Why I cook....
to feed my creativity.....
because a new ingredient is like a new toy...
to show my love....
because I love food....
to feel like a artist.....
to remind me of my childhood...
because my kitchen is one of my happiest places...
to unleash my inner chef.....
Cooking is an out for me....I love how it makes me feel (as long as I don't have to clean..Lol!). I love taste-testing...I love presentation. I love the comments or should I say suggestions. Cooking makes me happy and lots of times, it makes others happy and yes, I feel like an artist and I love having a small audience for feedback and I love when it's yummy in your tummy. I love my kitchen, I have my favorite knifes, favorite skillets, favorite platters and yes I love paper plates!! Cooking brings love to the air, cooking brings back childhood memories and I hope it makes memories for my kids that they some day will share with their kids and most of all cooking brings out my inner chef!
I have to say I enjoy cooking verses baking. Baking is ok, but my mom and mother-in-law are so good at baking, I kind of leave that up to them.
I love cooking shows...Emerald, Rachel Ray, Paula Dean, Guy Fieri, Chopped, Cupcake wars, 30 minutes or less, Food Network, Bobby Flay, Giada, and Trisha Yearwood. Basically, there is nothing like a home-cooked meal made with love that can spark old memories of our childhood. Down-home country recipes have a special place in my heart...recipes that have created memories that will never fade. Most of my favorite dishes to cook and eat are family favoirites:
Mona's....Ola-la-berry pizza
Mom's.....chicken-n-dumplins
Me-Ma's...peach cobbler
Dad's...pineapple upside down cake
Mona's....potatoe soup
Mom's.... gumbo
Ok, Ok.... there's salmon patties, mashed potatoes, beans and cornbread, Texas sheet cake, tacos, home-grown spaghetti sauce, homegrown tomato juice, fried chicken...darn I'm getting hungry as I am writing this.
Cooking and food makes so many memories. Take Valentines for example. For almost 30 years, we have had the same tradition with or without kids. A red tablecloth spread out on the carpet, hot dogs and cheese wrapped in a cresent roll served with tator tots and a splash of ketchup and mustard to deep them into----love is definitely in the air.
Spaghetti - 3 different recipes all in the same evening makes for a spaghetti cook-off, and the winner is....ALL 3.
One of my favorite times of cooking was our "Backwards dinner". First, you weren't allowed to enter the front door, back door only. 2nd, you had to dress backwards or inside out! Lots of creativity and good sports. Then being everything was backwards that could only mean dessert first. Awwww, that was Viana's favorite part, I mean how often do you get to have ice-cream sundaes and rice krispies treats before your meal! Not very often, but one time we will never forget.
I grew up on this menu, my kids grew up on the same menu and the next generation is enjoying it too. I share this with all my friends...."English muffin pizza's" we each get to top our own pizzas with our favorite toppings....salami, pepperoni, ham, olives, ham, pineapple, onions, mushrooms, cheese....place 'em in the oven and anxiously await for the timer to go off!
Another one of my favorites to eat is a meal of nothing but things from the garden, from my mama and daddy's garden. Not only is it healthly and tastey but with all the love and hard work is behind it makes it even better tasting. From plowing the ground, smoothing the ground, making the rows, digging the holes, placing fertilizers, rice hulls, placing the seed or plant and placing the soil back around it, watering it and padding it down nice and firm, and watching day after day for it to break thru the soil and climb and curl around the poles or string....more water, lots of sunshine, keeping the weeds away.....before we know it, there's the pods of okra, the green beans, the flowering zucchini, the green tomato turning red or gold, the radish ready to pick and eat, bellpeppers, chilis, haberneros, cilantro, all ready to add to homemade salsa. Yellow squash and zuchnni sliced and grilled, black-eye peas & okra. Oh, okra...fried okra and boiled okra, both at the top of my list....so hard for me to grasp that there are people out there who have never tried okra. So, yep a garden meal has got to be one of my favorite meals!
Throughout my adult life, I have collected 100's of recipes and the stories behind them. Each recipe is a memoir of the person who created it and carried it down from generation to generation. I'll have to say the main ingredient is the person not the food. As I follow the food-stained, time erased directions, I can see, hear and smell the person who shared it with me....from
Grandma Reynolds and her chocolate bread pudding
Nora and her strawberry jello gram-cracker dessert
Mona's oli-berry pizza
mom's chicken n dumplins
dad's pinto beans and cornbread recipe written on a paper towel
Shawna and her black-eyed pea salsa
Jerry's baklava
Dortheil's peanut butter pie
I can remember the pan that the dish was made it. I feel the comfort of each warm kitchen as I remember all the knick knacks that stood on the shelves, the lace curtains that hung on the windows. We not only shared recipes, we shared our lives. We shared the love of food, love of family, love of friendship. They are classic recipes in the sense that they are characteristics of that person.
Basically, there is nothing like a home-cooked meal made with love that can spark old memories of our childhood. Down-home country recipes have a special place in my heart. Some of these recipes have created memories that will never fade. Chicken-n-dumplin's, which I make over and over and even upon request! Cornbread in a cast iron skillet, Sunday after church fried chicken dinner along with mashed potatoes and incrediable Peach cobbler, hot and fresh right out of the oven! Oh the aroma of a hot peach cobbler, there is nothing like it. I love the top layer of pie crust...weaved in and out of each other, the melted butter, the sprinkled sugar and cinnamon & the bubbling edges, and the sweet aroma...in fact making my craving even stronger. This was not only my favorite, but many others.....no one could make it like my Me-Ma.
