These are a few of my favorite things...

I'm hungry and food is on my mind.  I need to bake two apple pies today.  I also have some leftover corn bread, so I plan to make stuffing to go with baked chicken and mashed potatoes later today. 

I think all of those things are a few of my favorite things.

But here are a few more.  Fresh baked bread and rolls.  Even just having yeast dough rising quietly but so full of potential in my kitchen.  The possibilities...oh...the possibilities! 

Cheese.  More possibilities.  Especially if there are blue veins running innocently throughout, holding such promise for bite and to make my mouth sing.

Cake.  So whimsical.  Who doesn't smile when a cake is around?  And if they don't, well, chances are they are in big need of a smile.  So maybe a cupcake or a cake pop would do the trick.  But back to the whimsy.  Fragile, delicate, sweet crumbs held together with fillings and frosting and hidden architecture to take on the appearance of things much sturdier or living or louder.  But most importantly - taking on the appearance of things celebratory.  Celebrating a person's life and living.  What a glorious thing!  All from the humble yet tricky beginnings of a piece of cake.

The smell of onion and celery sauteing together in butter when I make that cornbread stuffing.  It is a smell I remember from the night before Thanksgiving, when my mother would be preparing the stuffing.  I would be at the table, crumbling up the cornbread, and she would be stirring the onion and celery.  The smell takes me back every time, and it makes me smile and cry all at the same time.  I miss her.

The feel of the cornbread in my fingers.  Cooking is such a sensual combination of sight, smell, sound, touch long before we ever get to the taste.  Or well, while we are getting to the taste part.

Julia Child.  Alton Brown.  Jeff Smith (better known as the Frugal Gourmet).  Fanny Farmer.  I love me some good entreperneurial pioneer spirit, and each of these are or were cooking pioneers in their own way.

My Sisterhood.  For almost two years now, we have gotten together about once a month to cook.  We've done croissants, chocolate souffle, duck al 'orange, Julia's boeuf, some of the most amazing breads you could ever want to pull out of your own oven and pop into your mouth, garlic night, pizza night.  I think the only common denominator to all of the events has been wine.  Even on pizza night when we paired beer with the different pizzas, wine was still at the ready.  As of this writing, we are planning to host a tea in the near future that we hope many of our friends will attend so we can all indulge in tea and scone tasting.  And champagne!

Pastry.  Such a combination of chemistry and art.  Much of cooking can be described as such, but it is truer in pastry than anywhere else.  Over-measuring flour.  Over-working dough.  Forgetting one ingredient.  All of these can be detrimental to the outcome, and the product will be completely unforgiving.  Developing delicate layers of dough and butter so that you achieve the maximum expansion in the oven.  Decorating with washes and sugars to entice the pallette and the eye.  These are the things that keep drawing me back to pastry over and over again.

I haven't mentioned "crisp apple streudels" (but I've come close!) or "schnitzel with noodles" (a taste treat I have never tried, but I need to!), but as I think of cooking for others, these are some of my favorite things.

Which brings me to my last point - others.  If nothing else, food is about bringing people together.  Cooking for others is one of my "love languages."  I want people to feel loved when they come to the table.  For if I have failed in that arena, no matter how gorgeous or tasty the culinary offerings may be, it will have all been for naught.  For people matter most.