May 28th, 2024

It's no surprise that I love to cook and bake because I got a great start. I literally began my life in a basket by my mom's side in the kitchen. Mom loved to make everything from scratch and she could make anything — sometimes for 5, sometimes for 50 — and to her, the whole point of making something to eat was to make it taste good.  Let me tell you, Mom's homemade, melt in your mouth, hot out of the oven bread slathered with real golden butter was legendary. Keep in mind that Mom started cooking and baking bread when she was a child in the 1920s, long before anyone had even heard of the word cholesterol, and she baked bread until she died at the age of 82 so I'm not convinced cholesterol ever affected her, and it sure never changed her way of cooking or baking. Nor was a piece of anything ever too big. In fact, Mom made the biggest apple pies you've ever seen on huge aluminum sheet pans, and just like her bread, her apple pies were to die for. No one could ever wait for her pies to cool and set, we just cut sinful hunks the size of dinner plates and devoured them scalding hot with the caramelized sugar still dripping. Heavenly!

My mom was the most generous, giving person I've ever known, and she was in her glory when she was sharing her talent for cooking and baking with others. It was a common occurrence to come home from school and find Mom in the kitchen with 20 or so wives and mothers, teaching them how to make bread or chicken soup or "pirogis," stuffed dumplings from her Polish heritage.

In keeping with Mom's generosity, I love sharing my favorite recipes with you. And if you ever get a chance to come visit and want to learn how to bake cread, I'll put on a pot of coffee and teach you how to bake bread too!