Category: Bow Ties

[Yesterday, I re-posted a photo of Mom slicing her cheese bread. I told about the importance of cheese bread at our family holiday meals. Today, here’s a second re-post of the recipe.]

Five red Bow Ties o’ the Day are proud to provide a recipe we think you’ll find tasty. It’s cheesy and bready. Who could find fault with that?

Actually, I really can’t call this a “recipe.” Mom’s recipes ranged from easy-peasy to intricate and near-impossible. This is a simple one. Three ingredients are all you need. You’ll also need an oven.

1 loaf of French bread. 1 stick or 1/2 stick of butter. And one jar of Kraft Old English Spread.

Lay a sheet of foil across a cookie sheet. You do not want to have to clean baked-on cheese off your cookie sheet. Use the foil.

Hand-mix the cheese spread and butter together until it’s creamy. Mom generally uses the whole stick of butter, although I’ve seen her use just half a stick. I always use just the half.

With a bread knife, skin ALL the crust off the French bread. Ditch the crust.

Cover the bottom of the skinned loaf with the cheese/butter spread, then place it on the foil-covered cookie sheet. Continue to cover the sides and top of the loaf with the cheese/butter spread. Spread the spread as evenly as you can. Since the size of French bread loaves vary, you might or might not use the entire amount of spread. Plus, you’ll definitely want to experiment with how thick you like your cheese spread layer to be. If you want a thin layer of the cheese/butter mixture on the entire loaf, you’ll probably have enough to cover two loaves.

Bake for 10-ish minutes, at 350 degrees. Ovens vary, you know. Experiment with how crusty—if at all—you like the top of your cheese bread to be. The more you experiment with the variables, the more cheese bread you’ll “have to” eat.🤤

I recommend you slice the cheese bread (an electric knife works best) while it’s still hot. And put it on the table hot. But it’s still yummy when it has cooled off.

As any good cook knows, even with an easy recipe the taste is in the details. Mom’s excellent cooking was the result of tweaking good recipes to make them better, as well as her knack for timing. Still, she cooked primarily by sight, smell, and taste. Measuring ingredients wasn’t much of a concern to her. She guesstimated a lot. That’s what makes it difficult to pin down her actual recipes.

If someone wanted a recipe, she’d give them one. She’d also invite them to come to the house to watch her make what they were asking about. Her complicated candy-type creations are especially almost impossible to re-create, even if you watched her make it and tried to write everything down. She was always changing the way she did it or adding a new twist or a different ingredient. And, of course, exact measurements were not always Mom’s way.

Oh. About the potato chips and Diet Coke in the photo. Those food staples are for you to snack on while you make the cheese bread. Substitute a bottle of wine for the Diet Coke, if you are so inclined. Chocolate is also allowed.

[This is a re-post from 2019, offered for your re-enjoyment. I’ve had a request for Mom’s cheese bread recipe again. I will re-post her recipe in the next TIE O’ THE DAY installment.]

Entwined hearts Bow Tie o’ the Day is perfect for Mom. I have been told she’s having an extremely tough time missing Dad recently. Even though he’s gone, their love lives. It’s a time/space continuum thing.

This photo was taken almost 20 years ago. I think Mom is in the kitchen at the Palomar. Most likely, this was a Thanksgiving bash. Check out Mom’s attack face. She is darn well gonna conquer those two loaves of cheese bread. And note the oven burns on the back of Mom’s hand. You’ve heard of rug burn. Well, this is cheese bread burn. She burned her hands on the oven coils every time she made cheese bread. Every time, I tell you. Mom never met an oven glove she’d use. She was strictly a dishtowel gal.

In our house, the electric knife was used for cutting only two things: carving turkey and slicing cheese bread. It was basically used only on Thanksgiving, Christmas, and Easter. And then the gadget was immediately put back in its little 70’s original box, and into the kitchen cupboard where Mom and Dad kept the checkbook. The knife laid in its skinny box all alone for 362 days a year. Poor thing. I should have put a bow tie in with it for company.

Mom’s cheese bread is a sacred food. Many of you have had the privilege of tasting Mom’s confections over the years, and you know she was an excellent all-around cook. But Mom’s cheese bread was something she made almost exclusively for family holiday dinners. It was a rare gem. And it was the key food item of those dinners. Dinner did not happen without the cheese bread. Kinds of salads changed. Different versions of potatoes joined the basic mashed potatoes. You’d think the turkey would be the star of these feasts, but it was always about the cheese bread.

And it was war. The most desired slices of cheese bread are the ends, where the cheese-to-bread ratio is the highest. If you managed to score one of the ends, it was only because you managed to steal one before someone else stole it.

At some point after dinner, there was what I’ll refer to as The Tri-Annual Battle Over the Tinfoil On Which the Cheese bread Was Cooked. The tinfoil cheese was like the cherry on top. It was like the prize in the cereal box. The foil was covered in baked-on, cheese bread drippings. Dad usually won that war. And then he would sit at the head of the table, picking carmelized blobs of cheese off the tinfoil—obnoxiously, so we couldn’t help but watch it happen. And we drooled through the torture of witnessing him gorge himself on the results of our defeat.

I have made this cheese bread for parties and dinners and potlucks in three states in this U.S. of A., and I can attest to its lusciousness. A couple of enemies became my friends because of this cheese bread. Its power knows no bounds. 🧀 🥖