Home cooked meals were an every night event for my family as I grew up. We were a family of five so going out to eat was difficult and expensive, but my mom preferred to cook for her family anyways. As I grew up, I would always stand on a stool as my mom cooked to observe and learn. I have many favorite meals, all my mom’s recipes, but the first one that popped into my mind as I read the topic question was beef stew with biscuits and apple pie with ice-cream for dessert. Every year in the fall my mom would make beef stew in the crock pot in the morning and then my family would go apple picking for the day. By the time we got back from apple picking, our dinner would be almost done, and, in the meantime, we would make apple pie with the fresh apples we picked. My mom’s beef stew was the classic beef stew with beef, potatoes, carrots, onions, and celery in a beef broth base. We always paired our beef stew with the Pillsbury flaky biscuits. It was the perfect meal to accompany a day in the chilly fall weather and the apple pie with ice-cream just topped it off. My mom would make the pie crust dough and I would make the filling by peeling and spiraling the apples with my grandmother’s old apple peeling machine that stuck to the side of the counter, and then tossing the apple chunks in a cinnamon sugar mixture. My family’s favorite ice cream brand is Ben and Jerrys so we would have a scoop of their vanilla ice cream with the hot apple pie. Eating dinner with my family every night is absolutely my favorite memory as a child and I will definitely be doing the same with my future family.