Do I know how to bake? Uh, no.

I have been thinking lately about baking/cooking/the future/should I know how to cook.

OK here's the story: I can cook. I can make essential meals. I can cook meat, I can make rice or potatoes and vegetables. I can make garden and ceasar salads that are really yummy. I can make anything that comes frozen or in a box with instructions. I can make use of my debit card and buy prepared food. I am NOT completely useless.

This is a lot. This gets me through life, no problem! and I is happy.

But I have lately been feeling lacking. My family is not a big traditionalist family who pass down cooking knowledge and recipes from generation to generation, always doing the same things come holidays or birthdays and such. We do not have such a thing as a lasagne family recipe or the famous Fraser blah blah blah... I had to fight my mother to let me make turkey dinner for Thanksgiving. Wouldn't have happened if not for me (this year AND last year).

This I would sort of like to change. I love the idea of being taught how to make something that my parents parents made before them. I am craving that knowledge, but seriously lacking in resources. My dad doesn't cook. Except for burnt eggs and BBQing steaks..and I've got that. And my mother is a big lazy head and never really wants to do anything so cooking is like last on her to do list. Now her mother, my grandmother Clark, was an amazing chef/cook and made great classic dishes like white cake and stew and brown bread. She passed away many years ago leaving not a single bloody recipe. (I don't think she ever had one) My other grandparents aren't really big cooking types, so HERE I AM. Left to fend for myself.

I want to create a family recipe book for future Fraser generations and for my soon-to-be future family (and by soon-to-be I mean sometime in the next 10-20 years HOPEFULLY)! But first I need to master some recipes myself...

In this box o'recipes I would like:
 - Bread
 - Rolls
 - Biscuits
(THESE ARE STAPLES PEOPLE...STAPLES!)
 - Thanksgiving/Christmas dinner
 - Casseroles
 - Cookies (peanut butter, choco chip, skor cookies...drool)
 - Date squares
 - Lasagne
 - Ceasar salad (cuz the one I make is da bomb)
 - Taco salad (also da bomb)
 - Dips (french onion possibly?)
 - Homemade cake and icing (my gram made this the BEST in the world.)
 - DILL PICKLES! (also a gram thing)
 - Some sort of pie...pies sound hard :] CHALLENGE!

One thing my family never made was fish. After living 6 months in Cape Breton surrounded by ocean on ALL sides and I mean all sides including out my bedroom window I want to add some fish recipes as well! DELICIOUS. (I have none...)

That is all I can think of now...I am hoping more will come to me as the process goes on.

NOW HERE'S WHERE YOU COME IN: anyone if you have a recipe you think will do me good and fit in well with this please let me know! If you want to get together and make some for funsies, that is even better!

Help me escape from the dreaded world of Pilsbury croissants! PLEASE. (PS: I burnt them last night. Don't judge me.)