Mom is Just a Nickname

There are so many foods out there that are delicious and fantastic and waiting to be eaten! L is one of those letters that holds a couple of our family’s favorites. Funnily enough, they are ‘Toph Specialties”–he’s the one that cooks them, almost always, in our house!

Lasagna. Ah, the memories associated with Lasagna. It was the first meal Toph ever cooked for me. Ok, the first meal either of us ever cooked for the other, even!

Toph and I met on the internet, originally. Six months or so after we started talking regularly, we decided we wanted to meet up in real life (irl). So, the weekend after his birthday, he drove from Northwestern Ohio to the Eastern panhandle of West Virginia to see me. He’d made this lasagna at home, frozen it and then hauled it across Ohio, Pennsylvania, some of Maryland and a tiny bit of West Virginia to get it to me. He drove after working eight hours…it was close to an eight hour drive. I still cannot believe he did that. I worried about him the entire way.

Anyhow, the lasagna took forever to cook in the little oven in my dorm’s lounge/kitchenette. Other residents kept coming in to sniff at it, to ooh and aah over the homecooked smell. I think we even shared some of it with a friend or two. Who ever said that the way to a man’s heart was through his stomach should have reversed it! I thought it was incredibly sweet of Toph to make that lasagna for me. I’m sure the fact that he went to all that trouble to feed me helped convince me that it was true love.

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My parents actually introduced the next one to us. I guess it came out of a garlic lover’s cookbook and was originally made with shrimp. They altered it to go with chicken since we don’t eat seafood. They also used white wine to make it. Toph uses Triple Sec (a citrus liquor) when he makes it. It’s melt in your mouth, sweet and savory with a tang of lemon. One friend described it as ‘Sex on a Plate’ because she liked it so much! We generally just call it Lemon Garlic Chicken, though. After all, it’s one of J’s favorite meals! It’s perfect served with pasta, salad and some garlic bread.

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So, no recipes today either, for a very specific reason. I was reading more about copyrights and I don’t want to infinge on the copyrights of the authors of any more recipes. I haven’t decided yet if I will remove the recipes I already have up, but I’m leaning towards it. I’m not averse to sharing recipes, but I don’t want to post them on here.

It makes me sad because I’ve been enjoying sharing favorite recipes with this alphabet game. Now you just get my memories!