Always Cook with Love

Who has influenced your cooking? When I think back to my childhood, my memories are almost all connected to the smells, sounds and taste of my mom’s food. She never failed to have a huge meal on the table every night and was always inviting others in to join our family.

For Christmas 2002, my family decided to do secret santas to take the burden of getting presents for everyone off of my mom. I remember thinking, she sure was spending a lot of time in the “present wrapping room” for only having to buy one present for one person. Come Christmas morning, I, along with my brother and 2 sisters, all had large presents under the tree from my mom. While we were upset that my mom didn’t adhere to the secret santa rules, of course we still opened the presents.

Inside was a huge homemade cookbook of all the recipes my mom loved to make for us. She hand typed each recipe (there are nearly 350 included in the cookbook), put them in sheet protectors, and created an extensive index…for all four cookbooks she made for us kids. I can’t even imagine how much time she must have put into it. This cookbook is the best gift I’ve ever been given. When I look through the recipes, nearly every single one evokes a memory or an anecdote and I swear I can smell the food cooking on my mom’s stove.

Although I lost my mom just 2 years after that Christmas, I can always feel her presence when I flip through my huge binder of recipes and pick an old favorite. Unfortunately, I don’t know where all these recipes originated from but there are some great stories behind them which I intend to share.

For today, I wanted to share a few excerpts from the introduction of the cookbook and encourage all you home cooks out there to never doubt the impact that food can have on people.

“I have been so flattered these past few years by you kids asking me for recipes that I decided to made cookbooks for you. I have enjoyed this project so much because as I’ve been typing recipes and putting the book together, I’ve thought of you kids and how much fun we’ve had around the dinner table and how much we enjoy being together. Thank you for making it exciting to put a good meal together and get it on the table. Your encouragement and compliments have given me the confidence to be a good cook, and I enjoy that part of my life.”

“My wish for you is that you, too, enjoy planning meals and cooking them and all the people you cook for encourage you as much as you have encouraged me. Always cook with love – and ask for help if you need it!

“Finally, I hope that everyone that you cook for enjoys food as much as Dad always has. No matter what I’ve cooked, he loves it and eats a lot.”

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