All About The Big Blue Binder

 

I come from a long line of good cooks, starting with my great great grandmother on down through my nan and gran and mom.   I started as a very little girl, standing at my mother's elbow and watching her chop, stir and bake.  There has been a hunger in me to cook from my very earliest memories . . . from my little Robin Hood Bake set, gifted to me by Santa Claus when I was about 5 years old on up through the years . . .  I began clipping out recipes and saving them when I was about 9 years old  . . . the first ones clipped from my mother's discarded magazines and the Star Weekly which used to be delivered into our home each week.  Before too long I had quite a collection and so I began to put them into my Big Blue Binder . . .
Inside it's pages are all my tried and trues . . . recipes clipped from newspapers and magazines . . . recipes gifted to me by friends dear and near, and far away too . . . recipes that I hand copied out of books signed out from the library, because I could not afford to buy my own books, what with a growing family who had many needs, cookery books being the least of them . . . recipes handed down in my family from one generation to the next . . . old family favourites, traditions . . . a culinary family history that is priceless.

This Big Blue Binder has followed me around now for nigh on to 45 years or more . . . all across Canada and back again . . . across the Wide Atlantic to where I live now in England.  It's pages are buldging . . . tattered, spotted and smudged, obviously well loved, and I count it amongst one of my most precious possessions.

I'm so happy to be able to share at least a portion of it with you here . . . on "Recipes From the Big Blue Binder."

I hope you'll pull up a chair and sit and stay a spell.  I think it's a visit we will both enjoy.