Susan Steele Hardin of Calhoun City calls herself a “dessert fanatic.”?Like so many, she says sweets are her weakness. She always keeps a dessert made and her family is spoiled to homemade. When she and Tony married, sweets were the only thing she could make, so she would go to the store, buy groceries, then call her mother, Mary Steele, to ask her how to fix whatever meat she had bought, and she always had a good recipe.

Deb Bramlitt of Bruce likes to make desserts and “sweets are her weakness!” Desserts she usually makes for ‘holiday feeds’ and family reunions are the recipes she included, which can be doubled or tripled as needed, because a lot of times she cooks in large amounts. Besides family meals, for church youth lunches years ago and Weyerhaeuser dinners in the past, favorites prepared usually included Chocolate Delight, Sweet Potato Casserole, Nacho?Potatoes and Ritz Cracker Crusted Chicken.

Charlsie Alexander of Bruce has a passion for cooking. It gives her joy and peace, and she says “that’s the only thing I can do.” She loves to entertain and have girlfriends over to eat because she loves to feed people. She likes to cook something different for these gatherings, and when she hosts GRACE?Club.

Sherry Powell of Calhoun City is “sweet on sweets.” Desserts are her favorite to eat and make year round, and whenever they bring a meal to work for someone’s birthday or because they have no cafeteria at the Career Center, she is the one designated to bring dessert. The boss’s (Don Hardin) favorite is chocolate cake, and their next favorite is Strawberry Crunch. Sherry is Digital Media Technology Instructor at the center.

Kaye Wright of Calhoun City, dietary manager at Bruce Community Living Center, has served in this capacity in various nutrition departments for over 27 years. She is now serving as President Elect-Elect of the MS?Dietary Managers’ Assn. At BCLC she incorporates menus sent to her to include what her residents like.

Joice Maddox of Bruce likes to cook when she’s in the mood, but her Christmas tradition for the last 40 years has been baking Candy Cane cookies for Christmas Eve. She loves Christmas baking because the cookies are favorites of her sons, Greg and Bryan, and grandchildren, Wiley, Walt and Abigail.

Although Fran Jones of Calhoun City hasn’t made Italian Cream Cake since her Band Booster days at least 15 years ago, she does prefers to bake over cooking a meal, and holiday cooking is her favorite. “When my wife, Frances, and I were Band Boosters, Mrs. (Fran) Jones would donate her Italian Cream Cake for Band Booster auction. It was a favorite and always the cake that brought the highest bid,” said Tommy Collins. Fran got recipe from Jeanette Floyd in 1976.

Over the past eight years, Glenda Aron and husband, Jerry Fred, have traveled to every state except Washington and Alaska. Among their favorite stops along the way are tea rooms, antique stores, and plant nurseries.

Edmond Quillen, in the Cordon Bleu program at The Cooking and Hospitality Institute of Chicago, also works at Bonsoiree, which he describes as a “French fusion” restaurant. Father, Eddie Quillen, of Bruce, says they have a “fusion” deal here also--but it’s country and French.

When Bonnie Williams was little, she preferred her mother, Nell Aston’s, butter roll from scratch over birthday cake. A few years ago Bonnie, now of Vardaman, did some improvising on the recipe and started using frozen biscuits.

Kayla Bennett Clanton of Bruce says she will not be attempting to learn to make dressing or helping her sister, Nicole, cook a Thanksgiving meal, because she will be eating her dressing at Mamaw (Frances) Bennett’s.

Myra Anglin of Bruce, and formerly of Calhoun City, learned about cooking from her mother, Jean Johnson, and her grandmother, Mary Harrison, and says “nothing beats their cooking.”  She has many “hand-me-down” recipes from them and prefers those to new ones because they’ve been tried and she knows they’re good.