The project to centralize my recipes began in December, 1992. A note on the Seafirst Bank office billboard urged participation in the Christmas potluck. Mary Sue Milliken’s “Applecake with Cream Cheese Frosting”—that would break the ice. After much searching at home, I found the recipe in the garage at the bottom of a tall stack of cardboard boxes. In the boxes were my restaurant notebooks, menus from our annual January food fest, family recipes, and extensive canning notes. As I looked through the boxes, a twenty year food diary took form. What began as a method to easily access my favorite recipes has become a process of remembering how food has shaped my life.

From 1974-1992, I worked in kitchens from Vashon to Los Angeles. As my first restaurant boss Frank Miller said, “You don’t do drugs and you always show up.” Those two qualities got me my first restaurant job and kept me employed for the next eighteen years. I have no tales of toddler-cooking-by-Gramma’s side but grew up with well-cooked (to be taken in more than one way) meals as a given. My mom cooked a mean Sunday dinner and canned bushels of overflow as a matter of course. We ate better than we knew—before TV dinners were routine, when backyard gardens were commonplace and desserts were expected. My sister Nikki is a good cook, sister Ginny is a great cook, and what’s left of our family still gathers over good food and (due to Ron’s guidance) good wine.

Recipes developed by my old bosses Jeff Basom, Dennis Barry, Michael Roberts, Mary Sue Milliken, Susan Feniger and Tom Douglas can be found in their excellent cookbooks and I recommend them enthusiastically. Unlike those recipe collections, the following recipes have not all been tested—so beware. I’ve tried to give credit for recipes that are not my own, however, I’m not sure that anyone can really own a recipe. There can be variations on the theme, but perhaps like racehorses, all good food combinations can be traced to a common source.