I’m pleased to share with you homemade artisanal foods created with my hands and my heart. Cooking and baking from scratch started early for me in life. While others might consider it stressful, the process of cooking, baking, gardening and preserving foods have always been relaxing for me.
As a young child in the 1970’s I was a “Latch-Key” kid. Dad was a schoolteacher and Mom worked 2nd shift so she wasn’t around weekdays to make dinner.
Dad being the “man of tradition” as he was, always wanted dinner on the table by 6, so I learned to cook full meals starting in 2nd grade.
I would come home from school to an empty house, get my homework and chores done and then cook dinner for Dad and I.
I learned to season “with heart” and try new things as the kitchen became my own little flavor lab. Dad was a willing taste tester and made it clear when flavors and seasoning were a hit or a miss. He was brutally honest yet gave me encouragement to experiment and improve the end result.
We had a fairly large garden to harvest with a variety of vegetables. Our yard also had apple, cherry and pear trees. Raspberry bushes spread quickly and eventually took over a very large part of our backyard.
I have great memories helping my mom and dad in the garden, rototilling and preparing the soil, adding worms to the compost bin, or the “Worm Farm” as dad called it. Our soil was rich in nutrients and like black gold.
In winter we planted seeds in the basement to harden off and transfer to the garden in Spring. Dad would buy cans of sardines packed in water, and my job as a very young child was to throw a single fish into each hole dad dug before the tomato plant was added.
Every year we enjoyed the most delicious vegetables that tasted SO MUCH better than anything purchased from the grocery store!
I started cooking, baking and exploring new recipes as a young girl.
My earliest memories of preparing foods with Mom was canning on weekends – gathering large amounts of fruits and vegetables from our garden and making applesauce, apple butter, cherry pie filling, raspberry jam, whatever we had on hand, we created delicious foods and preserved them.
Dad loved this spicy condiment we made every year, in our home it replaced ketchup on everything. It was always spicy HOT, so as a kid I learned to love spicy foods. Together we would create the most delicious flavors, blending fresh vegetables and hot peppers to create…you guessed it, hot sauce!
My love for cooking and baking continued into college. At Augustana, on Sundays the cafeteria was closed and we were “on our own” so I would grocery shop and make meals for a few of my friends to eat together in the dorm. Girls on our floor would smell food cooking and pop in their heads, interested to join. Sunday meals grew in numbers as others wanted to be a part of our Sunday dinner.
Collecting a few $ from each person for the weekly shopping list, I’d make a full Sunday dinner which included dessert. Some Sundays we had a few people for dinner, but more often there would be close to 20 or more. It didn’t matter the count, scaling was easy and I enjoyed cooking for everyone.
When my husband Jeff and I started raising our family, as a new mom I was determined to offer healthy foods and to understand the dietary needs of our small children. That’s when my eyes really opened up and noticed the chemicals in our food. I didn’t like that the foods at the grocery store had ingredients on the labels I didn’t recognize. After all…
shouldn’t we be able to pronounce the ingredients we put into our body?
This brought me full circle back to gardening as an adult. In the beginning, our little patch of dirt here in Bloomingdale Illinois was heavy clay. Over the years we added composted organic matter and manure which improved the dirt to a beautiful rich black soil that supports abundant and delicious harvests.
Canning allows me to control sugar, salt and season the way we like.
Now with gardening and canning back into our lives, Mom and Dad would come over to our house to help processing. Just like we did when I was young, we prepped and canned together until they passed away. The best part was spending time with them and carrying the tradition forward. They taught me the value of preserving foods for our family which provides healthy alternatives to grocery store “junk”. Canning allows me to control sugar, salt and season the way we like.
Events bring our family and friends together regularly. Jeff and I love to entertain and we have an amazing family that enjoys spending time together! We gather together for more events beyond the Easter, Thanksgiving and Christmas as most families do. Sometimes we get together for no reason at all except to hang out and enjoy family gatherings like horseshoes, euchre, dart and game nights.
Family traditions and the foods surrounding them are an integral and very important part of our life. We celebrate St Patrick’s Day with an Irish Feast and our Italian Feast of the Fishes at Christmas. On Ravioli Day we have 4 (FOUR!) generations come together to make massive amounts of ravioli.
We have an amazing family that enjoys spending time together.
I’m so blessed our family has been willing participants for me to try new recipes. My husband has carried on the taste tester aka ”Guinea Pig” position for the past 40+ years.
There have been a lot of hits, and yes – definitely a few “misses” along the way – but for every failure, a great learning experience evolves which helps me to adjust my recipes and improve the final product.
Through the years I have shared my baked and canned goods with others – whatever the day’s bake or canned that week, It might have been a pie, brownies, cookies, focaccia, or maybe it was a jar of salsa, jam or giardiniera. I’d hand it off and say, “Here I made this. Hope you like it”
And the responses? “That was fantastic – Robin, you should really sell this”! Not from just a few, but from A LOT of people.
So I decided, why not?
I’m pleased to share with you my homemade foods created with my hands and with my heart.
Thank you in advance for supporting my local, small business.
Welcome to Grizzled Goat!
