Food is Love

I love food.  Food is memory and comfort and surprise and invention and expression.  I find pleasure in the simplest of foods - like toast with real butter dipped in coffee milk with lots of sugar, just like my Grandma E-A would give us.  And I am amazed by intricate, complicated dishes, like those prepared on Iron Chef.

I have always enjoyed consuming food.  My parents learned when I was young that I would not be fooled by the "Oh, you wouldn't like this..."when it came to foods like lobster and shrimp that I could eat until they came out of my ears.  I always enjoyed the stuffed artichokes my Great Grandmother made - what kid likes artichokes?

But preparing the food - I left that to the grown ups.  I was a notoriously bad cook.  My brothers like to tease me about the ruined Hamburger Helper I made one night while babysitting them.  And my brother Dominic lovingly recalls my first attempt at icing.  I didn't realize that confectioners sugar was powdered sugar and made it with regular sugar.  While Dominic says that the sweet, soupy mess tasted delicious, it was still pretty embarrassing.

But in my 20s I began to develop some kitchen skills and began to really enjoy the art of preparing meals.  As my cooking got better, I came to enjoy deviating from the cookbooks and coming up with either my own takes on existing recipes or completely new recipes. 

Some recipes are sacred to me though.  My Great Grandmother's Lasagna, Big Sauce, and Meatball recipes are never to be fooled with.  I make chicken soup by the recipe my Mom gave me every time.  Eggnog desert can only be made one way and that's according to my Grandma Rita's recipe.

I love nothing more than to put a pot of my tomato sauce on the stove on a weekend and smell it cook through the afternoon.  And there is no smell better on a cold winter's day, than chicken broth simmering on the stove.  And there is such joy for me in presenting the homemade cakes from scratch at my kids birthday parties.

In every meal I cook, be it something as simple as pancakes on a Saturday morning or a pork roast with a bacon blanket for Sunday dinner, I put a part of my heart and soul into it.  I put my love into it.

With that love in mind, I'm going to start sharing my cooking more here in this blog.  It is part of the fabric of my family and by sharing it here, I'm sharing love.

Grandma's Lasagna