These are recipes I grew up with and recipes I have collected along the way from friends, books, magazines, etc. The recipes I grew up with are Dominican cuisine, but, my mother was always cutting recipes out of American magazines, such as: House & Garden, McCall's and Good Housekeeping and always in the kitchen experimenting. She also made my father a daily dessert 5 days a week. I was in there "helping" since I could stand up.

Our kitchen was a production kitchen. Our main chef was Julia, a wonderful lady that looked just like Aunt Jemima, with a great sense of humor, who would start the production in the kitchen at 5 am every morning. This kitchen fed seven people in my family, three maids (Julia, Ramona and Maria), two gardeners Andres and Abreu, Juan,a kid that lived with us in exchange for food, and did errands, and Manuel, a painter that continuously painted our house. And, of course, the usual visiting cousin. Our splendid table was craved by most of our cousins. Later on, it added my husband, Tom who came over to eat every day before we were married.

In my early years, we made a lot from scratch since we needed to be self sufficient. We grew a lot of our vegetables and raised chickens. We had big milk cans delivered from the farm daily as well as Dominican "Pan de Agua (water bread) still warm from the bakery, which was gone by breakfast. We also baked bread and made our own butter.

Please comment if you make it. If you change a recipe and it is better, please let me know. I am always trying new things. I don't make things the same exact way every time.