When Richard and I were first married, I started making dinner one night. I was making chicken. Richard asked, "What are you putting on it?" My answer was, "Nothing."

You have to understand that my mom was a single mom for 17 years. She worked full-time and had other responsibilities too. She did like to bake some, and would cook simple things, but she never cooked anything fancy or with many spices. Most people I've met from upstate NY, that are actually born and raised there, don't experiment with seasonings. For me, cooking chicken was just cooking it in a pan, or in the oven. Just put the chicken in and let it cook. Nothing fancy. Just chicken.

Well, for Richard, coming from Texas, he liked seasoning on his food. He watched his mom cook for his family all the time. He loves to cook. I could get by with just the microwave most of the time.

When we got married, I had all intentions of becoming the cook in the family.... after all, that's what the woman is suppose to do, right? Anyway, after that first night of cooking chicken, Richard suddenly became the cook in the family, and it has stayed that way most nights.

Richard loves to experiment with different seasoning combinations and makes wonderful meals. However, he rarely writes down what he does. I've mentioned to him many times to write things down, but it hasn't happened.

We normally have the missionaries from our church over to our house twice a month for dinner. In the area we're in now, the missionaries are typically in one area for at least 7 or 8 months, sometimes longer, so we really get to know the Elders as they come to our house. We often ask them if they have any special requests for dinner. Recently I started thinking it would be a good idea to type up some of Richard's recipes to give to the missionaries when they were leaving our area.

Last night, we had the missionaries over for dinner and Richard announced that it was "Grandma Hodge's famous lasagna." We started laughing about it and I explained that I originally taught Richard how to do lasagna, since that was the first thing my mom taught me to cook. I showed him how to do it, and then one time he did it on his own and it turned out better than mine. That's the other reason he's still the cook in the family. The he explained that they were really all his recipes and creations, but saying they're from "Grandma" Hodge, just sounded good. One of the Elders mentioned that it sort of made it have more credibility that way. Then Richard also said that if he says it's "Grandma" Hodge's recipe then it's "Grandma's" fault if it doesn't turn out well too, not his.

Anyway, we decided that we will type them up to give to the missionaries. And when I was thinking about how to improve our website, I thought we could put the recipes here too. So, they're not really Grandma Hodge's recipes, they're Richard's, but the "Grandma" name seems to fit well and sounds fun, so I think we'll keep it that way.

It may be a few weeks before we actually get any recipes up here though. 

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