I have created this site to help people have fun in the kitchen. I write about enjoying life both in and out of my kitchen. Life is short! Make the most of it and enjoy!
Today when I was out walking around our lakes, I met someone who told me our little gazebo is in danger of being torn down. The reason stated is because it needs repairs, that would cost $$$. We have A LOT of people who live in the homes and townhomes that are part of our lake community. All the gazebo needs is a little TLC and some fresh paint. We could easily all pull together to fix it up and preserve it. There is no need to tear it down just because it is beginning to show its age. Shoot, we all are. But if we take care ourselves, we will live for a long time. I hope our charming little gazebo gets to live a long life too.
I just don’t understand why so many people want to throw things away and/or tear them down just because they have an aged personality. But then, they want to do the same with those of us who are older too. I am fighting to save our little gazebo. I have already spoken to and texted my neighbors. We have to fight for the little things. We have to fight to keep our personalities and our treasures. Maybe in some small way, I am fighting for my own self preservation too.
Couscous, like rice or pasta, goes with anything. You can dress it up however you like, and it will always be good. The possibilities on how to dress it up and what to serve it with are endless.
Couscous is a nutritious North African staple made from steamed, rolled semolina pasta, not a grain. It is high in selenium, low in fat, and cooks in minutes. It is not gluten-free. It is often served with stews, in salads, or as a quick side dish, typically steamed or steamed-then-hydrated. It is very healthy for you, with very little fat. A 1/4 cup (dry) serving contains 150 kcal, 5g protein, and 0g fat. It is a good source of selenium, manganese, phosphorus, and B vitamins. Because it is so high in fiber, it helps maintain balance for your blood sugars and aids in food digestion too.
When I made my orange spiced bacon wrapped shrimp Orange Spiced Bacon Wrapped Shrimp I served it over a bed of couscous with sauteed vegetables.
I added diced asparagus, red onions, red bell peppers, garlic, mixed olives, a variety of spices and cilantro to dress it up this time. It never ceases to amaze me how little bits of this and that can take something that is good into something that is fantastic and WOW!
I sauteed the peppers, onions, garlic, and asparagus together with a little cumin, cinnamon, cayenne pepper and salt & pepper in olive oil.
Once those were done, and the couscous was ready, I mixed everything together, along with the olives and the cilantro.
I added the shrimp and a little of the orange marinade/sauce, and VOILA! Dinner was done. Easy-peasy!
Things don’t have to be complicated in order to be good. In fact, as I have said many, many times, simple is often best. SO …. remember the K.I.S.S. rule – Keep It Simple (Stupid). 🙂
Have a great day and make everyday great. Life is what you make it, so make it fantastic. May 2026 be filled with happiness, good health and prosperity for all. ‘Til next time.
As we were dining on our deck, we were graced by not one, but two Blue Jays. It must have been a pair, because we also saw that directly underneath them was a nest. They are building a safe home for their future.
Our HOA has complained about our “dead” trees, but I don’t think they are dead at all. We always see so many different birds and squirrels in our trees, and now we even have nests in them. As long as there is so much life in our trees, I refuse to cut them down. They are far from dead, and are instead, very much alive.
Bacon and shrimp. Two great tastes that taste even better when put together. We love to wrap our shrimp in bacon. Once that’s done, all you need is a good sauce or marinade and then VOILA!
I made an orange spiced marinade for the shrimp and sauce. What a great, tasty idea, even if I do say so myself. 🙂 I served it over a vegetable couscous with a Portuguese white wine on the side. What made this dish even better was that it was our first dinner al fresco of the season. 🙂
Orange Spiced Bacon Wrapped Shrimp
You can use this same marinade for chicken or pork too.
1-2 lbs large shrimp or prawns, peeled and deveined and rinsed
5-6 pieces bacon, par cooked
1/3 cup olive oil
1/2 cup orange juice
1-2 TBSP orange olive oil, optional
3 TBSP orange balsamic vinegar, optional
1 shallot, minced
2 tsp sugar
1 tsp cumin
1/4 tsp cinnamon
1/4 tsp cayenne pepper
black pepper to taste
1/4 cup chopped cilantro
Whisk everything together well. Pour about half the mixture over the shrimp, cover and marinate for 30-60 minutes before wrapping in the bacon and skewering to grill.
While the shrimp is marinating, par cook the bacon. You only only it partially cooked because it still needs to be flexible enough to wrap around the shrimp. It will continue cooking on the grill with the shrimp.
Allow the bacon to cool slightly, then cut each piece in half and wrap around the shrimp. Skewer onto the skewers and place on a very hot grill to cook. Cook for about 3-4 minutes per side, or until both the shrimp and the bacon are completely cooked.
