I fear the art of cooking may be disappearing from society. With the largest growing section of the grocery store being frozen food and Doordash and Grubhub delivering food to your door, who cooks anymore? 

I love to cook, but I come from a long line of kitchen masters. My mother put a tasty meal on the table almost every night. The exception was in my middle and high school years when mom worked for a tax accountant. During tax seasons she would work 60 to 80 hours per week. Dad cooked or reheated meals, but we definitely craved mom’s cooking. Eventually, I started cooking to help out. I am not going to claim all my meals were successes.

My grandmother on my mom’s side was a great german-influenced cook. She was the wife of a farmer and had access to fresh ingredients. She had ten children, so she was always cooking for a large audience. After she died, I took all of her loose recipes and made them into a cookbook. My cousins and I all miss her cooking. 

The best gift I ever got was delivered shortly after I married. My mother gave me a subscription to the magazine Taste of Home. I would pour through the recipes planning meals. I think my husband gained 30 pounds that first year of marriage eating everything I was cooking. Remember the way to a man’s heart is through his stomach. 

Do you collect cookbooks? I certainly do. I have a collection of twenty or so in a cabinet above the fridge, but I still feel myself getting stuck in rut from time-to-time. This is when I hit up my local library for inspiration in the form of cookbooks. I have found some amazing recipes in borrowed cookbooks. 

It is National Homemade Soup Day! I could eat soup everyday. In the winter months, each week a pot of soup simmers on the stove for us to enjoy during the football games. And I want to share one of my favorite soup recipes – Stuffed Green Pepper Soup. It is the soup in the picture above.