This cookbook project started out simply enough: gather and test all of my mother’s recipes and compile them in a self-published cookbook in one year. I started on January 3, 2010 with a stack of about 100 recipes cards and the lofty goal to test all of them. I would report about the adventure on a blog and learn as much as I could about cooking in the style of my mother: simple, home-cooked meals, prepared with love. And with any luck, maybe I could actually recreate some of the taste memories I have of meals from my childhood.



After more successes than I anticipated, and the requisite failures along the way, I have a better understanding of ingredients and old school methods, and have certainly learned how to improvise. Most importantly, though, the project opened my eyes to the stories of the mothers in my family—my Granny Lula, and Great Granny Howard, and my mother’s own journey of being a mother who cooks for her family with deep love in her heart. As I quickly discovered, the food was only part of the journey.