
By 6:00 a.m. the next morning, 208,860 copies of The Register were landing on doorsteps across Iowa. And the switchboard lines in the newsroom began to lightup, bing, bing, bing, bing, bing.
“Julie, I don’t see flour or eggs listed. Can that be right?”
No. No, it was not right.
These were pre-internet days, when readers clipped recipes and saved them like family heirlooms. Mom’s recipe box is a prime example of this. For months, my phone rang with readers halfway through the now-doomed rolls. My newsroom colleagues thought it was hilarious. My editor did not.
From that day on, I had a deeper respect for food writers like Carol McGarvey, who made publishing recipes look easy. Carol and Kay Fenton Smith even co-authored a cookbook with 150 blue-ribbon recipes from the Iowa State Fair. The next time I’m at Beaverdale Books, I’m picking up a copy for Richard. He’s earned it.
Please share this with a friend. Pretty please?
Olive Tart Recipe (paid subscribers will have access to all recipes published). But the stories are free.
Next week, Katy says were are going to offer subscribers mom’s Corn and Oyster Casserole recipe:
“I’m pretty sure I can’t f—- that up.”