My sister, Megan, tagged me with this fun little kitchen questionaire. 1. How many meals does most of your family eat at home each week? How many are in your family? We eat nearly every meal at home (even lunch-- Cole almost always comes home for lunch) all throughout the week unless something unusual happens. We will typically go out one time on the weekend (i.e. either Friday or Saturday). Anyone who knows me well, also knows that Michelle doesn't do cooking on Sunday. Sunday lunch is almost always McDonalds and Sunday supper is frozen pizza and salad. :) There are 7 people in our family, but one of those people only eats babyfood and crackers. 2. How many cookbooks do you own? TONS! My 2 favorites are: 1. Perfectly Delicious written by the sisters of former Arkansas senator, David Pryor. They chronicled their mother's, (Susie Pryor) favorite recipes. She was a true southern belle and I love reading the cookbook just for all of the Arkansas history and Bible quotes that are included. (Susie was a devout Presbyterian.) 2. The Pastor's Wives Cookbook filled with recipes from the best church potlucks all over America! 3. How often do you refer to a cookbook each week? I look through cookbooks about twice a month when I am making my 2-week menu. I try to include one new recipe every 2 weeks so that life doesn't get too boring. 4. Do you collect recipes from other sources? Most of my recipes are from friends and ladies from the various churches that we've served in over the years. One of the best cooks I ever knew was a woman named Bobetta Baker who lived in Cole's hometown. I tried to learn everything I could from that woman and still make her Shrimp Fettucine, Brown Betties and Party Chicken (and think of her each time)to this day. 5. How do you store those recipes? In a photo album with those magnetic pages. I have the photo album divided into sections. 6. When you cook, do you follow the recipe pretty closely, or do you use recipes primarily to give you ideas? I follow the recipe fairly close to the letter the first time around and then I make changes and write them down IN THE COOKBOOK. I have notes all throughout my cookbooks. I will even write things like, "We tried this one time and hated it." I figure this might be helpful to my daughters one day. 7. Is there a particular ethnic style or flavor that predominates in your cooking? If so, what is it? Southern/Home-style. I have created a pretty mean recipe called "Michelle's Yummy Cajun Red Beans and Rice." Heavy on the creole. 8. What’s your favorite kitchen task related to meal planning and preparation? (eating the finished product does not count) I don't know. 9. What’s your least favorite part? Hauling the groceries up the stairs from the basement/garage. But I only hate it if I happen to be alone which isn't often. Usually, we form an assembly line and each bag gets passed through 5 sets of hands until it gets to the "runner" at the top of the stairs. Still, just putting all of the stuff in the pantries, freezers and refrigerators is a chore that I don't really enjoy. 10. Do you plan menus before you shop? Every two weeks, like clock work unless we have something unusual jack up the routine. 11. What are your three favorite kitchen tools or appliances? My Cuisenart food processor, my Kitchen Aid mixer and my Pampered Chef stones. Like my sister said, name brands don't usually mean a hill of beans to me, but in this case they really seem to make a difference. The mixer was a long-saved for gift from my husband and the Cuisenart was a bargain at $30 off of eBay!! 12. If you could buy one new thing for your kitchen, money was no object, and space not an issue, what would you most like to have? A gigantic refrigerator. I currently own 2 refrigerators and I still need more space. 13. Since money and space are probably objects, what are you most likely to buy next? A family-sized griddle 14. Do you have a separate freezer for storage? Yes- a small chest given to me by Mr. Jack Lynch. I need a bigger one, but I'm thankful that at least I have this. 15. Grocery shop alone or with others? The whole family goes and everyone gets a list. Emma does produce. Tru does stuff like diapers and lightbulbs. Ty and Ava run back and forth fetching one item off of my list at a time. Cole starts on the dairy end, I start on the freezer end and we meet in the middle. (I keep a computerized list on my computer and that list is written in the order of Wal-Mart's aisles.) We leave Wal-Mart with 3-4 baskets of groceries-- usually just under 1.5 hours. (And that usually includes some fun dawdling back in electronics or something.) I also make weekly trips to our local Super for things like milk, juice, produce and just all of the things that we run out of. 16. How many meatless main dish meals do you fix in a week? Cajun Beans and Rice, Macaroni & Cheese, Baked Potatoes... I don't know maybe once a week. 17. If you have a decorating theme in your kitchen, what is it? Favorite kitchen colors? I don't ever really get into themes. My mom used to do that. For a while she was into roosters. Then it was Noah's Ark. I don't really like brick-a-brack of any kind. (You will notice the lack of that if you come to my house.) The colors in my kitchen were picked by the former pastor's wife and are a decidely dated country blue. I keep meaning to re-paper, but it's a matter of steaming the old paper off. My dishes are cranberry red and sage green. (Franciscan-Apple pattern-- a true southern belle pattern.) Some day my kitchen will be taupe with a border that I bought on sale about a year ago... 18. What’s the first thing you ever learned to cook, and how old were you? To quote my sister: "Easy - chicken and rice and a pork chop dish with some strange sauce in a can." (The name of that sauce, Megan, was Compliment Sauce.) Our mother worked while we were growing up and my sister and I would sometimes come home to a note that said, “Put the pork chops in the dish and pour the sauce on it. Put it in the oven at 5:00. Etc.” We were pretty young. 3rd or 4th grade. I also learned to scramble eggs at a very early age and one time I made up this weird recipe that included putting cheese slices on saltines and sprinkling them with Paprika and melting them in the oven. I did this all of the time for an after-school snack. Such a budding goumet, I know. 19. How did you learn to cook? I learned a LOT from my mother-in-law, Jo Ray. Both of our husbands were in seminary at the same time and my in-laws took pity on us (our grocery budget back then was often times hovering around the $12/week mark) and they had us over for supper ALL OF THE TIME. She taught me how to make homemade biscuits, crescent rolls and homemade pie crusts. The rest I just learned from watching people and reading cookbooks. I learned to make all sorts of new things including homemade jelly when I was a new mother with only one baby at home and no car (i.e. bored out of my mind). Our church people were constantly bringing me sacks and sacks of plums and I figured I had to do SOMETHING with them. I pulled out the old Fannie Farmer cookbook that I had received as a wedding gift and taught myself. As I recall, I made about 40 pints. (Lasted 3 years...) I do remember asking an older lady named Mrs. Ganze to come over and help me figure out how to get the stuff to gel. 20. Tagging… I’m tagging Heartsjoy and Literture Lover. But only if you have time and want to play, of course… I won't be offended AT ALL if you opt out. It's kind of lengthy, I know.