This collection of recipes got started because my cousin asked me to write down my recipes. Many of my recipes are simply altered versions of recipes from my favorite cook books. Some of them are made up. Some of them belonged to my mother, and to her mother before her. I am not a cook that follows a recipe exactly. I almost always end up changing it either because I don't have all the required ingredients, because I make a mistake (and the mistake turns out to be a good thing), or because our tastes here at our house lend to a slightly different seasoning. I used to tell people that the recipe came from such-and-such place, but it was pointed out to me that when other people tried to make the very same recipe, they did not end up with the same results.
In writing down the recipes I discovered that many of them weren't written down anywhere. I knew what I did, or how I changed the existing recipes, but never had gotten around to writing them down. Some of my recipes were merely a list of ingredients scribbled down on the corner of an envelope or back of some paper retrieved from the recycle bin. (These were usually the recipes I stumbled across in a magazine somewhere and just had to have.) As I went to write down these particular recipes, I ended up second guessing myself and decided the only way to know for sure what the recipe was, or to know that the recipes would actually work for other people, was to make them ... writing them down as I did. Needless to say, my husband is all for this project as it has meant lots of extra goodies about the house in the process of clarifying recipes.
Here are my absolute favorite cook books. Do check them out! (I usually check them out from the local library, and then if I really like them, buy a copy for myself.) Although I have included some of my favorite recipes from these books (because of the aforementioned habit of changing things around) there are many more lovely recipes to be found between the covers of these books which are not included here (and may never be) because I actually follow the recipe. (check back occasionally as the list tends to grow-I've got 2 books out from the library right now that are undergoing the "to buy or not to buy" test).
Send me your favorite recipe, I'd love to try it!