I started cooking as a child, helping here and there with making gravy, holding the mixer while whipping potatoes or making brownies, learning to make fudge for my dentist and making my dad Crunchy Scrambled Eggs (my first creation as a cook; Scrambled Eggs with Corn Flake Cereal in it).

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Looking back, one of my first memories isn’t any of that-but of running around my aunt’s home and being handed a white binder with a name I didn’t recognize, and couldn’t read at the time, upon it. My momma told me it said, “Mary Marie’s Recipes”; this was a compilation of the recipes her mother made her growing up. This is probably where it all started for me. The white binder is covered in splashes of sauce and stains and filled with recipe clippings and print outs, from it’s use in my kitchen over the years; I still use her recipes for guidance and inspiration every time I’m in the kitchen. I have since inherited my other grandmother’s recipes as well and am working on a similar compilation of her recipes and I hope that one day it will be ready to inspire the next generation of her family.​

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