When life gives you lemons, just toss 'em in your pitcher!

I just happen to love lemonade, especially in the hot summertime. I have good memories of stopping by Cook's Grocery Store in Elba on the way to visit Mama and Papa Smith when I was a little girl, and buying a dozen lemons to make lemonade for lunch at their house. We didn't grow lemons on our farm so they were very special for us. We grew almost everything we ate except sugar and flour. (At today's prices, I buy lemons one at a time and make my lemonade from Crystal Light powder, slicing one lemon in it to make it look like the real stuff!).   


I also like lemon curd or as my mother called it "lemon cheese".  She made this to frost white sponge cake and it was so good.


But that's not what it means "when life gives you lemons, make lemonade".

Now to tie this into my cooking! I have been working on putting recipes into cateories and putting them into a folder in my computer. These recipes I've had in boxes, etc. for years and are written on backs of envelopes, cards, torn from newspapers and magazines, and many are covered with flour, etc.

When the recipes are "failures" or I didn't have the necessary ingredients, I would write notes in the margin about what happened and what I would do next time to"fix" it. And these are the "recipe keepers" I am putting in my recipe file.


When a recipe is a failure for me, I turn it into something better - or "make lemonade from the lemon" . Sometimes the revised recipe is so much better than the original - or to us at least it is.


I have been putting my recipes in categories such as dips, appetizers, beverages, sauces, pies, vegetables, etc. Now all I have to do is go to "My recipes" file, click on the category and find the recipe I'm looking for and print it out. So simple...... no more pulling down the boxes of individual recipes and searching for that elusive recipe for Baby Ruth bars or chicken chilli.


I even made a Miscellaneous file for things such as how to crack and peel a coconut. blanching and toasting raw almonds, substitutions, and many more.


This has been a tedious task, but very rewarding. Next, I will print out all the recipes and put them in a spiral bound binder to give to my granddaughters in college. They might enjoy using some of them. I'll enclose some pockets at the back of the binder for them to put their own recipes. Now isn't that being a good grandmother?