Our recipes and how we roll. - Audrey

Last week I got an email from Jeanette, asking me for a recipe that had been mentioned in a comment on Facebook, and after she asked for that one, she went on to say she would really like a copy of a lot of good recipes she remembers from when she lived with us. She suggested making a cookbook, and the more I thought about it, and talked about it, the more it sounded like fun.

Rachel and I started listing favorite recipes, and a lot of them are already typed up and stored in my computer, because I've sent them to my kids. As they've moved out, gone to college or missions or gotten married, they always ask for recipes for their favorite foods so they can make them at their new home, so I've got them stored in a Recipes folder in my computer.

Kim was very organized about it (as Kim always is), and before she went to college, she looked for specific recipes to take with her in a notebook, and she has added to it over time, so my first thought was to use her personal cookbook as a starting point, but then the idea got bigger!

Rachel thought it would be a great plan to make a family cooking blog, and include pictures of the food, and I thought we should put in pictures of the family, too, especially of the kids from the years when Jeanette lived with us. So eventually - I hope by the end of the summer - we will have a recipe collection that we can have printed into a cookbook.

Our plan is to present the recipes, with pictures and comments, and also probably with notes on our substitutions, because I am famous for making substitutions when I don't have exactly the ingredients a recipe calls for, and my children learned the art of substituting from me.

True story: Diana gave me a recipe for an easy and delicious (according to her) chicken and rice casserole. I didn't have rice in the house at that moment, which is surprising, because we always have rice; we eat a ton of rice! So I used bulgar, which is cracked wheat, in which the grains are about the same size as rice kernals, and I used something else in place of,I don't know, cream of mushroom soup, I think, and then there was a third thing that I didn't have so I used another thing.

When I told Diana about it later, I said I had made the recipe and it wasn't really as good as she said. She was surprised, and I told her that I had made a couple of changes, and by the time I got done telling her what I had used for this or that, she said, "So you really made an entirely different recipe, didn't you?" And yes, she was right, and I don't think I ever did make that casserole the right way.

These are our favorite recipes, so they will be good, or at least we think they are, and they are the recipes that I make for my kids when they come home from a hard semester, or a hard day, or just to hang out. They are the recipes that they call me for when they are away, so they can make the comforting home food that makes them feel better. Where I can, I will give sources, but some of them are things I've been making for so long that the original sources are long gone.

You can look forward to Harold's Good Meatloaf, Mom's Good Yellow Cornbread, Chicken Soup with Matzo Balls, and Killer Brownies, and if there are any good stories that go with them, we'll tell you about them. Through the magic of the Internets, Rich and I even found the source of the Pigs in a Blanket recipe that Kim started making for us when she was about 8!

Rachel and I are really excited about this!