I have always loved to bake and cook, ever since I was a little girl. It probably had something to do with the fact that my mother is a cook and baker.  If you need a meal cooked, a banquet catered or a recipe, my mother is the person to go to.  She has been cooking for fundraisers, schools and churches for as long as I can remember.  She would always convince me to help her with her cooking endeavors and I would always readily agree.  I would love to spend hours in the kitchen with my mom preparing meals for others, reading recipes and making up our own as we went.  One of her go to cook books was, and very much still is, The Mennonite Treasury of Recipes.

 This classic cook book filled with tried and true recipes was so worn that it no longer had covers, there were notes written in every margin and each blank space had other recipes scribbled in.  Some pages had been so used and spilled on that you could barely make out the recipe, then again those pages were mostly memorized already and consulted only as a formality.

I loved this cook book as a kid.  So when I saw it on the shelf of my local Ten Thousand Villages store in Saskatoon this past June I quickly bought.  I love thumbing through the recipes looking for the next one to try.  And that is when I decided that I would cook my way through this wonderful cook book.

Now here is the catch.  As much as I love this cook book, it has some quirks that may make cooking my way through it rather interesting.  This cook book was published in the 60's, a time of jellied food and easy casseroles.  Many of the recipes also take for granted that you know a lot about baking or cooking and they use many vague phrases like ' mix until it feels right' or 'add just enough flour' (without giving a quantity). So the results could be...interesting.  I will be picking recipes to make, following them to the best of my ability, with no changes or alterations, hosting friends to try the recipes and then blogging about them.

So come back often to check out what I'm cooking next.  I'm going to end this post with a quote from the introduction:
        "By the time the book was on the drawing board it was decided to add a chapter of Mennonite recipes. Many of these originate from times of want and austerity and are no longer in use but may be of interest for coming generations, perhaps as inspiration to adventurous cooks."

Consider me inspired!