In 1986, when I was living in Alaska, I made my yearly Christmas trip back to visit Mother in Southern Oklahoma. While I was there, I borrowed her little recipe box and took it back to Alaska with me. There I used the office copier and made copies of her treasured recipes. I mailed the little recipe box back to her and intended to transcribe all her recipes into book form and send it to her as a gift. Well, the years went by and it seemed like with the demands on my time by the jobs I had and my preoccupation with other things, I never got around to it. As it happens in our lives, Mother passed away in 1996 and as far as I had gotten, was the putting the pages of copied recipes into a binder. Since there is no way I can gift the book to her now, the best I can do is gift this book to her family and friends as a tribute to her memory and to her fine cooking.