I am grateful for:

• It started with bread… artisan breads, pizza dough, and later breakfast cakes
• Pizza sauces
• pickled mustard seed
• homemade mayonnaise – and so many other things that can be homemade
• gardening – inside and out, and direct to garden composting; a renewed appreciation for worms which I always thought were ‘ew’!
• canning
• brining and curing
• smoking poultry, beef, pork, and cheese
• the usefulness of meat thermometers
• humor in cooking
• pie crusts
• latkes (haven’t made yet, will), rediscovering my culinary Jewish and Cherokee heritage
• ice cream – first was non-churn lemon ice cream
• how to cook in a cast iron skillet without burning everything
• the how’s and whys of ingredients
• buying and using an instant pot
• buying and using a sous vide, cooking a variety of foods in sous vide, batch cooking
• Sharpening my knives
• Lobster rolls
• (good) Salisbury steaks
• Plating – making meals look appetizing
• Interest in growing/using heirloom tomatoes
• Renewed love for cats (not in cooking!)
• How to grill just about anything
• Interest in recipes/techniques/spices/inspiration from a variety of other countries, learning about ingredients from other regions, countries
• How to make better chocolate pot de cream
• Tarragon with tomatoes
• Peach salsa
• Hard neck garlic and scapes, scape pesto
• Refrigerator pickle
• Better salad making
• Making my own jelly/jam
• Plants and flowers that are edible
• Wonderful summer salads
• What the heck spatchcock means, how to do it
• Making cookie dough and rolling into cookies and freezing so I can easily bake as much as I need anytime I want.
• Newfound and renewed love for: eggplant, a variety of fish, miso paste, hearty-chunky stews, popovers, dutch babies, salads with protein, a good char on foods, home grown vegetables, water lilies
• How to grill/smoke the best baby-back ribs, and how to make and use a great dry rub
• Crème fraiche
• Sourdough starter (which I will do, someday)
• Peppercorn sauce
• Winter sowing
• Dirt bombs
• Balsamic reduction
• Almost fearless cooking when stepping outside my comfort zone
• …and mostly, that people online can show great kindness, be amazingly supportive, and become friends that will last : )

Thank you all : )

Well, you are a bright and cheerful soul who has contributed a lot to this forum in terms of food and humour and being a general all round good egg. So thank YOU!

When I feel stressed, I close my eyes and imagine I'm swimming in the sea. Aaaaah.

I'm very grateful for the fact that DH will pretty much eat anything (except for asiago cheese!) and he doesn't mind leftovers at all as long as they are something that is good leftover. And he loves my cooking. And because of that he sees to it that I have every type of cookware or tool or utensil that I say I need, no questions asked about the price. I'm not a gadget freak but I do like quality in cookware and the basics. I'm also grateful that I actually love to cook and to try new things. I'm not afraid of failure - doesn't happen often but it does occasionally and I'm OK with it. So aside from cooking out of necessity, it's also a pastime so I rarely have to try to find something to keep me busy, we eat every day and rarely eat out.

I am so grateful that our Mother taught us to be willing to try anything edible before judging it. To this day, the only thing I can think of that I don't plan on eating again is brains and eggs. I had this when I was young. My Dad had always talked about how delicious a dish it was. Mom finally purchased the brains and went about making brains and eggs for us. My sister and I were so excited because of Daddy always talking about how delicious it was, so we looked forward for eating it. My goodness! That first bite was absolutely gag inducing. I can still, to this many years in the future date, re-experience that taste and never want to try it again.

I am very grateful for everything, everything except one:

I am not grateful for wasting 1/4 of my life sleeping. What a total waste of my life! There are animals which do not require much sleep at all.

So much to enjoy in life, every second while I am awake.

dcarch

I also find it best to see the good and be thankful (as my grandparents would say Could be worse). WalnutCreek Zone 7b/8a brains and eggs - where was your dad from? My mother loves brains and eggs - she is from Georgia. I was never bold enough to taste them.

2Many, that was a wonderful list! And an equally wonderful sentiment.

I don't have a specific list, but I've learned scads from almost everyone who posts here. There is so much knowledge and good sense! Plus, topics I don't know anything about often spur me to investigate them and learn something else new. So thank-you to the whole forum.

Right now, I'm also grateful for my "friends in a box." :D

I'm thankful for all those that are thankful. Thank you!

I'm thankful for all those taking this pandemic disaster seriously.

At the moment I'm thankful to hear DH in the kitchen chop-chopping.

My BIL is thankful his wife's OCD is coming in handy, lol.

I'm thankful Baldor wholesale foods opened for home delivery at wholesale prices.

