The kitchen was the heart of our home when I was growing up. I could sit for hours and watch Mom make the yummiest meals and most delectable pies. Sometimes I got to help. And on the weekends, it was Dad who cooked. Dad enjoyed introducing us to specialty foods he'd bring home from San Francisco, including a variety of cheeses and California salami. How pleased I was to find Caputo's Italian Market and Deli in Salt Lake City where I can once again purchase and enjoy those treats from my childhood! Many of my early memories involve food. We learned to grow vegetables and to bottle fruits and to use what we had preserved. When I moved out on my own I found a real treasure in the things I learned from my parents in our kitchen. And I still love to cook, share and eat good food. I enjoy preparing homemade broth-based soups. I use a lot of fresh vegetables and beans, and I find those soups freeze and defrost quite well. And that suits my lifestyle because cooking during the week is difficult. I use my freezer A LOT. I also enjoy learning to bake homey desserts. Fruit pies, like Mom used to make, and I've spent a good amount of time working on a chocolate layer cake that is rich and dense, and satisfying to me. Still working on the frosting. Cakes are not something we ate a lot of when I was growing up. The process of caring for our fruit trees and preserving the fruit was a family affair. Everyone had a job. Everyday after school it was my responsibility to pick up the fruit that had fallen so it wouldn't sit and rot on the ground. And when canning day came, I helped fill the jars because I had the smallest hands in the family! Thanks to Julia Child and Jacque Pepin I have learned to use my food processor for making pastry dough for chicken pot pies, or biscuits for an out of this world blueberry cobbler which amazed everyone who tasted them. I couldn't believe that food came out of my kitchen! I'm really grateful for the cookbooks available now and the new techniques I've learned.I've always been able to make pastry dough, but biscuits are a real hardship for me. I'm working on learning to make biscuits still! My first attempt at baking whole wheat bread! Bread wasn't something anyone in the family baked from scratch so I was, of course, eager to try. I followed the directions in the cookbook. And the house sure smelled wonderful as it baked, But maybe I kneaded too much flour into the dough. Or perhaps I did something else quite wrong because the finished loaf was quite hard. Rock hard, you might say. Crispy without toasting, IF you could slice it. BUT Dad ate it and seemed to enjoy it very much. THAT is love.