The other night! For my gram's wild rice casserole recipe:

1 C. raw wild rice
1/2 C. white wine (or Vermouth)
1 onion, diced
2 Tb. butter
3 stalks celery, diced
1 qt. broth
1/2 tsp. salt (I leave out or just add a pinch, depending on how salty broth is)

Combine all. Bake in the oven in casserole/Pyrex at 350 degrees for 1.5-2 hours.

If you have time, saute the onion and celery in the butter for 5-10 min. before combining them with rest of ingredients to bake.

SO good!

I call my mom constantly for the "is this still good?" questions. For some reason, 2,000 miles away, I always trust her. And I am always asking my grandma baking questions.

I use recipes and then experiment from time to time with the help a phone call and advice of my family.

My mom actually calls me. Mostly it is for "look this recipie up for me" things. Then we talk for a half hour while I scour the big bad world of web (which she's good at just not as fast as I am).

But I am also the proud owner of my grandma's recipe file book. So every few months I get a call usually from a cousin about some recipe which I always diligently type up (these are great some including really specific directions for things like cookies "mix in the usual way") and send off after reading them. I think the only reason I got to have the recipe file is because I'm nearly always near my phone and will have a 12 hour or less turn around if I'm not home at the time.

I call my dad for meat cooking instructions. He was a chef for 20 years, the broiler being his specialty. I have basic cooking techniques down, and I trust recipes to an extent, but no recipe can beat my dad's detailed descriptions of processes and how things should look each step of the way, and what to look out for.

I think pretty much the only time I have ever made that "Help!!!" phone call was this last Thanksgiving. It was my first time doing the turkey (and it was a 22-pounder that I could barely lift) and I could NOT get into the cavity of the damn thing - from either end! The legs were frozen in place over the body cavity opening, and I couldn't even find the neck cavity. At that point I called my brother and begged him to come over and save me from certain turkey catastrophe - and he did, God bless him!

Last year, I called my dad's girlfriend in Prague (almost a stepmother?) for fool-proof dumpling recipes.

I call for all my favorites they used to make when I lived at home, too. Recently it was for my dad's beef stew recipe.

I often call my mom from the grocery store if a cut of meat that I think she used to use in that recipe I liked is on sale. I ask things like "What cut was that again?" and "How much do I need?"

It's funny because I stopped calling for general handholding maybe a decade ago but now her neighbor is calling her for the same. I think Mom finds it amusing, I know I did, to be reminded of all the things we take for granted because we just know what the recipe means.

Jeez... my Mom calls ME for cooking advice. It's nice, but a little annoying to have to explain why you can't "just boil the meat instead because it will cook faster". They busted their collective butts raising us, but it was pasta and hot dogs/mac & cheese growing up.

Oh man...last November when I baked a cake for my best friend's birthday. The layers were so moist that after I stacked and frosted them, a Grand Canyon-esque fissure began to grow in the center. I got on the phone with my mom right away for advice....my poor mom, she had to listen to me panic for about twenty minutes.

I call mom, my sister calls me... my mom calls each of us. Grandma is consulted and recipes/techniques new and old are emailed and telephoned all around. When food is such a strong part of family interaction, as it is for our family, calling gives answers AND starts conversations. The internet can give you answers quickly, and I use it everyday for food related information. Calling gives you "home" and memories, stories and shared experiences as well as answers... most of the time!

called a few weeks ago to see if i could sub half & half for heavy cream in a baked-pasta recipe. (it was right after xmas and all grocery stores were out of heavy cream!). i usually call her once a month for cooking advice - either what can i sub for a particular ingredient, how do i make one her recipes, or where do i find this obscure ingredient at the grocery store. (thanks, mom!)

I called my mom and dad a couple of weeks ago when a few jars of my pickles froze. I had to make sure I really HAD to throw them out. :-(

I've emailed for recipes a few times, but never called. My dad called about a week after I left for college to ask me how to make popcorn. He and I are the big popcorn fans in our house but I was the designated maker since I was about 10. That was a funny call to get at 18!

We tend to have pow-wows over old cookbooks when I'm visiting. Someone will drag something out and we'll debate it or copy out cakes of yore.

Last time to my mom was while I was making desert for our Christmas Eve festivities; I had questions about her famous apple cake. Yesterday, I was chatting with my mother-in-law and we were making her stew and had a question about one of her ingredients.

This happens frequently at our house.

Not since college 6 years ago. I used to call (or, more frequently, e-mail) for recipes from my childhood. But I have those all either in my head or written down now.

Ihave some kind of mental block about hard boiled eggs - do they go in when the water is still cold? How long do they boil? Or maybe it's really just a nice excuse to call my not-very-phone-friendly dad with a "reason"...

Well I'm getting old---so now I am the one who gets the Help Me! phone calls, but I use the internet all the time.

I called my mom when I was making popovers in a muffin tin and I wanted to know if it was okay to bake a pan without batter in half of it (I wanted space for my popovers to pop!) and I couldn't find the answer online anywhere.

I used to always do the "Mom, how do you make . . ." calls. A few years ago, she finally got fed up and typed up all her recipes and sent them to all us kids for Christmas.

I still call and ask for the ingredients of some things and she'll say, "Why don't you look in that book I gave you?" The answer is usually, "Because I'm standing in the middle of the grocery store and I can't remember what to buy."

