I missed palpitating in last week's benchmark What's On Your Workdesk? Wednesday (WOYWW) 200th hop, darn it all anyway. Many belated returns of the wonderful day to you Ms. Julia Dunnit!! If you don't know who she is, or what WOYWW is, you can click over and she will fill in you on the frolics!
I've been working the last few days (a shock for my system, you understand) and so I've not been able to make many cards which means I have a spoon-lickin' clean desk which isn't very exciting for your snooping pleasure. I didn't want to miss another week, so what would be interesting ...?
Then I remembered something I've been meaning to share. A few of you keep saying to me, "You should write a book." (Especially you, Shirley!) Well, it turns out I did write a book back in 2008. A cookbook. I'm not sure a cookbook is prezackly what you had in mind, but perhaps it will do when I tell you that it is a cookbook filled with laughter. A 302-page book of humor and recipes. Don't panic, I'm only going to show you seven pages!
I wrote it special for my sisters, as a gift for each of them.
Aren't we too button-cute? Of course we weren't really that young back in the mid-1900s when cars looked like that. Okay, yes we were. In bumper-sitting order, our names are given above the picture.
I hope your "click to enlarge" button works. I'm the second one from the right. The little imp on the end next to me, Doris ("Dood"), is giving me the hairy eyeball big time. I desperately wish I had put a conversation bubble over Dood's head, saying - to me, "I know you ate all these Cracker Jack, you bleeping bleep." I think she prolly did say just that in real life, because whatever she said made littlest sister Debbie whip around and give me a hairy eyeball just for good measure! I look smugly full of Cracker Jack, don't I?
And then there is poor sad Donna on the other end, who apparently didn't get one single bite. What's amusing about that is that she is the least-saddest-ever sister of all of us! Next to her is Diana, the oldest, so sweet and calm and serenely unpersmirched by it all.
As some of you know, it was just a couple of years later I was put in a foster home (was it the Cracker Jack?!) and I didn't see all the sisters again for forty years. It took a long time, but we've made up for that lost time since.
~~~
So about eight years after we were reunited, we were sitting around the kitchen at Dood's and talking about cooking and recipes and I had an idea. When we all got back to our own homes, I asked my four sisters for copies of all their favorite recipes, which they promptly sent me, some handwritten, some typed, some doodled on scratch paper. I typed them all into my computer and self-published them in a cookbook as a surprise to them, using Blurb. (They thought I was just typing them up in orderly fashion, not putting them in a hardbound book with pictures!)
I included amusing and inspirational quotes of other people . . .
I also included lots of pictures I took of food, and of us girls from childhood to adulthood.
Dood and Donna
Our first get-together in 2000
I even put some pretty unflattering photos of my sisters in the book, for giggles, seeing as how the book was just for us. Naturally I didn't feel like it was fair of me to do that to them if I didn't include some unflattering ones of myself, such as this prize-winning early-morning pre-coffee shot:
~~~
My sisters, to say the least, were overwhelmed. We all use our own copies on a regular basis both for cooking and for cheering up when we want to laugh out loud. I ended the book with this special tribute:
Donna, Darnell, Diana, Debbie, Dood
~~~
We, the willing, led by the unknowing,
Are doing the impossible
For the ungrateful.
We have done so much for so long
With so little,
We are now qualified to do anything
With nothing.
(Author unknown)
~~~
So that's what my workdesk is hosting today! I thought you might enjoy seeing it, and it might inspire you to self-publish your own family hardbound or softbound cookbook! There are lots of online companies available to help you with the process. If I can do it, you can do it! A few of those tiny family heirloom recipes handwritten on scraps of paper should be kept for sentimental raisins, of course, but perhaps not all of them, and there is a risk that they will get lost. Or played with by the cat. Or eaten by the dog.
~~~
Thank you for humoring me and stopping by for part or all of this mahoosive post. As usual, please let me know you came by so I can return the flavor! I may even get to you first!
Enjoy your day! No, seriously, enjoy. LITS*!
Thank you so much for stopping by the Playhouse. Special thanks to you if you take the time to leave a comment or join as a follower!
*Life Is Too Short!
