From the time I got my Easy Bake Oven at age 7, I knew cooking would always be enjoyable to me. My dad was a cook in the navy for a few years before I was born and my mother, a full-time nurse anesthetist, was also a good cook - even though she really didn't enjoy it much. She was the driving force behind homemade meals every night anywhere from 2-10 people... so it's understandable that one might tire of this over time.

 

Because of their busy work schedule in my teen years, I was given free rein to experiment in the kitchen as long as I cleaned it up afterward. We only had one cookbook in the house (a thick volume of casseroles written by Home Economics teachers) and even though we hardly ever made anything from it, I read it from cover to cover several times over the years. I learned to cook meat and potato type meals by watching my parents and trial and error. (By the way, I still have that cookbook.)

 

In 1978, after I graduated from nursing school, I married my husband who was training to be Air Force navigator in an RC-135, a reconnaissance plane. From our starting point in Mississippi, we traveled extensively throughout the United States and moved on average, every 2-3 years during his 20-year career. We set up housekeeping, made new friends and searched for a good church with every move to provide us with a sense of "home" and "family" away from our folks in Mississippi.

 

Early on in the marriage, I began collecting state cookbooks, focusing on the regional ones from churches or women's groups and I loved collecting recipes from friends. Everyone is a little piece of my past and I never fail to think of the person or place the recipes originated from when I make them.

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A former pastor once said that we rarely, if ever, affect someone in a neutral way when we cross their path. It's usually a negative or positive reaction. The Bible says "Even a child is known by his doings."

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When I think of my father, I remember the chicken and dressing he made for holiday meals and that he never failed to offer food or drink when someone came to our house.