Hello, and welcome to my kitchen. I’m Miss Peggy.

I grew up in Sparta, Tennessee, and I learned to cook the way most girls did back then: standing next to my mother at the stove, and later in Miss Opal’s home economics class at the high school. Miss Opal could tell whether a sauce was thick enough just by the way it came off a spoon. She taught me that most of what goes wrong in a kitchen isn’t bad luck. It’s a reason. Find the reason, and you’ve found the fix.

Thirty-four years of home ec

In nineteen eighty I started teaching home economics myself, at the high school in Tell City, Indiana, and I stayed thirty-four years. I taught a great many young people to make a pie crust, a white sauce, and a pot of soup that tasted like something. I watched those same dishes go wrong in the same ways, year after year, and I wrote every fix down in my teaching binder. That binder is still on the shelf in my kitchen, stained and stuffed full of recipe cards.

Cooking for two

These days I’m retired, and I cook for two: me and my husband, Walt. Walt is my taste-tester and my toughest critic. If he cleans his plate and goes back to the dish for the corner piece, I know I got it right. Most of my recipes make enough for supper tonight and supper again later in the week, and I’ll always tell you how to freeze the rest.

What you’ll find here

On my YouTube channel, Miss Peggy – Somonday, I explain why the dishes we grew up with go wrong: the soggy pot pie, the mushy noodles, the gluey potato soup. Here on the website you’ll find the full recipe card for every one of those dishes, written out the way I’d hand it to a student, with every measurement and every step.

My Fix-It Cards

Every recipe on this site comes with its own one-page Fix-It Card: what to do when that dish goes wrong, even after it’s already on the table. You’ll find it at the bottom of each recipe. Print it and keep it by the stove.

A few promises

I cook with what you can find at an ordinary grocery store. I’ll tell you what’s worth spending a little more on, and what isn’t. And I’ll always tell you why, because once you know why, you won’t need a recipe to tell you what to do. That’s the best thing a teacher can hope for.

Come back and tell me how it turned out.

Clean plates. That’s the only review I ever trusted.
Miss Peggy