Growing up when dinner time came around, I/we never had to fend for ourselves and just eat. We came together and would sit down at the table together...a tradition we still do to this day, and grace was always said before we ate....yet I always knew "grace wasn't a prayer we just asked before a meal, it was a way to live". I'm so grateful for being taught that.
Another favorite is church get-togethers for Thanksgiving, Christmas, chili cook-offs, bar-b-q's and roasting a pig in the ground. Lots of great memories...my Me-Ma, my mom, my mother-in-law and now my Renee are all cooking inspirations for me....
Meatloaf (my mama)
homemade mac & cheese (ann souza)
fall off the bone ribs ( Renee)
Magic beans (Erin)
chicken stuffed bellpeppers (lindz)
and the list goes on and on...
So now maybe you can see just another little piece of my puzzle of why I love to cook.....
to feed my creativity...
to show my love.........
because I love food.....
to feel like an artist.....
to remind of home- growing up.....
to unleash my inner chef
and all because of His Amazing Grace.....
I grew up on this menu, my kids grew up on the same menu and the next generation is enjoying it too. I share this with all my friends...."English muffin pizza's" we each get to top our own pizzas with our favorite toppings....salami, pepperoni, ham, olives, ham, pineapple, onions, mushrooms, cheese....place 'em in the oven and anxiously await for the timer to go off!
Another one of my favorites to eat is a meal of nothing but things from the garden, from my mama and daddy's garden. Not only is it healthly and tastey but with all the love and hard work is behind it makes it even better tasting. From plowing the ground, smoothing the ground, making the rows, digging the holes, placing fertilizers, rice hulls, placing the seed or plant and placing the soil back around it, watering it and padding it down nice and firm, and watching day after day for it to break thru the soil and climb and curl around the poles or string....more water, lots of sunshine, keeping the weeds away.....before we know it, there's the pods of okra, the green beans, the flowering zucchini, the green tomato turning red or gold, the radish ready to pick and eat, bellpeppers, chilis, haberneros, cilantro, all ready to add to homemade salsa. Yellow squash and zuchnni sliced and grilled, black-eye peas & okra. Oh, okra...fried okra and boiled okra, both at the top of my list....so hard for me to grasp that there are people out there who have never tried okra. So, yep a garden meal has got to be one of my favorite meals!
Throughout my adult life, I have collected 100's of recipes and the stories behind them. Each recipe is a memoir of the person who created it and carried it down from generation to generation. I'll have to say the main ingredient is the person not the food. As I follow the food-stained, time erased directions, I can see, hear and smell the person who shared it with me....from
Grandma Reynolds and her chocolate bread pudding
Nora and her strawberry jello gram-cracker dessert
Mona's oli-berry pizza
mom's chicken n dumplins
dad's pinto beans and cornbread recipe written on a paper towel
Shawna and her black-eyed pea salsa
Jerry's baklava
Dortheil's peanut butter pie
I can remember the pan that the dish was made it. I feel the comfort of each warm kitchen as I remember all the knick knacks that stood on the shelves, the lace curtains that hung on the windows. We not only shared recipes, we shared our lives. We shared the love of food, love of family, love of friendship. They are classic recipes in the sense that they are characteristics of that person.
Basically, there is nothing like a home-cooked meal made with love that can spark old memories of our childhood. Down-home country recipes have a special place in my heart. Some of these recipes have created memories that will never fade. Chicken-n-dumplin's, which I make over and over and even upon request! Cornbread in a cast iron skillet, Sunday after church fried chicken dinner along with mashed potatoes and incrediable Peach cobbler, hot and fresh right out of the oven! Oh the aroma of a hot peach cobbler, there is nothing like it. I love the top layer of pie crust...weaved in and out of each other, the melted butter, the sprinkled sugar and cinnamon & the bubbling edges, and the sweet aroma...in fact making my craving even stronger. This was not only my favorite, but many others.....no one could make it like my Me-Ma.
Growing up when dinner time came around, I/we never had to fend for ourselves and just eat. We came together and would sit down at the table together...a tradition we still do to this day, and grace was always said before we ate....yet I always knew "grace wasn't a prayer we just asked before a meal, it was a way to live". I'm so grateful for being taught that.
Another favorite is church get-togethers for Thanksgiving, Christmas, chili cook-offs, bar-b-q's and roasting a pig in the ground. Lots of great memories...my Me-Ma, my mom, my mother-in-law and now my Renee are all cooking inspirations for me....
Meatloaf (my mama)
homemade mac & cheese (ann souza)
fall off the bone ribs ( Renee)
Magic beans (Erin)
chicken stuffed bellpeppers (lindz)
and the list goes on and on...
So now maybe you can see just another little piece of my puzzle of why I love to cook.....
to feed my creativity...
to show my love.........
because I love food.....
to feel like an artist.....
to remind of home- growing up.....
to unleash my inner chef
and all because of His Amazing Grace.....
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