To Blog or Not to Blog?

Look, does the world really need another food blog? I don't know. I guess I just need another food blog. The ones I've seen have certainly been pleasant reads: inspiring, challenging, gorgeous... and perhaps a bit too specific for my daily practices.

I live in a small Midwestern town. I am no more than ten minutes away from any family member, including my in-laws, who are literally over the river and through the woods (well, orchard), and my childhood home, where my father still lives. On the farms and in the gardens, local and organic food is varied and plentiful. On the store shelves, not so much. Gourmet and ethnic ingredients are somewhat harder to manage.

My kitchen work leans to Midwestern farm food, as taught to me by my mother, who is long gone. I have cookbooks by Paula, Julia, Rachel, Betty and Nigella and I use them all. But my favorites are the church cookbooks, or the ones celebrating the events of the local towns... the ones full of local names like Miller, Beachy, Yoder and Bontrager. More treasured still are the well-worn handwritten recipe cards. They are faded and marred with kitchen spills. Most of them are such proven favorites that I don't really need to look at them to prepare the dish. But when I see Mom's careful schoolteacher script on the recipe card for Apple Crisp, I am in her kitchen again, and it's yet another flavor of the process for me to enjoy. I take great pride in emulating her and all our foremothers. We women pass along tradition, nutrition, empowerment, training, and most of all LOVE... happy side effects all, in the process of getting our families fed.

The photo is of my first birthday. I don't know that the composition is so great, but I think it says everything that I want this blog to be. There is food, simply prepared - sometimes special because of the occasion - served at home from the hands of our mothers. These days the hand offering the food is mine and my children happily play the roles of willing recipients and students, learning the skills and recipes for their own homes one day.