These are a family favorite. When everyone is home, we need to make a double batch. My oldest kids would fight over who got the corner pieces because they were so tall in the oven. Originally the recipe was called Hoot-n-Anny pancakes. But my oldest would call them Hoot-n-Yummy and the name stuck.

As a Mom of young kids, I was always looking for ways to stretch our budget. We often made home made pizza. Our favorite way to measure how much sauce we needed for each pizza was to make a smiley face on top of the pizza dough. It’s always just the right amount of sauce.

My kids like to eat the white of a hard boiled egg. But the yolk? It is too dry for them. It ends up in the trash. Unless Grandma Linda brings her deviled eggs. Then everyone loves them.

One year, one of my boys wanted to have a chocolate volcano cake for his birthday. We happened to have a cone shaped cake pan that I picked up from a thrift store that worked perfectly. Using an egg less cake recipe and a can of cherry pie filling, we topped it off with some chocolate rocks. We have made several of these cakes over the years. It’s a family favorite.

I can make the whole house emerge from their bedrooms and offices just by making up a pot of this Kettle Corn. One Halloween, my oldest had a Halloween party and showed the Dr. Who episode “Blink”. The episode impacted us so much that years later his younger sister didn’t like to mow our back lawn because she could see the neighbor’s angel shaped lawn ornaments and was nervous to show her back to them.

This was probably the first salad I ate that was pre dressed and had spinach in it. It was so delicious that it has become my go to salad to impress at a gathering.

I have come to love tacos made from veggies. Especially Zucchini. I’m not sure what is in Zucchini but it can turn my day from one that I’m struggling though into a day where things roll off my back. My

heart sings when I think of making and eating veggie tacos. And I just want to dance.

This rice a roni taste alike recipe is so loved in my house that my oldest dubbed it Yummy Rice. I have yet to find a child who doesn’t love this.

When my oldest was about 18 months or so, my parents came to town and my siblings and I took our families to a trout farm to fish. He was so curious about how to get the fish that he fell in.

My sister gave me this recipe. It says it is good enough for picky eaters. Our family loves it with or without ham and you can easily substitute mozzarella cheese if you are a bit low on Swiss cheese.

These bread rolls are a holiday favorite at our extended family parties. Aunt Sharen makes them by the multiple cookie sheet full and always goes home with empty cookie sheets. Her family would make an assembly line to get all the breadsticks made in time.

We love to go to the beach. One afternoon, we got to a crowded beach, set up, and pulled out our snacks. As I sat back to enjoy my chips, I was distracted by my children. As I held a single chip mid flight to my mouth, a seagull swooped down and snatched that chip right out of my fingers. I don’t hold up food at the beach anymore.

One day, when I was young, I wanted to have chocolate pudding, but we didn’t have any instant chocolate pudding mix. So I asked my mom how people made chocolate pudding without a mix. She got me a recipe and set me to stirring the pudding. I learned two things: if you don’t continuously stir pudding while you heat it on the stove, it will scorch. And my muscles did not like to stir anything continuously.

The first time I tried to make asparagus for my little family, I thought we would all enjoy eating it more it if it was covered in parmesan cheese and bacon bits. That did the job. Now all of the kids enjoy eating asparagus even when I don’t have parmesan cheese or bacon in the house.

My mom often made this granola. I started making it for my own kids and now my husband occasionally takes up the responsibility. A batch of our granola doesn’t last too long.

When my kids were little, we loved buying Pumpkin Chocolate Chip cookies from the local grocery store bakery. When I moved to the East Coast I discovered that I had to bake them myself. I started taking them to afterschool Art Club and the kids love them.

My Grandfather was a missionary in 1918 in Austin, Texas. One hot day, his companion and he came home for lunch and my grandpa took a bath to cool down. His companion walked in on him, and found him in the bath tub with his tie still tied around his neck. His companion said, “Elder, what are you doing?” My grandfather replied: “I tied this tie right once today and I’m not going to tie it twice.”

Mom raised 10 kids. She decided early on that she wanted a large family. So she created systems to help her be successful. One of them was she could not be a room mom. But she could come in as a guest and teach the kids all about wheat and how to make whole wheat bread. Then she would help everyone make scones with the whole wheat dough that they had made. She always liked to start the hands on presentation with the story of the Little Red Hen.

Mom loved to sing. When she was newly married, she wanted to join the Mormon Tabernacle Choir. They turned her down but she didn’t let that stop her. She sang every where she could. When I was 7, we moved away from Utah and she never did get to sing in the Mormon Tabernacle Choir. She passed before my youngest was born. And since my youngest came out singing, I envision that my mom taught her about the cool things you get to do on earth while she waited for us to have her. I think that if my mom had been one of those angels that got to herald the birth of Christ, she would have been so excited and she would have brought along her family with her. And my youngest would have eagerly followed her to the hills outside of Jerusalem 2000 years ago.

During the Great Depression, my Dad’s Grandpa farmed hay. Times were hard. Crops failed. Machinery broke. One day, something happened that broke that hard working man. He said, “If there is a God in Heaven, may he strike me down.” A few days later on a clear blue day, he was working in the field when along came a little cloud and struck him with a lightning bolt. He lived to tell the tale and after he healed up, he put back on the clothes he wore when he was struck to hand down to his children’s children’s children so we would know there was a God in heaven.

My husband’s Great Grandfather ran away from home when he was 16 and signed up to sail on a ship. One day there were a group of sharks following the boat and according to family legend he asked the captain if he could try to catch one. Family legend has it being quite the to do and after the shark was captured, the captain forbid anyone to try it again. Looking for evidence that this was more than a mere fish tail, we photographed all the ship logs for his ship. My father in law scoured over them until he found a simple entry: “Caught a Shark”