Mom's Cookbook; To My Kids, With Love

I am putting together a cook book for my children.  It will include recipes for all of the dishes they have grown up with.  I hope to have it done by Mother's Day.  I will have to prepare all of these things again from scratch and note the ingredients as I do so, since most are never measured or depend on my taste at the time.

I use very little, if any, salt.  I rarely use canned ingredients, and I buy fresh spices regularly and freeze the surplus.  I grow my own herbs.  All of this is really easier than it sounds.  Once used to it, you just begin to think that way, and plan for it.  And, it makes a huge difference in the taste of our food.   

The kids regularly call from college to ask for recipes or advice on food preparation.  This book will help them cook their own favorites from home, and provide a foundation from which to create their own dishes.

Included are titles like Daddy's 'Drop It!' Omelet, so named because as the huge family-sized concoction was flipped whole into the air, the kids chanted 'Drop it! Drop it!', hoping for that best of all possible outcomes, a dropped omelet.  The kids demanded to be called for the big event each Sunday that the dish was prepared.  

Another choice is Momma's Four Hour Omelet, so called because  by the time I begin preparing the first ingredient until the last person straggles puffy-eyed and rumpled from bed to consume the final omelet, it is usually well into a weekend afternoon.  Of course, the omelet doesn't take long to fix, and many are made in the time period, and a section of the newspaper usually gets read along the way, it is a lazy day undertaking.

The entrees requiring red meat will be difficult for the kids to duplicate exactly unless we supply them with venison or elk, or they find time to go hunting themselves.  We do send game home with them to their apartments, or, in my eldest's case, fill him up with it when he's home. We also make sure they have salmon, halibut, clams, crawdads, and whatever else we have gotten from the land ourselves.  Along with the usual toaster, microwave oven, coffee maker, and vacuum, we also set each kid up with a small freezer.  My daughter is planning to can and dry food from the garden this year, as well.

Some of the recipes came from my family.  I remember a cold bowl of cucumber slices in vinegar water with onions and pepper sitting on the dining room table on summer afternoons, ready to grab on the way by.  It was so cool and refreshing, I just had to include it in the cookbook.  Although, when I set the same concoction out when the kids were younger, it was never touched by them.  Call me nostalgic.

It is of great pride and satisfaction to me that each of my kids is a good cook and kitchen manager.  They are creative and competent.  They each have a set of Hinckel's knives, using and maintaining and protecting them from novices.  How cool is that?  From the time they could stir ingredients, they helped in the kitchen.  Usually resulting in great messes and lots of stories.  That is often my experience in the kitchen, even now.

So, with our family's focus on food; the growing, the seeking, the harvesting, the preserving and the preparation, a family cookbook seems the perfect way for me to pay honor to the mothers of my children: myself, my own, and those behind her.