Here We Go!

I can't believe I'm actually going to attempt to do this! I'm not a writer. I'm not a scholar. But mostly, I'm NOT a Dallas Socialite!  I am, however, a mother, a daughter, a friend and a FOODIE!  I collect cookbooks and kitchen gadgets.  Currently I have about 200-ish cookbooks and a drawerful of random handwritten or printed or scrawled out recipes for just about everything.  Let me just say that if there was one thing I could do full time and get paid well (ok - VERY well) for it would be cooking for people. I absolutely love to cook for friends and family because I love to see them happy and enjoying themselves. If I had the room to do it and the room to store all of the things it would take to do it, I would be having dinner parties every week!! I'm not a gourmet chef and I'm not so sure I want to be. I just want to have some fun and enjoy my friends.

I recently went to an Estate Liquidation in University Park that my friend, Mark, was organizing for a family whose aunt had recently passed.  Apparently her aunt was a foodie, too.  And she loved to cook and entertain.  This was evidenced by all of her dishes, gadgets, etc.  Mark let me come for a pre-sale because he knew there would be plenty of things for me to prowl through and find and take home with every good intention of actually using and experimenting with.  Her name was Rosemarie, and I didn't know her, but wish I had.  I think I would have enjoyed cooking with her!

Sadly, her niece didn't realize the value of the room full of cookbooks her aunt had collected over the years.  Before Mark had a chance to tell her not to, she had taken all of the cookbooks off to Half-Price Books to sell.  She didn't get much for them - and there is no telling what kinds of treasures she had.  So knowing there were no books to sit for hours and read through I headed for her kitchen to start my treasure hunt.  I felt like a kid in a candy store!! :)  Gadgets galore, pots, pans, dishes, appliances! Mark made me a heck of a deal on a table full of lots of miscellaneous things!  The one treasure I was most excited about was a clear, plexiglass recipe box FULL of Rosemarie's handwritten, stained recipe cards.  She made notes about how she might have changed things, when and where the recipes came from and how much she liked how they turned out.  Best of all, there are several that are handwritten in GERMAN! :)  I'll have to have some help from my German friend at work, Chef Andreas, to make it through those!

Thanks to a suggestion from my "let's talk about recipes and food and all things Southern" friend, Jeff, this is my journey through a Dallas Socialite's recipes!!  Starting this weekend I am going to go through the box one recipe at a time and then blog about how it turned out.  I can't wait to see how my teenage girls react to all of this! haha  If I ate every single thing I cooked I'd end up being bigger than my house, so be ready if I show up on your porch with a plate full of food - or better yet, if I decide to get fancy and actually invite you over for dinner!  There's always a place at the table for you!  Well, here we go!!