Traditions

Today is July 4th, a wonderful holiday celebrating the tradition of our independence. An independence that was won by the hard work and death of so many. It greatly deserves to become a tradition celebrated across the country every year. On this particular 4th of July, I am working on a tradition we have started for our family- a recipe book.

It was actually a tradition started for us by a friend of my mothers. As a wedding present, Jo gave us a recipe binder. It has everything we needed in it to put all of our favorite recipes in- the recipe cards and protectors, a binder with the dividers needed to separate the recipes, some bigger recipe pages for those more complicated recipes, and the favorite recipe's of Jo and other friend's of my mom.

I think this would have to be one of my favorite wedding presents. Not because it was expensive or elaborate, but because it is something that will probably always be with my family from now on. Because it is a tradition. Now, at some point down the road the actual physical appearance of it my change- it might fall apart, or become too full so we will have to get a bigger one, or it might be come electronic due to the changing of technology, but the idea of the "recipe book" will always be there.

For those of you who don't know me or my family very well, then you might not know how big a part of our life cooking really is. See, my husband loves to cook. He is really great at it too. If we led a different life, he could defiantly make a career out of it. He could be one of those timeless, well-know cooks- such as Julia Child. He is just that good. And he is so creative. He does things with food that are just amazing. Yes, most of the time I think what he cooks is just too elaborate for our life style, but that doesn't mean in another life and time it wouldn't be perfect. As for me, I like to cook to, and I think I am fairly adequate at it, but I would rather have a simple nourishing meal, where he would like to have some big exquisite affair. To me cooking is a necessary part of the day, where to him cooking is an art.

Cooking is a big part for another reason as well- it is with our food where we first really did something for ourselves and our marriage and our future. See my husband is also overweight. But in the 6 months we have been married, he has already lost almost 50 pounds... just from us changing our diet. I love my husband whether he is overweight or not, but being overweight comes with many health risks and more than anything I want him to be around for our future, for our kids, grand kids, etc. So we changed our diet. Although i wouldn't really call it a diet, more like a lifestyle change. We definitely don't starve ourselves. We eat three meals a day, with 2 snacks in between. It's what we eat that has changed. Healthier foods, healthier portions. We also don't eat out very much, which is why cooking has become such a big part of our life. We cook 95% of our meals, usually from scratch too.

So here I sit on a beautiful Monday evening while my husband is off doing who knows what, and my two wonderful cats are sleeping around me (one is on the file cabinet, and the other on my desk) working on a tradition that is bound to be a part of our lives for a very long time. Most of the recipes in this book right now are from others... but just two days ago my husband and I were cooking up something for a party and he turns to me and says "we need to write this recipe down." I wonder if years down the road when my husband and kids are in the kitchen and cooking and my child looks at the recipe in the book, sees the author was their mom and dad, I wonder if they will ask where it came from. Will we remember that July 2nd so many years in the past when we spent the whole day cleaning the house and cooking food for the week, or will it blend it with all the other normal, everyday moments that led to the forming of this tradition.

When my children get married, will they ask for a recipe book of their own? Or will they ask for a copy of ours, like my husband asked his grandma when we got married. What other traditions will we set for our family? These are the thoughts that float through my head as I sit here writing up recipes for our recipe book and I am just amazed that this wonderful tradition came from a simple, inexpensive wedding present. Another question that enters my mind- are these things Jo thought about as she picked out this wedding gift? Does she have her own recipe book tradition? Or was she just simply trying to give us something that we didn't already have?