Recipes carry treasures from the heart and they are very sentimental in nature.

Many may not agree that cooking can be fun, but I think it is.

Standing in the kitchen preparing a meal that was handed down from generation to generation became a norm for some of us. Perhaps, you may have experimented and created some delicious dishes on your own.

There are so many tricks of the trade when it comes to cooking and baking.  It might have taken you a while to figure things out but you finally recognized that when you seasoned your poultry; you could use also the same seasoning for steak, ground beef, pork roast, etc.  You may have to experiment to find the right cooking temperature for a certain dish.  Or maybe your cookies turn out  better with a tad more vanilla added to the recipe.

When the kids grow older and move out, you find yourself cooking fewer meals. Your dinner may be at times a TV dinner or food from a fast food restaurant–sometimes a bowl of cereal does the trick. The burden of cooking everyday is off your shoulder. But, you still treasure the memories of the time you spent together around the dinner table. You treasure those precious moments when you came up with some wonderful creative dishes. Your entire heart and soul were involved in creating those dishes. It was because the dish was created with love.

Of course, recipes and the memories; they serve are sentimental. Here is my favorite recipe for Sweet Potato Pie to add to your family cooking diary.  It is one of my favorites.

Sweet Potato Pie

2 Large sweet potatoes                                           1 stick of butter

1 ½ to 2 cups of sugar                                               2 eggs

1 tablespoon ground nutmeg                                   1 tablespoon ground cinnamon

1 ½ teaspoon vanilla extract                                    2 small unbaked pie crust

1 cup marshmallow                                                    ½ cup of chopped pecans

1 cup of whole pecans

Cut off the skin on the potatoes. Slice the potatoes before placing them in the water. The thinner you can slice them the more quickly the potatoes will get done. Boil the potatoes for about 40 to 55 mins or until done. The potatoes will be very soft and mushy. Make sure the potatoes are not lumpy. Run cold water over sweet potatoes.

Next place sweet potatoes in a bowl. Add butter, sugar, eggs, nutmeg, cinnamon, vanilla flavor, crushed pecans, and marshmallows and mix well with the mixer. Place the sweet potatoes with the ingredients in a pot . Let the ingredients cook very slowly inside the pot for about 5 minutes or until  you see the marshmallow dissolve. Watch carefully so that it will not burn. Make sure the marshmallows dissolve completely.

Place your unbaked pie crusts in oven for a few minutes then pull them out of the oven. Then put the sweet potatoes inside the pie crust. Bake at 350^o degrees for 15 minutes or until the fork you place in the center of it come out clean. After you have taken it out of the oven, place the whole pecans around it. To keep your pie crust from over browning cover edges.

Bake in the middle of the rack.

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