I am off for the holidays and so it is my traditional time to cook, jar and freeze chili and stew. Both are mama's recipes. Tomorrow, I will become a baker and for the first time ever try to make my mama's bread recipe. It was so good as rolls at the holidays that when my cousins had moved away across country and could not attend family gatherings anymore, they always pestered her to make rolls and send them to them. She shipped rolls to California!
On Christmas Day evening, I'll lay three pork butts on the smoker overnight in homage to my time in the South. When it's done that smoked meat, too, will be mostly frozen. All this makes for easy meals later on harried nights when we are too worn out to cook from scratch. I just finished the last of my January 2019 batches last week.
This Christmas we have received a special gift. My wife found a small notebook my mama had written some more of her Italian family recipes in, so we can add that to the recipe legacy she left with me. I am so glad that when I was in college I asked her to write down recipes for me. At the time, cooking was a great way to attract girls, but now I cherish that notebook. This new one is a welcome addition.
So below is chili being cooked and then jarred, stew being cooked, and the pork butts prior to being rubbed and laid to rest in the refrigerator until Christmas.
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