Like Butter

Cupcakes, cakes, brownies...those are more my specialty in the kitchen.  I can bake the hell out of bread and desserts and breakfast delights.  I am sort of famous for my bruschetta recipe and I have quite the reputation for cookies.  Cooking, however, is always something I tend to see as a chore.  I try to make dinner an easy event around my house and I often use my crock pot to allow me to do as little work as possible during the actual dinner hour.

I love cookbooks and enjoy trying new recipes but with only two of us here most days of the week, I almost always stick with one of my go to recipes so that I will not feel like I am wasting food.  As I have gotten older, my palette has expanded.  I do like to try new things and this is quite a change for someone who almost always ordered the same three things off of any given menu!

My mom grew up on a farm and they used the freshest ingredients and recipes.  Those recipes became my childhood meals and I tend to follow my mom's style of cooking.  My mom may not use a lot of fancy spices, but she can cook like nobody's business!  If I could just master a couple of her famous meals, I would be happy.  The "spices" my mom used most often growing up were salt and butter.  Awwww, yeeeeeah.  I mean, anything made with salt and butter is bound to taste good, right?  Not everything she made were made to give us heart disease from an early age.  We had tons of fresh vegetables and we ate a mostly vegetarian diet for a long time.

I find that I do not use a lot of spices in my cooking.  Sure, if a recipe calls for one or two, I toss them in.  On my own, I tend to use salt and pepper the most.  Garlic is a major player as well.  I also love cilantro and basil.  Cayenne pepper is also a favorite in my house.  I toss bay leaves into my homemade marinara sauce.  I would like to give a shout out to garlic salt (what, what!) and Lawry's Seasoned Salt (hey, hey!).  Those two things make life very easy and tasty!  Also...butter.