Look and Listen

Biography

I learned to cook the way my Mother cooked and that was without measuring anything. One day a few years ago, my daughter told me that if I didn't do anything else before I died, please write down my Banana Pudding recipe. So I did and that started me to thinking, why not write down other recipes too and then why not write a cookbook for my kids. Most women have a thing about buying cookbooks. We have tons of them but how many have more than 2 or 3 recipes in them that we actually use? None of mine do. They either have at least 1 ingredient I don't like or they're too fancy to feed the meat and potato man. So I started going through my books and magazines and taking from one recipe and adding from another until I had what I thought was the perfect recipe which meant it tasted good to me. Then it hit me that I needed another opinion. I started taking dishes over to a friend and when she wasn't home I took them to another friend. This started what I call my "testers" of which I now have about 25. And believe me they don't like to be left out when a new dish is being passed around. I live in a condo and about half of my testers live there too. You won't believe how many times I've sneaked dishes over to one condo hiding it from another. Good thing I have a dog to give me an excuse to be out walking that much. I did start an "early morning weekend coffee club" but not many like to be up, out and at my house by 8:00 in the morning on a weekend. Those that do make it get to test a new breakfast dish and are treated to flavored coffee. As I came up with my recipes I started noticing that a lot of them were foods I had cooked for years without measuring so they really weren't new, they were those old favorites that were being lost over time. They also reminded me of moments in my life that may not have been funny when they happened but were funny now. And they always seemed to have some sort of lesson in them. I wanted my book to be different so I decided to add some of those stories. I also noticed that after talking to a few young adults that some were never taught things that are simple to us such as "how to peel a boiled egg". Most of us "Baby Boomers" learned from at home mothers, grandmothers and aunts. But being a Baby Boomer, most of us worked outside the home and didn't have time to teach our girls the simple things of cooking. This gave me the idea to add tips to my book. There may not seem to be many recipes in my book but if you will use the imagination in your taste buds and do as I have by taking away things you don't like and adding things you do like, you will find that these 100 recipes are actually the basis for many more.

Inspiration

My inspiration comes from 2 quotes. "The future belongs to those who believe in the beauty of their dreams" and "Do the things you think you cannot do." Both by Eleanor Roosevelt