How It All Started For Me

     I have always enjoyed cooking. As a teenager, I cooked dinner for the family a lot; not because I had to, but because I enjoyed looking up recipes and trying them out. My family became my unofficial guinea pigs when it came to my creations. When I left home to go to college, things changed a little. Not only was I on a budget, which limited what I could cook, I had to start planning around classes and such. I ended up on the typical "college kid menu," which consisted of prepackaged foods that were easy to make.

     Around the time I met my husband, I started to really cook again. I discovered that cooking is like any other talent-if you don't use it, you lose it. All those months of a college kid diet had completely slashed my creative thinking when it came to food.

     It took a few months after we were married for that creative thought to reappear in my mind. When it did, I started to do something I had never done before: I started creating my own recipes. Up until now, I have never recorded these recipes anywhere but in my memory. This blog is so I have that record and can share what I make with others.

     Recording the recipes may turn out to be a bigger job than I can do. You see, I don't use measurements when I cook from my own recipes. My husband says I have a "Remmy-like" ability. For those who don't understand that reference, Remmy is the Rat from Rattatouille. But I digress. When I cook, I decide what spices should be used based on smells. I discovered that if the spices smell good together when they are just in their jars, they will go well together in the food. I also have to take into consideration what it is I am cooking. For instance, I wouldn't use Seasoned Salt and Lemon Pepper in Chicken Noodle Soup. The two aforementioned spices go very well together, but they don't go very well in Chicken Soup. This I know from experience.

    With that said, I will make every effort to accurately record the measurements I use, and to not just "dump and chuck." Instead of being Amelia Bedelia, (who mixes "a little of this and a little of that")  I will try to be as the chef on Yahoo's Chow Ciao (I think his name is Fabio).

Cheers,

LP