Patient, patient woman, that one.

called my dad last week (and I call him all the time).

wanted to make sure I could sub carrots for raisins in a savory dish (raisins seemed really weird to me)

I call both my Mom and Dad with random questions, and my Mom calls me quite frequently with questions, too. My Dad was a Chef for a long time, so he gets the more technical questions. Mom often gets called from the grocery store with questions like "What could I make with this random thing on sale?" or "What am I forgetting if I need to make lasagna and this is all the stuff in my cart?"

I also love to talk on the phone while I cook, so I'm usually chatting with one parent or the other when I'm making something. That makes for very easy question/answer exchanges.

I totally call my parents to find out when food is too old to eat too! I usually call my grandma for recipes though because I learned all my mom's best recipes when I was at home :)

Last time I called home for cooking it was to ask my mom "hey, you never pre-cook manicotti noodles do you? How does that work?" But I don't call very often anymore. Only the first time I make a family recipe, or for a substitution suggestion. When I first started cooking I called quite often.

I called home last with the question of whether I could split my mom's quiche up into muffin tins rather than the pie plate.

And a few weeks ago, I attempted yeast bread for the first time....which necessitated about 10 phone calls to my dad for help.

I called my mother in law for her cheesecake recipe, turns out it calls for two sticks of butter and 12 eggs in addition to more packages of cream cheese than I eat in a year! I couldn't quite get past that so I graciously wrote it down and looked online for another recipe.

Thanksgiving. Several times. The good thing is that I now know how to make gravy without my mom's help. Not bad for a 28 year old!

My sister, Mum and I are attemping to write a cookbook together - so we tend to talk food and recipes all the time. It is great. We all call on each other for different reasons as we all cook with different styles. I guess food in our house has always been the center of things.

My mom, my aunt, my cousin and I are all known for calling each other...depends on what you need to know and who's home when you're panicking!

I don't call as often anymore, but I was assigned the vegetarian Summer Bread for Christmas Eve (a dish that traditionally is NOT vegetarian, but rather is riddled with ham and bacon). I had seen it made every Christmas Eve since I was teeny tiny, but never paid that much attention (mainly because I don't like pork and I was NOT looking forward to that dish). It was a lot of, "Seriously, processed Swiss? And ACCENT?! I am not putting MSG in mine, I'll tell you that much..."

Mine came out delicious: only real Swiss, real chopped onions, and portobello mushrooms instead of meat. It was a huge hit!

Original Summer Bread (from my Great Aunt Dorothy, who got the recipe "at the club"):

Slice 1 loaf round french Bread 8 times - not through bottom crust.
1 pkg Swiss Cheese
2 pkgs Cooked Ham

Cream:
1 cube butter
1/4 cup chopped onions
1/2 tsp Accent
1 tbsp Poppy Seed
1 tbsp dry Parsley

Spread between slices.
Place sliced cheese and ham between slices.
Place 6 slices bacon on top.
Bake 15-20 mins @ 350

Before I moved overseas, my sister would call me -- almost daily -- about some cooking thing or other. Sometimes, it was just "I'm in the grocery store. What should I make for dinner? Because I'm seriously considering buying cereal and milk and calling it a meal."

When I was home for Thanksgiving, she called me from the grocery store. Just because she could, she said.

I called my mom last week for advice on making perogy dough. Apparently the secret is potato water (silly me, I was using regular water).

Never-I'm a more confident cook than my mother and my grandmother practically lives on ready meals (she says she hates cooking). My mum sometimes calls me when she gets something from her weekly veg box she doesn't know what to do with-she tends to promptly ignore my advice and put it straight on the compost heap! Oh well...

Sunday! I'm a vegetarian but wanted to try to roast a chicken for my fiance who is making an attempt to eat healthier meals*. I've never cooked poultry before so I had a range of questions for my lovely father. Back up or belly up? When the recipe says "tuck the wings under the bird" where am I supposed to tuck them? Up? Down? I don't own a roasting pan--will the pan I use for brownies work? And on. And on.

*This meal ended up not actually being healthy, what with the butter brushed on the skin and then timidly poked beneath it. Whoops! He did eat some butter/chicken fat-soaked vegetables, so I've counted it as a minor victory. Thanks Dad.

My parents are TERRIBLE cooks, so no, but everyone calls me constantly for all kinds of advice and recipes.

Not a phone call but a text message, the other day: "Mum! What can I do with uncultured buttermilk?"

...she told me she hadn't a clue and I should google it.

I call at least once a month with an "is this still good" question or "what can I substitute for this crucial ingredient I neglected to buy" question.

At this point my wife and do not make these calls, but we do receive them. Our son calls at least once a wk on average w a cooking question. We are very happy to help and pleased he has such an interest in cooking good food.

Love the picture of the phone! It looks just like the one in our kitchen made out of bakelite-heavy as lead but works like a charm

During the pre-Christmas baking season, I called my mum for help with pie crust, too.

I desperately wanted to get my Mother's country style steak right. And the eye of round (which she uses) is cut a bit differently in New England than it is in the South, where I am from. She talked me through it (about a year and a half ago) and I have since perfected her steak recipe. We have it a few times every winter.