MY NOT-SO-SECRET OBSESSION

I’m a recipe junkie. If there’s a recipe in a magazine I’m reading that looks good, I’m reaching for my scissors (or surreptitiously tearing it out if I’m in a doctor’s office waiting room). My recipe folder is so fat with clippings, I’d have to live to be a hundred and fifty to test all those recipes. Imagine my delight when I discovered an app that allows me to find, organize, and store recipes online. It’s called Paprika and it’s probably my favorite app. It’s become my traveling cookbook library. Wherever I go where there’s a kitchen and a grocery store, I have what I need to whip up a feast.

But what about all those clippings languishing in my recipe folder? And the recipes handwritten on index cards in my recipe box? I probably won’t ever get around to testing but a fraction of the recipes in my folder, but I cherish the recipes on index cards, many of them handed down from my mom, all of them covered in food stains and dog-eared with use. Recipes for dishes that were staples of my weekly menus back when “fancy” meant anything that wasn’t made from a mix. Any lasagna that isn’t made from my mom’s recipe isn’t “real” lasagna, as far as I’m concerned (however tasty it might be). Mom wasn’t a fancy cook but she was a good cook. The bread my siblings and I ate when we were growing up was always homemade. Cookies, cakes, and pies in our house were always made from scratch. And Sundays weren’t Sundays without my mom’s beef roast or lamb roast with homemade mint sauce. My sister Karen and I have carried on our family tradition. To this day, we often swap recipes when we’re not in Karen’s chef’s kitchen cooking together.

The following is from my recipe box. It’s the recipe for my mom’s easy-peasy enchiladas. Is it authentic Mexican cuisine? Heck, no, but it’s mighty tasty. I once ate it after I’d fasted for a day (on one of my crash diets when I was a teenager) and thought it was the best thing I’d ever eaten. Enjoy!