Angelsbakingmemories.com has been my personal goal. Enjoy my blog! Really, Angels DO bake in my kitchen! The Angels come in form of my family members - Sisters, Brothers, Nieces, Nephews, Grams, Great Grandmas, Moms, Cousins, Aunts, Uncles, In-laws, Outlaws…and many friends and workmates. (I say Sisters in the plural even though I only have one special sister. I also count my in-law sisters as my Sisters.) Many of their incredible recipes (or “receipts” as my two Grams called them) are included in my blog, Angels Baking Memories. And, more will be added along the way. Since COVID upset the apple carts of this world, I’ve discovered a delightful way to devote my time and accomplish a huge personal goal at the same time. I have happily sliced and diced, baked and burned (well, not too often), sifted and kneaded, blended and food processed, toasted and roasted, created new recipes and made old receipts, working my way through over 170 created and updated recipes over the past two years. My featured recipes include everything from fancy desserts, including pies, cookies, decorated cookies & cakes, Bundts, & bars, to one pan stovetop or oven meals, to savory snacks to delicious whole meals to easy scratch pizzas. And, one of my favorite specialties is creating untraditional recipes for traditional holidays. Eventually you’ll see most or all of these on my blog, Angelsbakingmemories.com. Exploring my old family recipes in tandem with hundreds of black and white as well as old faded color photos to examine their lives has made social distancing fun. I call them my “Angels”, thus, the name of my blog – “Angels Baking Memories.” They are behind me all the way, as I develop new and refined recipes. I think of them often as I play in the kitchen because they have offered up their own delicious recipes for me to share with others. What’s my background? My work life dealt with writing, editing, researching, marketing, public relations, organizing public events, volunteering for trade associations, local non-profits and much more. Those skills lead perfectly into my current method of digging through family cookbooks, over 500 recipe cards in many recipe boxes. Now I’m on to a new life, remaking many of our favorite family recipes, and creating many updates for today’s bakers and cooks. Being from the Midwest has not limited my tastes for different foods. Enjoying food in 7 foreign countries and 42 of these United States has enticed my desire for different types of foods. Hosting many years of Christmas, Easter and Thanksgiving standard family food fare, I still like to try different ways to cook things. That’s why I’ve always returned to my family’s foods, trying new versions of the tried and true. How many of you have old recipes, old family favorites from your Mothers and Grandmothers? I have the fortune to come from a family of wonderful cooks – with recipes even from my Great Grandmother. And, there seems to be a thought-provoking story behind every one of those recipes. One of my Grandmothers called them receipts. Evidently, that’s an old name for recipes, which had become pretty much obsolete around the 1970’s according to some wordsmiths. Whatever your ancestors call them – recipes or receipts – family recipes tell stories of the many generations before us. Once I got married those recipes seemed to double, triple and quadruple in number, giving me access to many Norwegian and German receipts (as some of them call their recipes). There is a comfort to family recipes and I’m lucky to have access to so many. Thank you to my Grams, Mom and other relatives for keeping diaries from which I’ve been able to share fun family stories giving us a special insight to daily life from years and years ago. Thank you, also, to local grocery stores for creating convenient options to order baking and meal supplies and unique ways to take advantage of contactless and curbside pickup. It’s been invaluable to my baking and creating with food on my way through the pandemic. So, sit back and enjoy my blog and sample some these recipes. Be sure to take the time to enjoy your own family’s recipes…or “receipts.”