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Cooking has always been such an important part of my life. It is how we share love. A single dinner as a family, helps to renew our souls. It is a chance for us to reconnect and talk about our days. It can heal old wounds and bring new life into struggling relationships. It is a chance to break bread and find common ground.
My parents were always avid cooks. To be fair they were foodies before being a foodie was cool. I didn't have a casserole (outside of green bean casserole at Thanksgiving) until I was married. Yet cooking was a struggle in my early years of marriage. See I felt like I had to cook like my mom and dad to show my love but I wasn't near as good at cooking. I got frustrated and eventually just gave up making dinner. We survived on Hamburger Helper and Velveeta meals and aluminum foil chicken (the recipe is below).
I was great at baking breads and muffins. I loved dips and snacks and side dishes but main dishes were terrifying. So I started slow, I baked bread. Then I added a few items to our rotations until I actually built a pretty decent library of meals. I am sharing my favorites and hopefully they will come to be your favorites too. Many of them include links to their original sites. As my sweet daughter would say, "Let's get cookin."
I love fresh homemade bread. This is a simple white bread recipe that lends itself to making the most delicious sandwiches. It can also be modified to add cheese to dough which is my kids favorite.
This recipe is made with only a few ingredients and they are delicious. They also freeze great if you can keep your kids out of them while they cool. We are rarely successful around here.
This is one of the easiest recipes and it lets each person pick their own flavors. When my husband and I were first married, we loved inviting friends over and encouraging them to raid our cabinets and mix and match whatever flavors they thought sounded best. We had a lot of fun concoctions but also some really great meals.
This chicken is delicious. It is a super simple pressure cooker meal. I use frozen chicken breast and dump the sauce and hit start. It is amazing over rice.
This recipe is the exact recipe that was served at the lunch counters in Famous-Barr Department Stores. It is my favorite version of french onion soup and your whole house will smell amazing.
Olive cheese balls are one of my families favorite appetizers. They are super easy to make and are baked in the oven to a level of delicious I can't explain.
If you are a fan of Creme Brulee but don't like the extra work required to make it, this may be the best version ever created. It is also about a bazillion calories but it is amazing. I often make "small ramekins" and bring them in my lunch to school. Unfortunately the torch to caramelize my sugar has to stay home but the pudding is still delicious.
In our early years together, I made risotto once a week. I used it as a side dish for everything and sometimes as a main course. My husband may hate risotto by now but this recipe has been my OMG people are coming over tonight and I should feed them something decent and filling and not from a box. It is easy and if you are really pressed for time, it can be made in 7 min in your pressure cooker.
As a teenager each year I would get together with a friend and bake cookies to sell for the holidays. We would spend a weekend baking hundreds of cookies. It always gave us a little spending money for the holidays and was an excuse to have friends over. These drop cookies are super easy and look really pretty with their powder sugar cracks.
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