Momma Bean can cook.

I do, I really do. For those of you that know me, you are probably rubbing your eyes, certain that you just read wrong, but I feel confident in my advances over the past year to make the bold statement that I can cook.

For years, I was either bored with, intimidated by or too busy to cook. I’ve written before about what a wonderful cook my mother is and how every dish I make, I compare to her and constantly fall short. Very short. But, I’ve heard many times the stories of her cooking abilities when she was first married. She was a horrible cook and even worse, soon after she married my dad, they moved back to the United States, a country that was foreign to her with food and stores that must have been more intimidating to her than I feel trying to recreate her dishes.

That’s not to say I wasn’t a little curious about cooking and food in general. I love food. I love discovering new flavors and trying new dishes. My dear friend and I spend countless hours during the week emailing back and forth and more often than not, it is about food. We talk about new restaurants in the area, recipes we’ve found, kitchen gadgets we long for and our (her) beloved Gordon.

So, I was playing around with what to do with this site, to keep it fresh and new, to wipe away the cobwebs and neglect, and to infuse the spirit of Beans in my writing, which was my original intent. I have been losing the game with time organization and it’s been more apparent as the Beans became older. I can’t sit for long stretches of time in front of the computer, recounting their newest giggle or their latest word, before one peers over my shoulder, asking to go to “Disney Dot Com” (thank you, cross-promotion) or another knocks softly at the door wall with longing to run in the grass and water the flowers. I thought about the time I spend on the computer at home and, lately, it’s to find a recipe that would be suitable for the wide range of taste buds I have living under my roof. So, to ease back into this, I thought I’d share the recipes that I’ve tested on the Beans, and their reactions. Hopefully this will evolve into something important (to me and to them) and into me getting back to the business of writing the history of my children as they grow before my eyes.