The Beginning

Hopefully my followers so far have read the background about how cooking has influenced my life in both the past and the present. Though I think I need to make it clear the huge project I am embarking on. In other words, why am I blogging?

Like I said before I have been thinking alot about going to culinary school and opening a restaurant of my own. One random weekend as I was sitting on the couch watching tv (probably The Food Network or Top Chef), I began to think about this hypothetical restaurant and the kind of food I would want to serve there. The things that came to mind were family favorites that my Grandparents and Great-Grandparents would make. They come from Columbia, South Carolina so their specialty was southern comfort food. Things like shrimp creole, crab cakes, corn pudding, pecan pie, and apple brown betty were always my favorite and I could picture them being on the plates in my restaurant.

On that day, as I was remembering how good that apple brown betty tasted, a light bulb went off in my head! I realized that all of the dishes that my family would serve when catering parties and lunches were original recipes that my relatives passed down from generation to generation. So I decided that it was time for my relatives to get some recognition and credit for all the hard work that they do and have done in the past. I decided that I wanted to create a cookbook of all of these wonderful dishes.

After pitching this idea to my family, I got some help from my Uncle, Aunt, and Grandmother who still work at the private club in D.C. They gave me access to many of the recipes that my family has used for decades. As I looked over them, I noticed that some were very concise and some were very vague. For example, the gazpacho recipe that will follow was literally a grocery list and other recipes would tell you to add an ingredient but never say how much. So I knew that if I really wanted to write a cookbook, these dishes would have to be tested and tried and recipes with exact ingredients and measurements would have to be created.

Now here we are in July 2010 and his blog, "April's Cookin'" will be the place where I reflect on the dishes that I am trying and share some of the recipes I create. When I asked my friend Heather if I should start this blog, and if it was a little too "Julie and Julia" she said that it was. But then she said the worst that could happen is that no one reads it and the best thing that could happen is that I turn out like Julie OR Julia. I have to admit that this inspired me because both of these women reflect what I want to become; like Julie, I would love to be writer and like Julia I would love to be a chef! Either way, I am cooking my way through my family's history and hopefully creating something wonderful for my family, friends, and followers.