A Random Assortment

Hey Ma-

Ok, so Susan has long been one of my heros, but after reading her recipe yesterday she somehow gained even higher stature. Remember when she got up from the dinner table, walked into the kitchen, opened the pantry, dug through the trash only to march into the dining room with the empty Cool Whip container held high over her head as she joyously proclaimed, "Ah-HA! I KNEW IT!"? If only you'd known then that she was the queen of culinary shortcuts. If only...I'm not knocking shortcuts, just admiring Susan for her endless hutzpah.

Anyway, completely unrelated...but you know, what I'm going to write about anyway...are two other food things.

First, in red white and Rachel fashion (do you remember the tv show the OC? yeah, I stole that joke from seth cohen from that show...and, incase you've never seen it, yes that is EMBARRASSING to admit), I immediately began reorganizing our entire house the second school was out for the semester. M's room is done and ours is most of the way there, but the kitchen--which isn't getting reorganized--has become the landing place for all of our things which are currently roomless. That meant burritos for dinner last night and tonight we're noshing on sausage. I'm pretty sure I don't need to share my recipe for incredible sausage cooking...

The second thing is that we're getting ready to come and see you. In true type-A fashion I've been neurotically considering everything M could ever possibly need on a plane, including provisions for the 3 day snow-in that I've decided (at your urging...ahem) to prepare for that will occur where our layover is. Needless to say, this doesn't include the homemade food we've been giving her.

And so now we're going jarred food and she's not particularly into it. I find myself feeling frustrated at the need to bring unopened jars through airport security, feeling overly regulated. I find myself thinking that food is such a site of control in our society, from its marketing to its very calculated revulsions (for instance, I'm pretty sure I didn't just decide one day never to eat produce grown with pesticides, but that that idea was marketed to me...egads, the infiltration is so subtle) to disordered eating. I've been thinking and thinking on this lately, turning it around in my brain. There's been no dramatic conclusion to this consideration, but I figured I'd share it today anyway. What do you all think?

Anyway, speaking of food, off to that delicious sausage...

XXOO
-R

The Beginning

After months (okay maybe years) of talking about starting a blog on food and cooking, we are finally doing it. We both love cooking and sharing recipes we've discovered and fallen in love with (and every so often hate). Beyond that, though, we both see food as a point of togetherness and sharing, with coming together for a meal as a time not only for nurturing ourselves and our families literally, but also as a time in which we pause and mark our lives.

Janet here: We got the name for the blog from an essay I wrote about my mother's cookbooks. When my mother died a decade ago, I discovered that she had written commentary in her cookbooks. "Bob [my father] really loved this," read the one next to the recipe for horseradish meatballs in her coverless, stained McCall's Cookbook. "Janet and Kellee [my sister] did NOT like this," read the comment by tomato aspic. I realized as I leafed through them that these were more than simply recipes; these were my mother's journals, her way of recording our lives together.
So Rachel and I started talking about this idea and realized that sharing recipes was one of the ways that we've remained connected even though we're now living 3,000 miles apart. It made our lives still seem somehow connected, and we thought if this is happening to us, it's probably happening to other people too.

Rachel here: When I first moved across the country from my family at the age of 19, one of the ways in which I navigated my homesickness was by making food that my mom made for my brothers and me when we were growing up. Now that I have a partner and we are growing a family of our own, one of the ways I bridge the two parts of my family is through food. As my mom and I have discovered our shared love of cooking (alright, let's be real here--we're pretty fond of the eating component, too), though our kitchens are thousands of miles apart, our exploits in them have become a shared space space of sorts.
Anyway, we hope you enjoy our blog and would love to hear your own tales of culinary trials and errors, as well as about the ways in which food functions in your life.