My Love of Cooking!

My Love of Cooking!

I was just thinking today about where I got my love of cooking from and I finally realized it came from my step-father.  He loved to cook good fresh food.  We lived on a farm and had fresh ingredients to eat and canned all kinds of things.  It was a lot of work in our huge garden, sweet corn patch, and taking care of cows, chickens, ducks, and pigs.  I usually complained about it, but I wish I could go back there now.  I hated taking the canned jars to the cellar because he kept a black snake down there for the mice! 
I have so many lovely recipes from great grandmother (my step-father's family), grandmother (my mother's family), mother and aunts (my mother's and husband's family).  My step-father hardly ever used a recipe and we had a cook-off to see whose cake would be the best without using a recipe!  His cake was delicious!  He "taught" my mother how to cook the foods he liked.  She was divorced raising 3 children on cereal, tuna, boxed mac & cheese, instant potatoes, and spam when they met.  She became an excellent cook.  We usually had mashed potatoes and gravy with the evening meal or fried potatoes.  A nice piece of pork, beef, or chicken and a green vegetable or tomatoes.   Her canning skills were awesome in the pressure canner from my great grandmother.  The holiday meals were wonderful too!
The torch has passed to me to make the homemade noodles for Thanksgiving and Christmas.  This is my third year and everyone loves them.  The recipe is from my grandmother and my mother passed it to me with her noodle cutter.  We were buying homemade noodles from the church women and I decided I wanted to make them for our family holidays.  My sister makes the mashed potatoes (she is an awesome cook too). 
My mother tells people that I am gourmet cook!  That cracks me up!  I watch a lot of cooking shows and demos on youtube and I like to try new things.  Cooking relaxes me and I am retired now and have more time to spend in the kitchen.  I made the noodles yesterday and will bake a couple of pumpkin pies tomorrow.  Everything else will be done on Thanksgiving morning. 
My diet is going well.  I have lost 25 pounds and want to lose a few more.  Being able to cook good food has helped me drop some pounds.  It's all about portion control! 
My step-father gave me a Better Homes and Gardens cookbook (1980) as a wedding gift and told me this was a great place to start and I refer to it often. I kind of collect cookbooks too!  He was a generous man to many people, loved the Lord, and his family. I think he would be proud of me and I give thanks to him for his love of cooking and passing it on to me!