Article Title: Ida Hall's Cooking Brings on the Smiles

Edition: December 2001
Category: Horizons
Author: Jake Brown
Article:

Ida Hall, 90, is a straight-talking woman with a wry sense of humor who loves to cook.

She likes it partly because it's rewarding when people "ooh" and "ahh" over her results.

But she's also pretty practical. She wants to know if things don't come out right.

"Sure, it's nice if they tell me it tastes good, but I also like them to tell me it doesn't," she said. "But they don't very often," she says, suggesting people are too polite.

Maybe they are, but could it be that her food is rarely mediocre?

Hall is known in her family and at the Montpelier Senior Center for her great cooking. She does killer macaroni and cheese, baked beans, and angel food desserts among others. For years she was the volunteer who cooked lunches for the entire Senior Center on Tuesdays and Thursdays, and these days she's doing the desserts every other Tuesday at the center.

At a recent meeting with The Bridge, Hall flipped through dozens of recipes, many of them on yellowed newsprint and partly tattered cards, and asked: "Tell me what you want!"

They all looked great, but a beef casserole seemed to rise to the top. (The recipe is at the end of the article.)

"The beef casserole is tender and good," Hall said. "It's nice and tender is all I can tell you." And she added that when you cook the casserole, you should resist the temptation to look at the product too soon. "No peeking," she warns.

Hall, who lives on Elm Street, often cooks for members of her family at her place and in the summer at her family camp on Lake Champlain in Georgia.

Hall grew up in Jericho and Burlington and for 32 years worked at the state highway department garage on the Barre-Montpelier road as a payroll clerk. She retired in the mid-1970s from that job.

Soon thereafter she was one of the first organizers of the senior center which at that time was just getting off the ground.

Today she's at the senior center for square dancing on Monday afternoons, Tuesdays for the rug hooking class. Hall had been taking the ceramic class until that was discontinued.

She organizes bazaars and rummage sales at the center and attends the Trinity Methodist Church on Sundays.

She still drives and walks to many of her errands downtown.

And glasses? Does she wear glasses?

"Just for reading," she says.

Ida Hall's Beef Casserole

1 pound stew meat
1 can cream of celery soup (do not dilute)
1/2 cup Burgundy wine
1 envelope Lipton dry onion soup mix
Put into casserole in order listed. Cover. Bake 3 hours at 300 degrees. Do not look until time is up. Stir before serving.

This has got to be the easiest dish ever made. It always turns out good and you can make it with beer instead of wine and add vegetables. If you're out of Lipton soup mix you can use a bouillon cube and chopped onion. It can be frozen a day or two ahead of time. If you want more gravy, just double the wine and soup.

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