Time to pull out the faded and stained old handwritten recipes or notes, favorite cookbooks, and share with friends who really want to offer our best dishes to family and friends for Christmas. This time of year I especially try to remember the two women who taught me to cook, and to love cooking. My husband’s paternal grandmother, and his mother taught me with encouragement, kindness, joy and pride in the making of simple meals for big families. They taught me how to make good, nourishing meals from simple, cheap ingredients. They taught me to cook with love. I was a really slow student, but fortunately God gave me such good teachers that even I learned to cook well. Eventually.

Please share old family favorites, new discoveries, and memories, of course. I especially love it when we get recipes from different parts of the country, and our international readers. Zurich Mike, where are you? Being, as we say here in the South, of a certain age, I am steeped in old Southern recipes and cooking methods, but I have loved getting new ideas and recipes from our readers in Texas and Louisiana who do meals with boldness and heat, our coastal friends who share the best seafood recipes, our Northern friends who give us so many good stew and roast and vegetables recipes. Midwesterners just seem to do such a great job with family meals and especially winter vegetables, and no telling what you might get from out west and the West Coast, but the ideas and recipes are always wonderful.