One of my favorite desserts is New York Cheesecake.  I have a recipe that is from an old Better Homes and Garden cookbook from the 60’s.  That recipe makes the best cheesecake ever.  It’s not hard to make, but it is time consuming.  I took the cheesecake to a family gathering one time years ago.  A sister-in-law that is not my favorite person in the world, called me the next day asking for the recipe.  I gave her the recipe and if I remember right, she got mad at all the steps it took.  I used a blender for the crust and a mixer for the filling and you have to put the cheesecake pan in water in another pan under it when you bake it.  And I think there is grated lemon peel in the crust.  But I think that it is worth the effort, myself.

I used to have a collection of really good recipes.  At one time a few years ago, I got a computer software called “Cook’n”.  It was really neat because you could make a cookbook of favorite recipes with it.  And it organized all your favorite recipes.  I gathered family recipes from cousins and had fun with it.  Plus I remembered some of my Mom’s and Gram’s recipes.  But lost interest in it for some reason or other.

It’s fun for me to cook and bake and I think that if I had made a career of it and had gone to culinary school, I think that my work would not have been work at all because I enjoy every aspect of cooking.

As a second job at one time, I got to work weekends at a spa cooking breakfast and lunch.  There were only 25 people that I had to cook for, and I got to wear a chefs jacket.  They made me clean the refrigerators (there were 4 huge wall refrigerators) and I had to clean the round glass table tops in a huge dining room.  Then I had to wash dishes.  And a young Chef from Austria used to make me lots of extra dishes from having a parties on Friday nights  with her friends and then leave the dishes with pans that were not easy to scrub before putting through the dish washer.  But just getting to work there was awesome to me.   Plus I learned a lot from real Chefs.

Oh well.  It’s not an easy world.  That is for sure.  It takes more then being good at what you do.  My Mom used to say that anything you learn, no one can ever take away from you.

Another one of my Mom’s sayings was to have the faith of a mustard seed.  I actually have a charm that goes on a charm bracelet that has a tiny mustard seed in a little silver disk.

I like kitchen gadgets.  Over the years I have collected lots of useful stuff for the kitchen as has most everyone.

And that’s my thoughts for a rainy February day in Vermont.  I can not believe this weather.  Very unusual.