I too am so thankful for everyone on this forum. I have increased my cooking repertoire greatly thanks to the encouragement of everyone here. I am so happy also that due to shared experiences I found Misfits. We are eating so many more fresh fruits & veggies than we used to during non-garden times. (Another reason to hate winter LOL.) Thank you all so very much.

I've been serious cooking and baking since I was 12 (60+years). I love food. I've learned a lot but most of all I learned that my DH is wary of anything his mom didn't cook or that he himself couldn't make with simple ingredients like PB&J, grilled cheese or ramen soup. Since 3 years ago he found that he can't have red meat it has gotten even harder to please him but I am grateful that I finally realized that to him food is fuel - not as the pleasure I get from it, foodie-me - so pleasing him is no longer important, nutrition is. Looking at all the What's for Dinner posts, and the how-to's posted makes me very happy, foodie-me. Thanks for making my brain happy tasting things in my mind.

@daytona4, were we separated in childhood? I have almost exactly that same memory: Daddy wanted brains and eggs. Mother made it. Sister and I thought it was vile. The only good thing I can say is I have no recollection of what it tasted like. I’m grateful for that!

This is not exactly food-related, but I was just vacuuming the kitchen and scrubbing the sink and thinking how much I *hate* house work. I haven’t cleaned my own house in eons. And then I realized I should be grateful I have a house to clean. That shut up the whiner in my head!

Many of you have guided me in learning new techniques! I mean, where else would I have learned to make frico in the microwave! 😉 Or how to make a classic pound cake. Or how to make sugar cookie dough ahead so I can be the “cool” aunt.

Many thanks to the experienced cooks who give so freely of their knowledge and wisdom.

Oh yes, I'm very thankful, for so many things, including my "imaginary friends" that I've made here and I'm thankful we're still here and cooking, canning, smoking, baking.

I'm thankful that 2many is not cooking the cats, LOL, but not as thankful as they are!

Today I'm busy being amazed at the nature of things. I've been starting my tomato plants, as well as peppers, cabbage, cauliflower, broccoli, all kinds of "starts". I see that tiny little tomato seed, tuck it into a nice warm bed of earth, step back and watch it grow. That one tiny little seed will grow a plant that will give me dozens of tomatoes with thousands of seeds, each with the potential of producing a plant and thousands more seeds. It always amazes me, I think of all the potential contained in that single, tiny seed.

Baby chicks should be here by Thursday, more egg layers, and that always makes me wonder why the first person would think "that came out of a chicken's butt, I think I'll eat it". (grin)

I'm thankful that I'm in a somewhat unique position to grow my own food and share that with my family, which I'm also thankful for.

And I'm especially thankful for that anonymous person who first paid my $15 fee about 15+ years ago, so that I could stay a member of the Cooking Forum. Spike ran it then and at first it was free, then he started charging a fee to join. As a single mother, I couldn't afford $15 for something so frivolous and so regretfully gave up my "membership". Some wonderful and generous person paid my membership so I could stay and I've been here ever since.

Annie

@daytona4, my Dad was from Alabama. I don't recall ever hearing any of his brothers or sisters talking about "delicious brains and eggs" or even my Grandmother (his Mom). So I don't have any idea where he developed his taste for brains and eggs.

I am grateful for the health care workers and first responders (such as ambulance operators) and also for the people who go out of their way to thank these people. I hear over and over that these people just wanted to be thanked and appreciated, and I guess this does not happen often enough. I think they would appreciate donations as well. If you do go to the grocery store or drug store, it's important to show gratitude to the people who work there as well. I haven't been to a store in two weeks, however.

I am also grateful that someone paid Annie's subscription and that she has stayed with us all this time. I'm very grateful to have her as a friend and feel that we will be friends for the rest of our lives, which is a great comfort to me.

I am grateful daily for:

my whole family and extended family - they are all such good people;

my dear friends who have supported me through the bad times and helped me celebrate the good ones;

all the unseen, but very real, folks on this forum, and all that we've shared over the years - (I too am grateful that someone paid Annie's fee;)

With respect and love to you all! Stay well!

Kate

Lars, I agree, we will be friends for the rest of our lives, and I'm thankful for that. I thought of you today, my little chocolate habanero plants are just happily growing under their lights, and I smiled and thought of you.

You are right, we should all be thankful for our first responders, our doctors and nurses and paramedics. My son in law is a police officer and he was sick last week. In normal times we would shrug and think it was the flu. Even though his symptoms were an upset stomach and a fever, he was tested. Thank goodness he was negative for COVID-19, but we do have a couple of cases here in this small community, from college kids who were attending school out of state and had to return when their schools closed. So, it's a very real possibility for all of us, I think, and I'm thankful that, at least for now, we are all safe and healthy here, and I hope that we all stay that way.

Artemis, quail? I thought of raising those but have not yet, I'll be interested to know how that goes for you...

Annie