Top the shrimp with more of the marinade and serve alongside your favorite side dishes. I made some vegetable couscous and warmed pita bread, and then served a cool crisp white wine on the side. Enjoy!
Have a great day and make everyday great. Life is what you make it, so make it fantastic. May 2026 be filled with happiness, good health and prosperity for all. ‘Til next time.
Once again, things were pretty quiet around the lakes; with one exception. There was one Red-Naped Sapsucker that captured my attention. She let me take quite a few good shots of her too, which I was more than happy to do. I am pretty sure this is a female by her coloring. A male would have a lot of more red. I think she is very beautiful. I am very grateful she let me take so many pictures of her.
Have a great day and make everyday great. Life is what you make it, so make it fantastic. May 2026 be filled with happiness, good health and prosperity for all. ‘Til next time.
Jessica Brody has submitted another article for your enjoyment. This one is about preserving the family recipes through the generations and passing down family heirlooms through food and through family recipes.
For home cooks who want to keep family cooking traditions alive, the hardest part is realizing how quickly a beloved dish can become a half-remembered story. Preserving family recipes sounds simple until the recipe card goes missing, the steps were never written down, and the “little bit of this” depends on the memory of one busy relative. Notes end up scattered across texts, notebooks, and margins, and ingredient swaps happen without anyone recording why. With the right approach, protecting a family’s culinary heritage becomes realistic, and sharing recipes stops feeling overwhelming.
Understanding Family Recipe Preservation
Family recipe preservation is more than saving instructions. It is both documentation and connection, turning a dish into something others can repeat with confidence. Many recipes start as spoken guidance, then become scribbles on paper, and later a clean, shareable version that can travel.
It matters because recipes can keep traditions alive even when the original cook is not there to explain the timing, texture, or shortcuts. Sharing also helps younger cooks build skills faster and keeps cultural food traditions in everyday rotation, not just on holidays.
Think of Grandma’s soup: you might know the ingredients, but not when to brown them or how salty the broth should taste. Writing those cues down, plus the story behind them, makes it cookable by anyone in the family.
Turn Handwritten Recipes Into a Cookable Digital Cookbook
Digitizing family recipes works best when you treat it like kitchen prep: capture everything, tidy it up, then cook from it together. This process helps you turn fragile recipe cards into easy, practical recipes your whole family can actually make on a weeknight.
Gather, label, and scan your originals Start by collecting recipe cards, notebook pages, and printouts, then label each with the dish name and whose recipe it is using sticky notes. Scan with a phone scanning app or a flatbed scanner, aiming for clear, square images. Save files with consistent names like “Aunt_Lina_BananaBread_1978.jpg” so they are searchable later.
Type the recipe and capture the “how it really goes” notes Create a clean text version in a shared doc, adding missing details like pan size, oven rack position, and visual cues (“until edges are golden”). If the recipe was taught out loud, call the original cook or a relative and ask two questions: what to watch for, and what most people get wrong. Add those tips under a “Notes” section so beginners can succeed.
Build a simple digital family cookbook folder Make one main folder in Google Drive, iCloud, or Dropbox, then subfolders like “Weeknight,” “Holidays,” “Desserts,” and “Freezer-Friendly.” For each recipe, keep the scan and the typed version together so you can verify details if questions pop up. Add one short story line (when you eat it, who made it) to keep the connection, not just the instructions.
Import into a recipe app and tag it for real life Choose a recipe app you will actually open while cooking, then import the typed recipes and add tags like “30 minutes,” “kid-friendly,” “gluten-free,” or “one-pot.” The growing relevance of recipe tools shows up in USD 436.9 million of forecast recipe apps market growth, which is a good reminder to lean on tools that make searching and scaling easier. Attach the scanned photo in the app when possible so the original handwriting stays part of the record.
Host a family cook-through and update the recipe afterward Pick one recipe, share the shopping list ahead of time, and give everyone a small job so it feels doable, not chaotic. Use the flow to demonstrate and cook together to show key steps, then let each person try the technique once. After eating, update the digital recipe with timing fixes, salt levels, and any smart shortcuts you discovered.
Weekly Habits That Keep Family Recipes Alive
Preserving family recipes works best when it becomes part of normal cooking life, not a one-time project. These habits make sharing easier, help younger cooks build confidence, and keep your recipes usable on busy weeks.
One Recipe, One Story
What it is: Add one memory line to the recipe, including who made it and when.
How often: Every time you type or revise a recipe.
