{"id":830,"date":"2023-01-03T16:26:06","date_gmt":"2023-01-03T21:26:06","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.fayegibbons.com\/?p=830"},"modified":"2023-01-03T16:26:14","modified_gmt":"2023-01-03T21:26:14","slug":"dont-cook-collect-recipes","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/blog.fayegibbons.com\/?p=830","title":{"rendered":"DON\u2019T COOK\u2014COLLECT RECIPES"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

My latest book, HALLEY, awarded 2015 Jefferson Cup Honor for Historical Fiction, awarded the Moonbeam Silver Medal for Young Adult Fiction, and awarded the 2016 Frank Yerby Award for Fiction. Available at: NewSouth Books: www.newsouthbooks.com\/halley and Amazon.<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

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FAYE WITH HER RECIPE BOX<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

I like good food, but let\u2019s face it\u2014cooking involves messing up your whole kitchen, including every pan you\u2019ve collected during your entire life.\u00a0\u00a0Those utensils don\u2019t scrub themselves. Collecting recipes, on the other hand, just requires a huge cabinet drawer or a medium size shipping crate. You\u2019re ready to start!<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

At a potluck dinner a while back I found the best cake I\u2019d ever tasted. \u201cI want this recipe!\u201d I declared between bites. \u201cYou can have it,\u201d said the cook who was standing nearby.\u00a0\u00a0\u201cJust take a pound of butter\u2026\u201d I quit listening.\u00a0\u00a0Anything containing a pound of butter would have to be good, and I already have half a shipping crate of recipes to prove that.\u00a0\u00a0As official taster, I also have a roll around the middle as supporting evidence.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Jeff Foxworthy says, \u201cYou might be a redneck if most of your best recipes begin with, \u2018Take a can of Campbell\u2019s Soup\u2026\u2019\u201d Well, Mr. Foxworthy, it just so happens that half the recipes in my shipping crate begin that very way.\u00a0\u00a0Ten or so years ago I took a number of cooking classes with the intention of moving up to \u201ccuisine.\u201d And, yes, the resulting food was good, but most dishes couldn\u2019t hold a shuck to my Campbell Soup dishes. Plus, cuisine is a lot more work.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

So here\u2019s the deal, when I go out to a really ritzy restaurant or when I\u2019m in France, I\u2019ll go for the finest cuisine they can whip up. But when I\u2019m cooking for company, I\u2019m heading for my collection.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

My mountain Georgia mother didn\u2019t have recipes.\u00a0\u00a0A lot of times she had no\u00a0ingredients. There were no measuring cups or spoons or casserole dishes in the house.\u00a0\u00a0No electric mixer until I was in college. Yet she was a good cook.\u00a0\u00a0Her biscuits were better than anyone\u2019s. Her watercress topped with new onions, crumbled bacon (when we had it), and drizzled with hot bacon grease was the best.\u00a0\u00a0Her soup beans were out of this world.\u00a0\u00a0My sister and I did not learn any of these \u201crecipes.\u201d Mama was afraid we\u2019d waste grocery staples. Our job was to clean the kitchen after the meal. And I mean\u00a0clean. A fly had better slide if it landed on one of her pans. As a result, when I married I knew how to cook one meal\u2014Kraft Spaghetti dinner in a box. Only when I became a stay-at-home mom did I decide I needed to learn to cook.\u00a0\u00a0I asked my prize-winning cook mother-in-law for help, and she was glad to give it.\u00a0\u00a0A little too glad, now I think about it!\u00a0\u00a0I\u2019m sure she had been dying for me to ask.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

I learned all right.\u00a0\u00a0Soon I could puree, fold-in, saute\u2019, and braise. I learned to make a banana pudding which did not require instant vanilla pudding. Many of the recipes in my hoard are written in my mother-in-law\u2019s hand. So for twenty years I cooked two or three pretty good meals a day and collected more recipes than I\u2019d ever use even back then.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Time moved on. Now my sons are married to lovely women who know how to cook better than I ever dreamed of.\u00a0\u00a0One of my sons learned to cook pretty well during his long bachelorhood.\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

As for me, sometimes I think I\u2019ve come full circle. No, I haven\u2019t returned to Kraft meal in a box.\u00a0\u00a0Not yet anyway. But my crate of recipes gets little use unless the kids or grandkids are coming. Otherwise my husband and I have a lot of one-dish meals\u2014beef stew, chicken soup, gumbo, Chicken ala king\u2014things you can cook in big batches and freeze for later meals.And while the big pot simmers on the stove I have time to read the latest\u00a0Southern Living\u00a0<\/em>and maybe collect new recipes for my stash!<\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

My latest book, HALLEY, awarded 2015 Jefferson Cup Honor for Historical Fiction, awarded the Moonbeam Silver Medal for Young Adult Fiction, and awarded the 2016 Frank Yerby Award for Fiction. Available at: NewSouth Books: www.newsouthbooks.com\/halley and Amazon. FAYE WITH HER … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"gallery","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.fayegibbons.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/830"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.fayegibbons.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.fayegibbons.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.fayegibbons.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.fayegibbons.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=830"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/blog.fayegibbons.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/830\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":837,"href":"http:\/\/blog.fayegibbons.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/830\/revisions\/837"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.fayegibbons.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=830"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.fayegibbons.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=830"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.fayegibbons.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=830"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}