About Judy

I have loved food for as long as I can remember.  I have always loved food despite the fact that my Uncle Larry Fried (who was my wonderful father Murray’s twin brother), sternly told me many times, “Judy, you cannot love food.  You can only love people. ” My response every time to my uncle was, “But Uncle Larry, I do love food.” And I did.  Luckily, my mother and especially my father didn’t agree with my Uncle Larry.  They knew I loved food, and they encouraged me.  I will never forget the look on my father’s face as he kvelled (beamed) as I devoured my mother’s delicious meals.  So many of my best childhood memories are connected to food.  But my love of food was not soley confined to eating it.  As a child, I enjoyed nothing more than watching my mother, Shirley Fried prepare all of my, my brother Kenny’s, and my father’s favorite recipes.  Many of those were recipes my mother had gotten from her own mother, my Grandma Hindes, from her mother-in-law, my Grandma Fried, from  her closest friends,  from her sisters in law, Sally Hindes and Florence Fried, and from The Settlement Cookbook, which I think was the only cookbook she used when she got married.  As a very young child, I stood by my mother’s side as she used her vintage Sunbeam Mixmaster to prepare the batter for her delicious marble cake and sour cream coffee cake, as she used her old fashioned pastry blender to mix the flour with Crisco shortening to make her flaky pie crusts for her yummy Thanksgiving apple pies and her Father’s Day blueberry pies, as she made the rich, glossy chocolate icing for her delicious chocolate cake  that I think was my absolute favorite dessert of hers, and as she prepared the layers for her light as air sponge cake layers for her incomparable strawberry shortcake.  I wasn’t just standing there for the fun of it.  I was using every ounce of my power and concentration to memorize every little technique she used.  The years of my childhood were basically my training ground.  I was an apprentice and my mother was my mentor.  When I was about 10 years old, my mother bought me my first cookbook.  It was called the Betty Crocker Boy’s and Girl’s New Cook Book.  I am not exaggerating when I tell you that I spent hundreds of hours staring at all the pictures and reading through every single recipe in that cookbook.  I used to just visualize myself making every single recipe in the book.  I think I actually made only 2 of them, but that didn’t matter to me, because in my imagination I was cooking and baking every single one of those recipes.  I got married in 1982 at 24 years old, and I finally was able to begin cooking and baking to my heart’s content.  Initially,  I focused on mastering all of my mother’s recipes, but then I began creating recipes of my own.  I’ve been cooking and baking for my family and friends ever since, and I haven’t lost one ounce of my passion for it.  Along the way, I had 3 children.  My daughter Randi is 25 years old.  She’s married and pregnant right now, and she’s also a middle school English teacher.  My son Danny is 22 years old.  He recently graduated from Brandeis University, and he’s looking for a job.  My youngest child is Benji, and he’s a freshman at Dartmouth College.  By day, I am a Special Education teacher, and I love my job.  

When my daughter Randi became engaged 2 years ago, I vowed to start going through my recipes so that I could hand them all down to her.  I decided to type them into my computer, so that I would be able to print them all up, and put them in a binder for  her.  Well, when I started to type the recipes, I realized that my daughter would appreciate them much more if I wrote little autobiographical stories to go along with each one.  It did take quite a bit of time to do this, and the experience was emotional for me as I remembered my own beautiful childhood and the  wonderful years my own children were so young when I was more fulfilled and happier than any other time in my life.  I printed up the recipes with the stories, and I gave them to Randi.  She was thrilled, and she, Danny, and Benji sat and read the stories together.  

I decided that I’d go one step further with this project, and that I’d start my own blog where I could record the recipes permanently.  It gives me joy to know that my children will be able to go on the Internet to my  recipe blog and find any of their old favorites with ease.  My aunts and uncles and my cousins will be able to go on my recipe blog and look through my recipes and find some favorites of their own as well.  This blog is turning out to be an amazing way to preserve the most wonderful family memories in addition to preserving our beloved recipes that have been handed down from one generation to another. 

 You can reach me at: judysrecipeconnection@gmail.com