Club keeps Cook of the Week online and in the kitchen
Betty Crocker had always been Nancy Clemens go-to gal for recipes. She'd open her trusted binder-style cookbook to find recipes for family dinners, like the Swedish meatballs that became an early favorite.
“Pretty much everything I got was out of a cookbook, or from my mother-in law who would clip things out of the newspaper,” the Carpentersville resident says.
Not so much any more.
Instead of paging through books, she gets recipes from cooks across the country with the click of a mouse. Instead of an open cookbook taking up valuable work space, she sets her trim iPad on her kitchen counter.
“When I think about how we got recipes way back when, looking through a cookbook or going to a library … you can't compare that to looking online,” she says.
She's recently discovered Just A Pinch recipe club on Facebook. A national online recipe swapping club based in Franklin, Tenn., members post their recipes and can search the database for hundreds of others.
“They (members) are people with their favorite recipes, their family recipes. I like that rather than (commercial) test kitchens,” she said.
Joining the site last November, this “lightly salted” contributor has shared some of her favorites at justapinch.com. Among them are cream cheese and chutney dip, an appetizer she discovered at The Little Traveler in Geneva and passes along to Daily Herald readers today.
Her most recent upload to Just A Pinch is her spinach cheese appetizer.
“An employee I worked with brought this recipe in one day and I fell in love with it. I'm not a big fan of spinach and hesitated but I loved these bars. I've been making this for about 13 years now and it still gets raves when I serve them or bring them to someone,” she said.
Clemens has never been shy about asking friends, family, co-workers or acquaintances for recipes and laughs as she realizes where many in her collection came from.
“It dawned on me, ‘oh my gosh these are all my daughter's old boyfriends' recipes or recipes I got from their families. So to her new boyfriend, I said ‘you're going to have to get me one.'”
Today Clemens also shares calico beans that was passed along by her sister. Since sharing at a family gathering years ago, it has become a must-have dish when they all get together.
“I think it's because of the bacon. Men love bacon,” she said.
Nancy admits she's come along way since the “crazy two-hour” dinners she made for her father as a teen — two hours because nothing was finished at the same time. She never gave up or got discouraged, enjoying the satisfaction she got from sharing food with family and friends.
“It gives one some sense of pride,” she says, “and wanting to please others in the comfort of food.”