Recipes

All my life I think I have been interested in recipes. Well, at least since I was in first grade.  We were given the secret assignment to ask our mother for her favorite recipe. These would be compiled into a recipe book we would surprise our mothers with for Chirstmas, or Mother’s Day, I cannot remember which. Anyway I decided to forego the ‘ask your mother’ part of the assignment and find my favorite recipe my mother would use to create my favorite: Chocolate Chip Bars. Later once the recipes were all neatly typed by one of the nuns at the catholic school I attended and then illustrated by yet another nun, and I proudly presented it to my mother, she was mortified by ‘her’ contribution.  This was really no contribution at all!  All the other mothers sent in things like Baked Alaska, Lemon Meringue Pie, Potatoe Nests with Cheese Sauce, Roasted Chicken Supreme, and my mother was aligned with Chocolate Chip Bars.  She never forgave me – I swear!  I still have that little recipe book full of mimeographed pages of pink paper and blue ink, complete with years of spills and smudges.

Recipes are wonderous things.  Recipes can help a cook create a delicious new ‘something’.  Recipes can inspire and grow confidence.  Recipes can become family artifacts.  Recipes can yet spell disaster.   Recipes, I believe, are a navigational food tool. No guarantees you will get where you want to end up, much like a road map. It is like my life association with baking.  I have never been stellar at baking.  Cooking I think ‘perhaps’. Baking not so much.  Our daughter is a wonderful baker.  I know from experience Jess and I can have the exact same recipe for a baked product, use the exact same ingredients in my kitchen, bake it in my oven at the same time, and they will not turn out the same.  Her results will be sumptious, delicous.  Mine will be edible.

The recipes I have included here reign under two categoreis:  Seasonal Favorites which will be as it says, and will change seasonally, and Tried and True favorites, which are standards my family loves.  Many I have created, some are old favorites of our family,  and some I have adapted to be a bit healthier.  Some of the recipes are fast and quick, others not so much.  Try them out, be inventive and tweak them as you feel inspired to do so.  I would love to hear what you did!  Recipes are meant to be shared, and share I will!

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