This Journal Belongs To...

What a lovely evening. It is the first day of autumn and the air is crisp! Leaves are turning, air is cooling, and nights of tea and cozy blankets are starting up (tonight is one of those nights). I took the dog to the dog park today and it was perfect light-jacket weather. I love fall. Have I mentioned that?

I was doing some fall cleaning in the kitchen (putting away too many cookbooks that had been left out on the counters and table) when I stopped to look at our cookbook collection. Between the two of us, Kyle and I have a fun assortment ranging from stir fry books, four-star restaurant cook books, classics like the Moosewood Cookbook and the Joy, and then I saw a semi-worn cloth-spined book. I opened up to the front page and it is dated 1/6/11. It is my baker's journal that I used at work. Over time, I didn't need it as much to document what I was experimenting with or what new recipes we were going to try in the bakery, so entries got more spaced and eventually quit. I knew it was here all along, but something was calling me to page through it tonight. 

So much is in it! Hard evidence of my improvements in the kitchen! Entries about experiments and recipes for cinnamon rolls, pages with jotted recipes about scone and muffin fillings, soup recipes and ideas, catering orders I filled, notes from probably a hundred bread experiments...A slip of paper fell out of the front as I was flipping through. It was a meal I made at home and had jotted it down so I could remember and make it again (which I want to after reading it! Grilled lemon, parsley and garlic salmon topped with a poached quail egg, served with a rice salad of lemon, shallot, capers, toasted almonds and garlic and an arugula salad with a dijon dressing and hard-boiled quail eggs. Bam.) 

I love reading through old stuff. I had my mom make copies of my grandma's pickle recipes just so I can have her handwriting in my recipe box. Someday my grandchildren will come across this old green book with a tattered brown spine on a bookshelf somewhere and will open it to read about my progress in my earliest years of cooking and baking. They will have recipes and ideas that I developed, read about my struggles and triumphs in many (many) experiments, and then have recipes that I cooked for them as their grandmother. Food is all about legacy. Feeding and nourishing. Most importantly, sharing.