Why it helps: Stories create pride and motivate younger family members to try it.
Kid-Job Cooking Night
What it is: Assign age-friendly roles like rinsing herbs, measuring rice, or setting timers.
How often: Weekly.
Why it helps: Repetition builds real skills and turns traditions into something kids own.
Two-Minute Taste Notes
What it is: After dinner, write three notes: salt, timing, and one shortcut.
How often: Each time you cook a family recipe.
Why it helps: The recipe improves without turning into a perfection project.
Teach-Back Step
What it is: Have someone explain one key step back to you before doing it.
How often: Each cook-through.
Why it helps: It locks in technique and reveals missing details.
Cross-Generation Check-In
What it is: Plan a monthly call inspired by the [grandmother’s hands project]https://www.barnardos.org.uk/blog/power-keeping-family-recipes-alive-through-generations to swap one recipe tip.
How often: Monthly.
Why it helps: It keeps traditions current and strengthens the family cooking habit.
Recipe Preservation Q&A Home Cooks Ask
Q: What are the best ways to digitize and organize handwritten family recipes without feeling overwhelmed?
A: Start tiny: scan or photograph just 3 to 5 favorites, then stop. Name files the same way every time, like DishName_FamilyName_Year_Source and store them in simple folders such as “Weeknights,” “Holidays,” and “Desserts.” A single cloud folder can hold years of cooking notes, and all of my recipes totals 82.26 GB shows how manageable digital storage can be.
Q: How can I involve younger family members in preserving and sharing our culinary traditions?
A: Give them ownership of one job: taking photos of steps, typing the recipe, or rating the dish after dinner. Ask them to record a 30-second voice note describing what it smells and tastes like. Let them choose one recipe to “adopt” and be the official keeper.
Q: What are some simple methods to document the history and special memories behind family dishes?
A: Add a “memory header” at the top: who made it, when you ate it, and why it matters. Snap a photo of the original card and also write one paragraph in your own words, including substitutions that happened over time. If details are fuzzy, capture the best guess now and update later.
Q: How can hosting virtual or in-person cooking sessions help keep family recipes alive and relevant?
A: Cook together and have one person watch for missing details like heat level, pan size, and timing. Record the session so you can replay tricky steps and pull screenshots into your recipe notes. Afterward, agree on one “standard” version and one “flex” version for busy nights.
Q: What tools or services can help me create and share a family cookbook seamlessly?
A: Keep it simple: use a shared folder for scans plus one master document for typed recipes. When a recipe has multiple pages, merge the scans into one PDF with a basic online PDF combiner, click here for merging recipe scans into a single PDF, then share that single file so nobody loses page two.
Preserve One Recipe’s Story to Keep Traditions Cooking
It’s easy for treasured dishes to live only in someone’s head until a move, a loss, or a busy season makes them fade. A simple, steady mindset, motivating recipe preservation through food memory preservation alongside the ingredients, keeps family culinary heritage from getting lost in the shuffle. When recipes are saved with their names, notes, and context, celebrating family recipes becomes something relatives can actually cook, share, and recognize. Preserve the recipe, preserve the story, and the tradition stays alive. Choose one dish this week, write down the memory and cultural context behind it, and save it with the recipe you already organized. Sustaining cooking traditions matters because it builds connection and continuity that future generations can taste and feel.
Once again, all these are great tips and ideas, but the best way to preserve the family recipes and traditions is to cook with the family and learn by doing. We all have our own ways of doing things, and writing things down doesn’t always give you the whole story. A lot of what and how we learn is through observation and by doing it ourselves.
Once again, thank you Jessica for your contribution. Have a great day.
We are trying to start the birthday club again with our friends Wendy, Marc, Zoe, Mike and Lauren. In December, we all went out for New Year’s Eve, and also celebrated our December birthdays, Larry and Zoe’s boyfriend Jared. Mine was the next birthday, being in February. My birthday choice, aside from my tapas party, was to go to another Flamenco show. No one other than Larry and I had ever experienced the Flamenco before, and we’ve done it quite a few times. I love Flamenco. It was a fun evening and a new cultural experience for everyone else.
The Flamenco performed by StudiOle Flamenco at lilinaekupper@gmail.com was once again hosted at Kingman WineryThe New Kingman Winery, Another Fun Night At Kingman Winery. This was a new show, but every bit as good as the last one we attended. 🙂
Larry was taking this photo, and we forgot to ask someone to take one of all of us, but Larry was definitely here too. 🙂
This show was named Aires del Alma – A Journey Through the Emotions of Flamenco. “We dance unseen: the pulse beneath the skin, the memories stirring quietly, the whispers of joy, longing and courage. Each palo reveals a different breath of the soul – from celebration to stillness, from intimate confession to collective exhilaration. Aires del Alma invites you to travel through these shifting inner winds, guided by rhythm, vulnerability and the unmistakable truth of Flamenco”.
