Introduction

I have had a love of cooking since I was a very young girl. I remember helping my mother in the kitchen when I was a child and the fun that was had during those times. She had a garden on the side of our house and it was a wonderful learning experience to see foods picked fresh from the garden, brought in and transformed into the meals we ate. She made fresh bread and canned preserves and other fresh items to be eaten later in the year. My mother was always a very good cook and she taught me the basic skills I needed to further my own knowledge as I experimented in the kitchen.

As I grew I not only became quite comfortable in the kitchen, but also furthered my love for growing fresh foods. Over the years I have collected old cookbooks and became interested in how things were made before the introduction of items like condensed soup and cake mix. I had an older family friend who used to call me a "scratch girl," (I forgot about that until just now) which meant that I was a girl who knew how to do things from the ground up. She considered that a skill that few women today still possessed.