ABC’s & Baking

This post is a little late but I had a busy weekend. We finally had beautiful weather so I was outside. I accomplished a lot of yard work and managed to get things done inside as well. It felt so good to open up the windows and let the cool breeze blow through the house. I wish it would blow all the dust right outside but it seems to work one way – blowing the dust and dirt inside.

Today with various social media formats, every individual has an outlet for their creativity. People are on FB. They Twitter. Some blog. I'm a blogger. When time permits, I blog to update family and friends on what we as a family, or I, might be up too.

This next project, a large one and timely one, will put our new kitchen to the test. Two of us will be doing the work and blogging, four of us will enjoy the products.

Kitchen. Baking. Eating.

Those that know me know I love to bake. I have been called Martha and Suzy Homemaker. Thank you for those knick names. I take them as a compliment!

ABC’s. We have 26 letters in our alphabet.

I love to bake. Since I can remember, I have clipped recipes from magazines, newspapers and any other place an interesting recipe was printed. I spent hours writing recipes on recipe cards that I thought sounded good. Most of those recipes would be cataloged under cookies, pies, desserts. Rarely did I clip or write down a meal. I skipped right to the tasty part of a dinner – dessert! I still tend to do that but I do collect main meal recipes now too. Honestly, the ratio would probably be 10:1 when it should be 1:10 but hey, I bake. My preference is to bake. I do cook. I enjoy cooking but baking, I’ll attempt any recipe.

In the past 4 years, I have sat alone at night, going through my collection of clippings. HUGE collection. I have organized most of them into one small box. I have really DOWNSIZED my collection. I threw away (gasp) hundreds (I kid you not) of recipes. After all, once I found that perfect apple pie recipe, was it really necessary to have 27 more in my box? Absolutely not,so out they went.

So why collect recipes only to have them sit in a box? Good question! And I have asked myself that time after time.

And why should I continue to collect wonderful recipes if I don’t make them within a specified time? Good question! [Once I told myself, if you don’t make this recipe within a month, you need to throw it out. I never got around to marking the calendar and those recipes still sit where I placed them.]

Last year, I read a book about a lady that cooked her way through a cookbook. Plain crazy! Weird recipes. Daunting techniques. I could not relate to taking on that “journey”.

Then I ran across a blog where a lady bought thrift items and created new pieces of clothing from them. They were fabulous. I was amazed at some of the pieces she created. However, I am not a talented seamstress.

But I can bake. I have recipes. So I plan to bake my way through the alphabet. A all the way to Z. That way, I’ll try 26 new recipes. My family will get to try 26 new baked goods. I will not however, bake these 26 new recipes in 26 days. I am not crazy. I will bake on the weekends.

I have also, unintentionally, made this a competition. When I told my daughter about this, wouldn’t you know it, she sat right down with penceil and paper in hand, and then she went to grab some cookbooks. She started writing out her ABC list.

What have I done? What am I creating? Competition in the kitchen perhaps?

A little girl time in my favorite room! I’m sure we’ll learn a few things along the way. We’ll have lots of laughter and dishes to wash. At the end of this baking experiment, I’m sure we’ll be adding a few recipes to our “tried and tested” binder and some will, unfortunately, find their way into the garbage bin. Not all recipes can be a “keeper”.

This will be fun! I hope you check back in to see what’s bakin’.