The Thing Is.

The thing is I don't really have a recipe box. If I look really hard I may be able to find a plain metal box, but the box I'm afraid would be empty.

Because the thing is, cooking is my least favorite thing to do. I, do it, of course, out of necessity, we do not have the money to employ a full time chef, so it's mostly up to me that the cooking falls to. So I do the cooking, but believe you me, if I didn't have to, I wouldn't. I've got nothing against food, mind you, I find it most pleasing and tasty...when others do all the work.

It's just too labor intensive for something so temporary. It takes up way too much time to plan a menu, shop the groceries, chop, dice, or otherwise prepare the food and then serve it to my ravenous hoard who will devastate all my work within minutes and leave me with the clean up. No, the pay off is definitely not worth the effort and the worse part is that within another couple of hours the whole cycle will need to be repeated. No cooking is not for me.

But the gals over at the Mason Dixon knitting blog were curious as to where I keep my recipes. Here they are, this is my recipe drawer.

These are not my recipes per se, they are mostly my mother's and mother-in-law's recipes that they have tried and refined over the years, I've just borrowed them. The recipes I most use are written in two notebooks, The other books are cooking and baking books that have been given me in an attempt to excite my interest, it's not working, but I hold on to them just in case.

The recipe on top is a recipe for Potato Soup that my mom wrote on a recipe card and reduced the portions for a single person for when I went to college.

This is a favorite recipe among my family. I'm a potato girl, we are potato people, we eat potatoes cooked anyway. Potato soup is a very plain recipes it doesn't have a lot of ingredients mostly just potatoes.

I have doubled the amounts from the above recipe and then I usually double it again. Actually I don't measure anymore I just make whatever amount I think will be enough.

4 cups of cubed raw potatoes - I used a large pot full.

Cut up potatoes in cubes add 6 cups of water and cook. It doesn't say to add salt to the water but I do, and so did she.

2/3 cup chopped onion - I used - One large & one medium sized onions.
4 med stalks of celery -chopped - I used six stalks.

Fry onion & celery in 1/2 cup of oleo...aka margarine. I use butter.

Cook about 10 minutes or until the onions begin to look clear. (I add the salt and pepper and sweet basil to the fry mixture) Add the mixture to the potatoes and continue cooking until done. (Done is when the potato's are cooked through and are soft easily pierced with a fork. That's not on there either that's just common knowledge among us potato people.)
When just about done take the 1/2 c milk and flour (about three Tbsps) and shake together in (a covered shaker cup) and shake real hard so there is no lumps, and add to potato mix.

Add cut up wieners if desired.
This soup is a comfort food and a few weeks back we had an unexpected death in our extended family so I made up a batch, a large batch for my family at home, I expected to have left overs, there was none.

PS. This is what is actually in the back of the notebooks, recipes that haven't made it into the official notebook. I have asked my daughter as a birthday gift to enter all the recipes in the computer database so that we can print them out and then put them in plastic sleeves in a binder. This would benefit her as well, if she would someday like to have a recipe from my collection she could print out her own copies. She's thinking about it.