my style of cooking...

I was thinking of my style of cooking today while I was trying to lay down with a migraine (that is always the perfect time for me to think about things and prevent me from sleeping...)

so anyway, I got to thinking about styles of cooking and since I of course sort of learned from my mom, I will start with her...
tho, it is not really fair to compare her cooking...we were a very poor family of 12 kids, some nights the bigger kids went to bed without dinner...and when I think of her, she did not have the ability of having money just to go to the store for any ingredients she might need for a recipe...she cooked simply...
spaghetti sauce was tomato sauce
salad dressing was mayo tossed into some lettuce
tuna casserole, was just chicken soup, tuna and noodles
get my drift???
but she was a fantastic baker, when we had the monies for such pleasures...her angel food cakes from scratch with coffee frosting were legendary and her cinnamon rolls were to die for...we all loved her Christmas cookies...

when I got married, I cooked what I was used to and hubby was not too happy with my dinners...I have posted before how he was used to a meat and potato dinner, unless it was Italian and his mom can make a mean Italian dinner...when she still cooked (she is 86) lasagna was always the Christmas dinner...

I started expermenting a little with seasonings and I like to think I got pretty good and hubby started liking my dinners more and more (otherwise I told him he either ate or he didn't...) and I had a month's supply of menu ideas that I could grab at any given time...so from the time we were first married and then kids and then kids growing up, I sort of stayed with my 30 day's of menus...in December, hubby always had 3 weeks of paid leave and I would make up my 30 day's of menus so we would not run out of food while he was off...(money was a little tight, tho nothing compared to my mom...) and this worked for us, especially when I worked...

since retired, I have been more experimental with cooking and especially in the last couple of years, I really can say that I have gotten pretty good...say like this month, I tried 19 new recipes...
and I am getting pretty good at looking at a recipe and decide if I want to keep it the same or substitute something...such as I did with the barley pilaf in the previous post...I did a few changes to it and I ended up loving it...
I can remember just a couple of years ago, when I wanted to make a soup, I had to google or try Food Network for an idea...now, I can think of something, try it according to my thoughts and it comes out pretty good...

I am proud of myself for coming this far and only see good things in the future...