I grew up in Kentucky, so there's a country cooking background in my past even though I spent many more years in Louisville than near Center. I've always loved cooking and watched my Granny cook from the time I was a very small child (age-wise, at least). She was not a gourmet cook by any means, but she knew how to make good, stick-to-your-ribs, down home food. Her dishes were always the empty ones at the church dinners or community potlucks. Granny used to go out in her back yard, grab an old chicken that had stopped laying eggs, chop off the head with an ax and fry it up for Sunday dinner. You know, it's weird, I don't remember the chopping part or the part between butchering the chicken and it being ready to cook, but then again, I was only 2 or 3 years old. I do remember Granny giving me pillows stuffed with the chicken feathers, though. My favorite pillows growing up were feather ones. Granny may have only had 3/10ths of an acre, but to a little kid, it was a huge yard. The garden took up a good amount of the space, and the hen house was out back where the adjoining fences created a "V." I remember the baby chicks pecking at my toes (yup, I was a barefoot Kentucky girl even at age 2!) but that was because I was too zealous when I picked them up (I tended to squeeze them a bit too hard). By the time I was 3 or so, Granny had stopped raising chickens and the hen house was a storage area.
I grew up in a single parent household - Mom did the best she could with limited resources, and all in all, we were ok. I remember we ate a lot of pasta (back then it was macaroni or egg noodles, not "pasta") or mashed potatoes plus ground beef, hot dogs or bologna. Oh and Rainbow Brand white bread (similar to Wonder Bread). As I grew into my teens, we would pass the Rainbow Bakery on the way to school and you could smell the bread baking. I remember tomato and mayo sandwiches on that soft, squishy bread as a kid when tomatoes were in season (mainly when Granny would pick them from the garden and give us some), dried pinto beans cooked with ham hocks along with cornbread (known as hoecakes - like cornbread pancakes), Hamburger Helpers (significantly altered and added to, of course - you never eat those things without some major modifications - ick!!) We lived near a White Castle and I could walk down the alley to get hamburgers "by the sack" OMG! I loved those things! (umm, still do, actually - YUM!) Mom had a trick where she could actually take instant mashed potato flakes and you wouldn't know for sure they were instant potatoes when you ate them, of course, if you use mostly milk and alot of "butter," anything will taste good. Remember this catch phrase? "Everything's better with Blue Bonnet on it." After all, if a little butter spread is good, then more is even better! Yup, we ate cheap and readily abundant foods, well, because we had to due to circumstances, but it was tasty and filling. Remember, the inexpensive foods are not always the healthiest ones and poor people can't always afford to buy fresh produce to feed their families. That combined with an extremely sedentary childhood and "Yes, Virginia - we have a weight problem." More about that at another time.
So . . . fast forward . . . Mom started allowing me to use the stove somewhere close to age 13 and from around that time on, I was the chief cook. Generally, I had dinner ready not long after she got home from work. In the beginning, I didn't season anything - no salt and pepper on the ground beef while cooking and I would get asked, "Did you season with salt and pepper?" I've come a long way since then, I kid you not. I do so love to experiment in the kitchen and have created various concoctions -- some were winners and some were absolutely, positively awful. But that's the nature of creation, you keep working on it until it's as perfect as you can get it. Then again, I have trouble knowing when to stop tweaking or fixing - I'm never happy with the results - I constantly try to improve something.
So,after watching the movie, Julie & Julia, I figured if Julie could blog her way through the quintessential French cookbook, then I can blog about my love of cooking, share some of my recipes and maybe we can have a few laughs along the way.
One thing . . . some ground rules . . . I don't mind you using my recipes or even sharing them, but you cannot attribute my recipes to yourself in any way, shape or form. In other words, don't submit my intellectual property to any recipe site, contest, blog, cookbook drive, etc. without citing proper credit. Some of these recipes are my own contest entries and if they win - I will let you know (you might even hear me screaming!).
Alrighty now . . . Let the adventure begin . . .