Focused at Fifty

 Very exciting stuff, chopping green onions!    After I received a comment from someone on the 'basic nature' of the recipes I was posting, I felt I needed to reiterate the purpose of my project. I will have recipes for meatloaf, baked chicken, zucchini bread, cookies, and veggie dip among others. These are home-style family recipes which many of you already have. I just have never made them and want to be able to say in a years' time that I have accomplished that. You can doctor them up as you wish and some of them I have and will note it when I do. This blog project is not about making gourmet foods (although I reserve the right to venture down that path in the future.) These are not cooking channel glossy magazine recipes. It is not about me cooking or rather stumbling through some famous chef's cookbook. This project is about cooking through my own families' recipes. Most are my Mom's, but some are my Nana's, sister's, cousin's, a...

My sis Sheryl and I ventured out to North Jersey (as we call it out here) over the weekend to spend time with our dear cousins, sisters Anne and Jennifer. We reconnected a couple years ago after a long absence. It is a funny thing when you get older, you realize that those cousins you hung with in your childhood years are almost the only family left and hopefully ... and if you are lucky, you reconnect with them or stay connected with them. If getting older has taught me anything, this is not always the case with friends and families. I live in a very special world where I am very lucky that my family loves each other and loves getting together. I know of plenty of dear friends which this does not happen. It is sad but something that I have come to accept. I cannot impress the close relationships of my family on others. Some families, unfortunately, will just not be that close. As an adult, I have come to accept that I cannot influence my friends in that regard. I ...

This is my Nana's recipe for sweet noodle kugel. I posted about this once before but never posted the recipe. Kugel is a holiday mainstay in Jewish culture and cooking. I remember having this on Rosh Hoshana, Hannukah, and Passover. It is fitting that I am putting this recipe up during the holiest of holidays periods, the 10 High Holy days between Passover and Yom Kippur. Kugel can be made in variety of ways:  apple sauce kugel, potato kugel, noodle kugel, matzoh kugel, savory spinach kugel, carrot kugel, and of course, my Nana's recipe below for the sweet noodle kugel with raisins. I love this recipe as I have eaten it as a side dish, dessert, or even a quick breakfast on the run.  My sister Sheryl makes a great spinach kug. I remember my brother Adam and I loving this recipe below when Nana and Mom made it in the 70's. We would fight for the pieces which had the most crunchy noodles on top. I made the recipe this evening. You could smell the apples, nutmeg...

Nana, Mom, and Sheryl As a child, I hated all types of fish except those that were battered, breaded, deep fried and covered in ketchup. Give me fish sticks till the end of the earth! I also loved those Gorton's beer battered cod fillets. They were so good with ketchup, LOTS of ketchup. As far as I was concerned, that is how they came out of the ocean, already slathered in ketchup.   We used to go to a restaurant in Mullica Hill, NJ, by the name of the Hilltop Restaurant. It was a small diner/café type place. Mom would drag us around town antiquing till she was ready to drop. We hated it but were rewarded with lunch and I had my FAVORITE meal, fried clam strips with lots of ketchup.   Growing up, I was never a fan of just baked or broiled fish. That is until my Mom made this recipe. I ate it cautiously at first. The 2 nd mouthful was even better. It wasn't until years later that I found that this was actually one of my Nana's recipes and the family history-bu...

Cooking and family. Anyone who knows me knows that I put family up as one of my greatest priorities. My brother Adam and sister Sheryl feel the same way. So it is of no wonder that some of our best family memories revolve around the dinner table. Mom and Dad insisted on nightly meals. Mom did most of the cooking as Dad was off teaching art at (then) Glassboro State College until dinnertime. (Dad, on the other hand, mastered the BBQ grill and brunch!) Our dinners were "all hands on deck." Everyone would help out setting the table, getting drinks, putting out the condiments, and generally participate in the making of the meals.  One of many holiday dinners at Wenonah (Brother Adam was taking the pic) During dinner, the conversation was loud and lively, with each of us recounting what happened that day.  We were not a big "grace" family. I only remember saying "grace" a handfull of times, usually when the grandparents were visiting. Mom and D...

The other day I was cruising home on the highway in my hot rod aka the Camry, when I came up against another 2006 pearl grey Toyota Camry, JUST LIKE MINE!  I was eager to see who was driving MY car down the highway so I sped up to get a look. Driving the exact same car was a man who looked like Jed Clampett from The Beverly Hillbillies . I was immediately annoyed. He shouldn't be driving my car. Someone who looks like ME should be driving my car. I had an urge to run him off the road or have his car repossessed. But I didn't. I hit the gas and he ate my dust.   I began thinking about why I got so annoyed with him driving the same car. Is it because we associate the type of car we drive with our identity? It must be. I certainly didn't want to be identified or have my car identified with him. Moreover, I also get annoyed when I find that others share my name.   If you do a Google search on your name, (I know many of you have but won't admit it...

Old Main, Penn State This past Sunday I traveled up to the Penn State Main Campus in State College, PA.  John had some business up there and I tagged along to keep him company on the 3 hour drive up and back. While he was doing his stuff, I spent the morning and early afternoon wandering the campus reliving college memories from my own alma mater, Rutgers University in New Brunswick, NJ.   Old college campuses are very similar in that they all seem to have that large stately main building on campus where it all began. There is a cupola on top and two wings of classrooms. Old Main at Penn State brought back memories of the Old Queens building on the Rutgers College campus in New Brunswick.  Friends and I would hang out in front of or behind it on the Voorhees Mall studying for our classes or just relaxing in the sun. Today at Old Main, students were doing the very same thing. Some guys were playing Frisbee, a couple here and there being romant...