When I was young, I always enjoyed helping my Mother in the kitchen. She showed me how to make pancakes, cookies, scrambled eggs, and anything else my tummy desired. She taught me how to measure the flour properly and how to crack an egg without getting any shell into the batter.
While I always enjoyed those times in the kitchen with my Mother, I never really loved the cooking part of it. It was more the talks and the quality time spent together that I loved more than anything. My mother would tell me stories of when she use to make the same recipes with her mother, and how her and my Aunt would fight over who got to lick the spoon after making a chocolate cake.
As I got older and was married, I realized that those fond memories of cooking with my mother were long gone! Now I was a young bride trying to figure out how to make a yummy, yet healthy meal for my husband and I every single day of the week!! Gone were the fun days of making pasteries and french toast. I found myself managing to perfect 3 meals and repeatedly making them night after night....boring!!!
So one day I picked up a Rachael Ray cookbook and decided I was going to figure this whole cooking/chef thing out! I bought her 365 recipe book and opened to a random page...."that's what I'll make for dinner" I told myself. Surprisingly, dinner turned out delicious that night and there were no complaints from my husband, Matt, for venturing outside my safety zone of 3 meals night after night.
In the past few years I have developed a love for cooking. I never understood before how poeple could love making food so much. Eating....sure, I could understand that. Everyone loves to eat yummy foods! Now, I have grown to love the process. The smells, the textures, and most importantly the flavors of food! God has created so many beautiful and unique foods, that it would be a shame not to explore them. When I post my dinner menu's on Facebook, many times people ask me for the recipes...so here they all are :0) Enjoy and from one cook to another....happy cooking!!