Real Life Recipe Stories

I grew up in a family of people who love to eat and love to cook. (At least the women cook, our men mostly just eat). My mom worked full-time and from the age of 10 on I was responsible for getting the family dinner on the table. As a matter of fact, one of my best memories growing up was walking home from school every day with my best friend in the world, Debbie, and while I set the table, fried up pork chops, or made tuna salad and nasty fish sticks (OK, this was on Fridays and we were Catholic), she would start our homework. Debbie’s grandma lived with them so she never had to cook a thing, but I really didn’t mind.

I cooked for so many years, and then I went off to college and didn’t do much but pour beer into coke cans and take them to class. After graduation I did what so many people in 1973 did – got married. Part of being a newlywed was that I got to entertain my college and work friends and I became quite experienced in making hor d’oeuvres. I would pull out any good-sounding recipe from any source I could and on my lunch hour I would walk to the library and copy recipes from their books. I have quite the collection and will share a few recipes in upcoming blogs.

We moved a few times, entertained a lot of corporate clients from my husband’s business (or at least I always had the drinks and snacks at my house before we went out to dinner), and I cooked for my family. On holidays, I always made the whole thing, and we shared it with many different people over the years if we could not get home. Some of our best evenings were spent after a big dinner playing Trivial Pursuit with our friends who just happened to be a bit drunk. Of course there is always that “smart” one who remembers everything and doesn’t drink and lives to win. You know who you are, but I am happy you are in my life anyway.