Shelley Powers

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ADA’S GARDEN DINER

Ada K. (Powers) Bullock was my great-aunt. Born in Mississippi, she lived from 1905 to 2001 and was married to Great-Uncle Ernest. She was a renaissance woman who dabbled in gardening, painting, ceramics and, most famously, cooking. Her love for cooking and her unfulfilled dream of opening her own diner led me to create this site in 2018. Ada and Ernest had no children. So, after her death, I ended up with her collection of nearly 700 hand-written recipes ranging from Chicken Divan to Pork Chop Suey and from No-Fail Caramel Cake to Whisper Lites Biscuits. After the collection spent years on my kitchen shelf, I decided to dust off these recipes to see what I could learn about Aunt Ada, about cooking and about my own place in this world. Ada’s Garden Diner is my way of finally opening Ada’s dream diner and sharing with the world the food that she cooked. The site features original drawings, writings and photographs, along with stories of my great aunt and myself.

Below are a few links to and excerpts from the site:

Ada vs. Julia

This morning, as I was thumbing through Aunt Ada’s recipes trying to figure out what I would make for dinner and blog about this week, I was hit with a harsh realization…I’m a cooking snob.

Now, that’s not to say that I have one iota of formal training or have a palate that can discern the difference between foreign and domestic caviar. (Maybe foreign and domestic cheese, but only if the domestic one is wrapped in individual cellophane wrappers and is labeled American.)

No, I have just found myself over the past few years gravitating away from the old recipe books like “Southern Living” and “Better Homes and Gardens,” online recipes from sites like All Recipes, and clippings from magazines and newspapers. Instead, I’ve been enamored with the idea of the science behind cooking, which I feel is what Julia Child aimed for with “Mastering the Art of French Cooking” and what is done on every episode of America’s Test Kitchen and Cook’s Country (two of my very favorite shows). I have also been drawn to cleaner recipes with fresher ingredients and tons of flavor… 

Getting Garden Ready

Great Uncle Ernest called everyone Charlie. He always gave me and my brothers a $1 bill when we would visit. A barber by trade, he was quiet and clean cut. And he loved my Aunt Ada dearly for years and years and decades and years.

When I was still in pigtails, I visited my great aunt and uncle for a week at their home in Collins, MS. They were kind and welcoming and reserved, and, though our age gap spanned roughly 70 years, that visit was one I would keep as a favorite childhood memory for always…

Favorite Caramel Cake & Never-Fail Caramel Icing

Truly, is there anything more rewarding than baking a cake? Mix a few ingredients in a bowl; pour the batter into pans; bake; cool; frost; and let the “Ooos” and “Aaahs” commence. I mean, you could slave for hours over a single loaf of bread or painstakingly make cookie after cookie…but for applause-to-effort ratios, cakes can’t be beat.

And this Favorite Caramel Cake with Never-Fail Caramel Icing was no exception, even though I, technically, failed at making the Never-Fail Caramel Icing. But more about that later…