do you remember your first inspiration?

I previously mentioned my first cookbook was The Nancy Drew Cookbook gifted to me by a childhood friend.  I was a master of the whistling bagpipes crunchies by the age of 13.  For the uninitiated, the crunchies were made with butterscotch morsels, peanut butter, Chow Mein noodles and marshmallows.

As I moved from my parent’s home to my first apartment with the Big Guy, I was gifted the Joy of Cooking by Irma Rombauer.  It was a bridal shower staple in the 1980’s since this was the time before the Food Network and the proliferation of cookbooks, we see on bookstore shelves today.

What started my collection of cookbooks and great interest in experimenting in my Carondelet Kitchen?  Caprial’s Café Favorites written by Caprial Pence, the first female recipient of the Best Chef: Pacific Northwest by the James Beard Foundation, along with her pioneering television services on the Learning Channel in the summer of 1994.  The back of the book states, “Caprial Pence has a knack for making the difficult seem not just manageable, but downright fun (and tasty, too).”

I agree with that statement and have the evidence of food stains and notes in the margins of my three-book collection.  At I look at them again, I remember first making roasted red pepper and lentil soup.  It was delicious and became part of our annual rotation of soups.  To this day, Big Guy still plants rosemary in the garden to make sure I make Caprial’s rosemary French bread.

Thank you Caprial for helping to ignite my interest in cooking.  You were the first chef who inspired me to be brave and creative in the kitchen.

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