We all had a fun evening together, as we always do. 🙂
After the show, the night was still young, so we continued the laughter and friendship over dinner at Lazy Dog, Lazy Dog Dinner, Date Day – Part 2 – Belated Birthday Dinner At Lazy Dog. It was a very fun evening, and a fantastic way to end February and my month of birthday celebrations. 🙂
Have a great day and make everyday great. Life is what you make it, so make it fantastic. May 2026 be filled with happiness, good health and prosperity for all. ‘Til next time.
As you all know, I cook ALMOST everything from scratch all the time, and I am very proud of that fact. However, every now and then we do eat things from a box, that are store bought. Not often, but it does happen on occasion. In fact, it happened just the other day.
I had purchased some garlic breaded tilapia from Costco. I cooked it according the directions, and then dressed it up with a tasty creamy sauce. You would never know I didn’t actually make the whole thing, and that’s exactly how it should be when cooking from a box. Would you have known if I didn’t tell you? 🙂
My sauce was made with red bell peppers, onions, garlic, mushrooms, heavy whipping cream, and then I made it even better with some dill butter from Bella La Crema Bella La Crema. I topped it all with green beans. I served it with warmed bread and a delicious cool, crisp sauvignon blanc on the side.
Who says boxed foods have to be bland and boring? We eat with our eyes long before the flavors hit our taste buds, so make it pretty, even if it does come from a box. No one will ever know your secret. We will keep it between ourselves. 🙂
Have a great day and make everyday great. Life is what you make it so make it fantastic. May 2026 be filled with happiness, good health and prosperity for all. ‘Til next time.
Right now, things are pretty quiet. I am not seeing much on my walks. The trees are filled with birds. I can hear them and I look for them when I hear them, but they are busy building their nests, so I don’t see them too much. The same is true for all my ducks and geese. But I am seeing a lot of prairie dogs. They are always out chirping about.
Sometimes they are out by themselves.
And sometimes they gather in groups.
Either way, they are always fun to see. These cute little critters always seem so happy and curious about everything, and they love to be out and about.
I bet you think I am talking about wine, right? NOPE. Not this time. This time, I am talking about the big, bold red sauce I made for my sausage and peppers.
Sausage and peppers are a favorite here at our house. I make it different ways all the time. Sometimes I sauce it up, and sometimes I don’t. This time I sauced it up with a big, bold red sauce made from lots of different tomatoes.
Big, Bold Red Sauce
I love tomatoes of all kinds, and I use tomatoes all the time. I mix and match them all the time too, like I did for this sauce. I used big, colorful heirloom tomatoes, vine ripened tomatoes, and cherry tomatoes for this sauce.
4-5 lbs tomatoes
1 can tomato paste
2/3 cup onion, diced
1 TBSP garlic
1 tsp dried oregano
1 tsp dried basil
1 tsp dried thyme
salt & pepper to taste
1/2 cup dry red wine
1/3-1/2 cup balsamic vinegar
6 TBSP olive oil
Add the tomatoes, tomato paste, salt & pepper, garlic and dried herbs into a food processor and process until it is all chopped and blended together.
Get a large skillet very hot, add the olive oil and the onions and cook for about 2 minutes, or until the onions soften.
Once the onions are softened, add the tomato mixture and mix in well. Add the balsamic vinegar and the red wine. Bring to a boil, then reduce the heat to a simmer and continue to cook for about 45-60 minutes, stirring frequently. You want the sauce to thicken quite a bit.
While the sauce is cooking, prepare the bell peppers, mushrooms and sausage. I used hot Italian links and cooked them in a separate pan, then sliced them. I used red, orange, yellow peppers and sliced mushrooms.
When the sauce is thick enough, add the sliced sausages and mix together well. Spoon the sausage and sauce over cooked linguini, then added the peppers and mushrooms on top. Larry added Mozzarella cheese to his, and I topped it all with fresh chopped parsley. I served it with garlic and herb cheese bread and, of course a big, bold red sauce needs a big, bold red wine to go with it.
!Mangia! Enjoy! This is a hearty, tasty meal you’re going to love. You can substitute chicken as well.
Have a great day and make everyday great. Life is what you make it, so make it fantastic. May 2026 be filled with happiness, good health and prosperity for all. ‘Til next time.
A Jeanne in the Kitchen 