Today I would like jump ahead to 1973.  This was the year I got married….for the first time.  I also graduated from college this year, just two months before I got married.  While I was very eager to begin a career in teaching  (this was the career of choice, at this time, for a woman who was going to help put her husband through graduate school), I was even more anxious to have a kitchen of my own.  I would be home every day by 4:00 o’clock, and I could start cooking all the recipes I had collected from my grandmother, mother and aunts.  I began my cookbook collection with ” Betty Crocker’s Dinner for Two,” Better Homes and Gardens Recipes for Entertaining,” and of course, “Joy of Cooking.”  I bought countless magazines that contained recipes just waiting for me to try.  I would rip out the pages of luscious dishes and started keeping labeled folders with such names as “desserts,” “chicken,” “appetizers,” etc.  I lined all the cabinets in my small but cozy kitchen with red contact paper and arranged all the pots and pans in size order.  I began a pantry full of cooking staples and spices….even ones I’d never heard of.  I could not wait to get started cooking! We would invite fellow grad students over for dinner, and we still laugh about the disasters that I whipped up in that kitchen.  But somehow, I managed to muster up the audacity to try a recipe from The New York Times Sunday Magazine on September 30, 1973.  It was such a success that I have consistently pleased my family and friends with “Teddy’s Apple Cake” for 40 years.  When autumn arrives, out comes the original copy of this recipe that I tore out of the magazine all those years ago.  Just looking at the worn page from The Times takes me back to that tiny kitchen in Philadelphia and how proud I was of this accomplishment.  I see myself as a young bride, so happy to be beginning my new  life….my life in the kitchen, expressing my love through the magic of food.

TEDDY’S APPLE CAKE

1 1/2 cups oil
2 cups sugar
3 eggs
3 cups flour
1 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon cinnamon
1 teaspoon baking soda
1 teaspoon vanilla
3 cups peeled, cored and thickly sliced Delicious apples
1 cup chopped walnuts
1 cups raisons, optional ( I never add them)
Vanilla ice cream, optional or homemade whipped cream is also good as a topping

1.  Preheat oven  to 350 degrees
2.  Beat the oil and sugar together in electric mixer while assembling the remaining ingredients.
3.  Add the eggs and beat until the mixture is creamy.
4.  Sift together the flour, salt, cinnamon and baking soda.  Stir into the batter. Add all the remaing ingredients, except the ice cream and/or cream, and stir until combined.
5.  Turn the mixture in a bundt or angel food  pan, greased and floured.  Bake for one hour and 15 minutes or until done.  Cool in the pan before turning out.  Serve at room temperature with ice cream or whipped cream, if desired

Yield:  eight servings