Chez Stéphanie

When I first left home, Mom typed her recipes on index cards and slipped them into a photo album. That was my first cookbook.

After high school, Jordan moved to Marseille to do a year-long spiritual internship. Naturally, I typed out his favorite recipes and put them in a small photo book. Justin and Kathleen used that recipe album when they lived in Marseille too. Once our daughters-in-law, Annie and Martina, joined the family, I decided it was time for a real cookbook!

Years ago, when friends first started asking me to share my recipes, I created a recipe document on my computer so that I wouldn’t have to keep copying recipes by hand. Each time someone asked for a different recipe, I would enter it into my database. I soon had a collection of my tried-and-true recipes to begin with. But cooking and eating together has always been an important part of our heritage and I wanted the book to be about family too. I went through album after album and box after box of photos to find just the right pictures to accompany the recipes. I gave my girls each a Chez Stéphanie cookbook last Christmas. Several family members and friends have said they would like to have a copy, so I’m working on a second edition. In the mean time, I'll be blogging.