Taking the plunge…

 

“There’s a magic moment that happens when you share a meal together.  Laughing comes easy.  People glow.  You can’t create that kind of communion alone, and you can’t create it without food.”  Kim Severson from “Spoon Fed – How Eight Cooks Saved My Life”
 

I’ve been thinking about doing a food blog for about five years now. I’ve been raising my family and homeschooling my kids for a long time, but as my youngest was heading toward graduation, I started really thinking about things I would like to do when that season of life came to an end. This really seems like a natural thing for me to do. I love food and I love cooking. I love hosting and entertaining around my big farm table. I love the stories behind recipes – and there’s a story for pretty much all of mine.

I grew up in a family full of good cooks – my mom, my aunts, my older sister. Every family reunion/potluck that I went to was full of really amazing food. It was normal for me. It was a totally natural thing for me to want to learn to cook, but it became a necessity when I started having kids who wanted to eat every day. Go figure. Also, going out to eat with seven people could totally break the bank. As I started cooking pretty much every day, I realized how much I actually enjoyed it. I started buying lots of cookbooks, asking different family members for recipes, and doing a lot of experimenting.

My husband is Italian, and I am a native of Nashville, Tennessee. My cooking often bounces back and forth between spaghetti and meatballs, biscuits and gravy, chicken Alfredo, and chicken and dumplings. I like to bake, but I REALLY love making things that I can mix up and throw in different ingredients and not measure. I’ve been making cornbread since I was about twelve years old, and don’t measure anything. I recently forced myself to make it and actually figure out measurements. There are things that my mom made and never measured that I am still trying to figure out how to make.

I got the name Mama Palma from one of my sons. My house is almost always full of family and friends. The kids knew that they could pretty much always bring friends home. My son, Brandon, started saying, “Come on over to Mama Palma’s house and she will feed you.” When I started trying to figure out the name for the blog, Brandon reminded me that this should absolutely be the name. A lot of his friends still call me that to this day.

Just to keep it real, I am working hard to learn everything I can about food blogs and how to make this one interesting. I’m an avid reader and love to constantly learn new things. I’ve read more articles about blogs than I can count, asked for help from tons of people, and written and rewritten things a thousand times. But, I know that I have some good recipes and I can’t wait to share them, for you to try them and give me feedback, and to create a little community here!

P.S.  I need to thank my husband, Daniel and my friend, Rickey for helping with all the technical stuff, Brandon for helping me brainstorm what this should look like, Kathryn and Michaela for helping me with creative decisions, and Elise for taking some really awesome pictures!  It’s a big family effort and I’m so grateful!