About Suz Chef

Suz Chef: Making Vintage Recipes and Living to Write About It

Welcome to Suz Chef!

I'm Suz, and in November of the-year-which-must-not-be-named, I undertook an endeavor to make recipes from vintage cookbooks. I'd give them a vegetarian twist, though, to suit my own dietary preferences.

I've never really been much of a cook, to say the least. I once made a meal in which the only edible component ended up being apple sauce from a jar. I'm the relative who is asked to bring rolls to Thanksgiving. I've messed up box cakes and burned frozen meals.

I like the idea of cooking, though. I like the idea of coming together to break bread. I've started a dinner group and hosted pop-up dinners all in an effort to motivate myself to learn how to cook better. I had some successful dishes, too! Somehow, though, the day-to-day meals continued to elude me.

So in month nine of pandemic life, I started a new hobby. I started making recipes from the vintage recipe books I had collected over the years, starting with my most recent acquistion, The Betty Crocker Recipe Card Library.

If you want to read more about that story, check out How It Began here:
https://suzchef.blogspot.com/2020/12/how-it-began.html

For someone who isn't much of a cook, I have a lot of cookbooks. I love stories about food, and I love the stories vintage cook books tell by just being a product of their time. I love stories about food so much, I decided I would start a blog, too. It would be a good way to start writing again, a creative outlet I had let fall to the wayside.

When I say "making vintage recipes and living to write about it," I mean both that I have not poisoned myself, and making these recipes has given me a sense of purpose and joy. This blog is driven by food, but it is also a bit about my life and experiences -- at times whimsical and nostalgic, at times struggling with underbelly exposed, but always with a taste for creation.

How the name Suz Chef came to be can be found in this post:
https://suzchef.blogspot.com/2020/12/cheese-souffle.html

At the time of writing this About Suz Chef page, I've had a go at a handful of the Betty Crocker recipes and am enjoying the process. I plan on trying recipes from other vintage cookbooks, too. Amy Vanderbilt's cookbook looms on the horizon, as does The Presidential Cook Book from 1902.

Thank you for reading! May all your spoons be red!
--Suz, January 2021

Suz Chef rates recipes based on a scale of 1-5 Red Spoons, 1 being the lowest and 5 being the very best.