The Recipe for Success

I love recipes and I don’t care where they come from. I’ve found some of my best recipes online, sure, but I’ve also acquired recipes from magazines, books, church fundraisers, friends and their parents.

Some of my favorite recipes come from this really cool recipe box that I got at an estate sale. In this recipe box are notes and coupons dating as early as 1930. This lady cut out recipes from magazines, the backs of boxes and containers and collected them from friends (I know because she dated these recipes and wrote down the name of the person from whom she got the recipe). I’ve made several recipes from this box; one cup salad, peanut clutters with condensed milk and sour cream cake to name a few. It’s amazing to think that this woman’s family considered this box unimportant and sold it with a pile of other junk for about $5.

As I’ve been looking through my recipe books for something to make for New Year’s Eve, I’ve realized that I’m also a collector of recipe books. This all started when my friend was cleaning house and gave me a box of her old recipe books. In this collection were a set of Better Homes and Gardens cookbooks dating from 1967, our favorite to use is titled Favorite Ways with Chicken, Turkey, Duck and Game Birds. Its recipes detail using bone in chicken and the book tells how to cut up chicken (p35), how to have an elegant dinner; complete with menus (starting on p57) and “Wine Cooking and Serving Suggestions” (p63).

I’m also a sucker for the people on the Food Network and own many cookbooks from my favorite TV show hosts. Sure I know that you can get most of their recipes free online, but you don’t get cute informative introductions and sidebar comments online. Our favorite Paula Deen is The Lady and Sons Savannah Country Cookbook (I just got my sister a copy for Christmas, so she wouldn’t steal mine, since college she’s been stealing my cookbooks J), which we use soooo much some of the pages stick together, our favorites seem to come from the dessert pages like Better Than Sex? Yes! (not sure what we’ll call this cake when the tiny tot gets older--this lady calls it Heath Bar Cake). I also have every Rachel Ray recipe book. Our favorite is Rachel Ray 365: No Repeats A Year of Deliciously Different Dinners. I think it would be daring if we tried each of these meals all in one year, so far we just stick to the ones we like such as Mac-n-Cheddar with Broccoli.

A cookbook that I treasure (from the same lovely lady who brought me the box of cook books ) is from a now defunct bed and breakfast called Andy’s Catch and this book is full of delicious, wonderful breakfast and brunch foods (side note:  I can eat B&G every day of the week and any time of day is the perfect time of day for breakfast) including breakfast casserole and breakfast pizza.

My latest find is a cook book I received from a friend for Christmas Are You Hungry Tonight? Elvis’ Favorite Recipes. I’ve already tried the infamous or should I say notorious Fried Peanut Butter sandwich and am looking forward to rockin’ the kitchen trying out all his favorite breakfast recipes. This book also has the recipe for his 6-tiered wedding cake and a meatloaf recipe I can't wait to try, as I have not met a meatloaf I didn't like. My favorite meatloaf recipe comes from Reader's Digest Kitchen Secrets (p237).

Well, gotta go whip myself up something to eat all this talk of food has made me hungry.

I’m looking forward to digging through all of these recipes for the perfect New Year’s Eve foods! If you have any suggestions feel free to send them my way.

Just a Handful of my Cookbooks...

50 Books in a Year: #1 Grace is for Sinners

          So, thanks to my friend Julie (thanks Julie!) I've been reading all about this 50 books in a year challenge and thought to myself, "Self...a) you really need to read more and b) you missed posting on Monday (and you're trying to post every day but MAJOR holidays). Why not dedicate Mondays to 50 books in a year?" So, now, while I can't sleep I will post for Monday, so when I wake up for Tuesday, I can post again.
          The first book I would like to talk about, is, ironically enough, a book I started reading yesterday (on Monday) called Grace is for Sinners by a little tiny sniplet of a girl Serena Woods. My sister first turned me on to the book over the summer and my friend Kathy bought it for me for Christmas. Frankly, I'm a little curious about it because my sisters and I went to high school with this girl--then Serena Walker. Actually, I've been on many an adventure with this girl (getting stranded in Perryville, MO when her car broke down, spending whole weekends at her house at a time in the summer...I remember this because we had to go visit her, not the other way around--you'll see why if you read the book, and finding a love of Ozzy Osbourne through her obvious love for him). I also remember getting totally out of touch with her and hardly knowing her by my senior year, and then hearing about her and feeling guilty about not talking to her or only chit-chatting with her when I saw her at the mall. I am guilty of hearing about what was going on with her and instead of trying to find and talk to her, I just let those rumors spread and thanked the Lord it wasn't me.
          While reading yesterday, I couldn't help but think about a) all the things that go on in someone's life that we are totally unaware of, because we listen to the rumor-mill not the actual person b) people only let us know what they want to let us know--I knew about her early life, not the life she must have been living right under my nose while we were in high school and going to the same church and c) I like that this girl is brave enough to talk about a subject that has stopped me from going to church and made it a hard time for me to see that there are good die-hard Christians. So, I'm going to finish this book during the week and then I'm going to pass it on...and, on...and, on...unless, of course, you don't want to wait and just want to buy one for yourself.
          It's not everyday that Christians meet other Christians who understand you can be a real person, I like that Serena is trying to get the message across that grace is the reason why we are here in the first place and it is grace that saves us not the amount of times we go to church, not what we wear to church or what we've done in our lives. We don't save ourselves, actually it seems that we do the best to destroy ourselves. I also love that this book is chock full of scripture, my mother has always said, and I believe it, that if you can't find it in the Bible than it's just your personal beliefs not something God wants you to do.
          So, feel free to join me on Mondays to talk about your book as you read 50 this year. I've been reading whole blogs dedicated to this project, not sure if I have time to go all out like that, but I can do Monday, hope you can too, how else am I going to find good books to read?!

Off to bed...ish...

PS. these are not going to be reviews, per se...I'd rather talk about how these books are shaping me and you decide if that makes it a good book or not.

"Outside of a dog, a book is man's best friend, inside a dog it's too dark to read." ~Groucho Marx

This is it. My first ever official blog post and what is it that I want to talk about, well it's books, of course. The other day I was thinking about the first book I ever chose to read on my own, Strawberry Girl by Lois Lenski, not about the storyline as I don't really remember it...there's a girl, she picks strawberries, there's some sort of turmoil everything turns out happy in the end...but about how I felt reading it quietly to myself on the bottom bunk of our bed. In an apartment full of noise, there were, after all, three girls, reading alone in the semi-darkness of a room lit up only by the sunlight coming in from the corner of the shade was the way I survived and it is the way that I've survived up to this day...reading a good book...do you remember your first read?