She Loved to Cook....and Collect

When my best pal Beth and I were in college, we used to have a friendly argument over whose mother was the best cook.  Maybe it was the mundane cafeteria food we were eating at the time, but we would try to top each other in descriptions of our mothers' great home-cooked meals.  I finally won the argument when Beth lived with my parents for a few months while earning her masters degree and got to experience Mom's cooking first hand.  No one who tasted Mom's cooking could argue with my bold statement of, "My mother is the best cook in the world."  What's more remarkable is that she never seemed to tire of spending time in the kitchen.  She raised eight children and as the years went on, she still delighted in rolling out cookie dough with her grandchildren or preparing a big meal for a family gathering.  Mom loved to collect recipes (Sunset magazine, the LA Times, and her sister-in-law Ilene were her favorite sources) and wasn't afraid to try new things if they sounded good.  One of my last memories of Mom was her sorting through a pile of recipes she had stashed away in a drawer and had long forgotten about.  She carefully read through each one, commenting on this or that, saving the ones that she still wanted to try out "someday".  Mom passed away last month, and in her honor I am starting this blog of her recipes.  The day after her funeral I managed to stuff all of her recipe boxes and one very large spiral binder into my carry-on bag on my trip back to New Jersey.  This was very precious cargo, after all,  and I was't going to chance it getting lost.  My goal now is to prepare and then blog about two or three recipes a week, adding my memories and/or anecdotes of Mom along the way.