Origins

Origins

The original hugs.org main page from www.hugs.org

When I decided to sort my recipe collection and share it. I knew it was going to be a major undertaking. What you see here is the result of weeks of work. I’ve worked (ok, so I’ve played) very hard to make the site easy to navigate and look at. There are a lot of recipes for you to enjoy, but there are some things I want to tell you about them, just in case you were wondering.

When I was doing the directory listings it was somewhere around 4 A.M. I tend to get a little silly that late at night and I certainly wasn’t going to change the code on over 1500 pages (the initial number of recipes I uploaded) at that stage of the game. All I can say is thank God for templates, macros and PFE.

I have a mental block as far as categorizing recipes is concerned. I can never decide if I want to do them by ingredient, course or type so I sort of hodge podge them. Maybe someday I’ll have a sudden flash of brilliance and it will all come together. Until then, I’ve done the best I can.

The whole point is to enjoy them, and if I spend time and energy worrying about where the perfect place for them is I’d never get anything accomplished!

Many of the recipes I have collected, and some of which I use frequently, have come from old cookbooks and are not exactly what you could call precise in their measurements and directions. I have included quite a few of them here for those of us who enjoy them. If they are outside the limits of your comfort level, please don’t try to use them. They’ll only frustrate you and make me feel bad that I made you have a bad cooking experience. I have included a page in the information section on translating the measurements of old recipes.

The recipe collection here reflects my basic cooking philosophy. I cook three meals a day for 6 people. I don’t have the time, energy or ambition to prepare ultra-involved food on a regular basis. I don’t worry about whether a food is authentic to it’s roots, although if it is, that’s great. If not and it tastes good, that’s fine too. Not that I don’t enjoy getting in there and giving the fancy magazine recipes a good going over (and have you any idea how much of that stuff is inedible? Lot of money for nothing sometimes!), but that’s a very rare diversion for me.

I also don’t believe in giving my money to grocery chains or food corporations and you will never, ever, find prepared mixes (i.e. cream of anything or flavored gelatin to name the two major offenders) or convenience foods in my kitchen if I can make them. I find it doesn’t take any more time to throw together something than it does to drive to the store, pick it up, bring it home, read the directions and make it. I’m not even going to get into the way I feel about some of the things that are legally in those things….. it’s enough to make you not want to eat anymore. I don’t know about you, but I want to know what goes into the food I feed my kids. Of course, as in everything, there are exceptions and until I can find a suitable homemade replacement for Hellman’s Mayonnaise, well, they get my money.

I am also a kitchen toy-a-holic. I own more kitchen stuff than any one person deserves to and I don’t even try to control it anymore. Sometimes you’ve just got to give in and admit defeat. In this case, it’s not even a struggle. I do use several of them more than the others and if I had to choose which ones were absolutely essential, they would be my KA (KitchenAid), hands down, followed by my slowcooker, microwave, and coffeemaker. If I didn’t have these things to help me out, I would never have the time to sit here and do these pages, read mail, check out any sites, you know, the important things in life. 🙂

If you decide to send me mail commenting on the site after you’ve had a chance to look around, please be gentle in any criticism. Labors of love are seldom perfect, no matter what form they take. This is no different.

Well, I’ve rambled and spouted long enough for one web site. Go, explore, have a good time and come back often as I will be adding more recipes quite frequently for a while. What is already here is the very small tip of a very big iceburg. Or maybe I should say a very small section of a never-be-big-enough hard drive!!

Leave a Reply