Passover and it's time to cook!

I have loved cooking for Passover since childhood.  My mother used to set me to pounding the nuts in a brass mortar; now I use my food processor.  I still grate apples by hand for charoses, and except for whipping the egg whites, mix the cake batter by hand.  Every year I make a matzo spice sponge cake (recipe is in the Settlement Cookbook)--12 eggs, ground nuts, spices, wine.  Generally it is also the only sponge cake I make all year.  Charoses is simple--grate apples, grind nuts, mix together and moisten with wine.  What I did different this year is take pictures, since I admire the step-by-step that other people post on fixing cars or making electric generating wind turbines.  So included here is my cake and charoses in pictures.

Diggle Cheese Soup is the January recipe on our Lancaster, England calendar. It didn't look very tasty from the recipe--about 1 pint milk, 1 pint water, some grated cheese (about 4 ounces), minced leek, parsley, butter, & flour. Boiled it for 15 minutes as directed; the soup stayed smooth. It became grainy when the parsley was added but still looked pretty good, and it tasted good, too.  Recipe was metric and I had to weigh the cheese, so I got to use my scale. Overall result: Good, easy, and quick, and I will make it again. Recipe testing--new career?

Blog number 1!

I was inspired by Julie and Julia and thought I'd try all the vegetarian recipes in The Art of French Cooking. Then, not finding any used copies, I thought I'd try all the vegetarian recipes in The Joy of Cooking. But with only two of us, and two out of three meals usually being leftovers, I never did it.  Then some English friends sent us a 2012 calendar with views of Lancashire and a recipe for each month. Aha! January is Diggle Cheese Soup. Maybe tonight, but with the spouse being a Blackburn Rovers fan, the recipe for Blackburn Apple Pie seemed the best place to start and he the best person to make it. Lots of questions, lots of flour all over later, and the pie looks and smells wonderful! Despite the MIL's comments on how cheap apple pie is at the grocery and "why make your own?", I think we will love it.