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Welcome to The Baker's Dozen Challenge!

Choose a "Baker's Dozen" of basic ingredients, and using only those, prepare 100 entrees that are simple, varied, and delicious. Standardize your recipes so they are reproducible and then attractively photograph the stages!

The general idea is to use original recipes that are reasonably easy to prepare, healthy, and all made primarily from your list of 13 ingredients - "A Baker's Dozen". A broader theme is living a simple, local, modest, and thoroughly satisfying life which is distinctively native to your culture, yet kind to the environment.

The Baker's Dozen Challenge

Entrees from 13 basic ingredients - my choices:

Chicken - Beef - Eggs - Dairy - Vegetable Oil - Lemons - Onions/Garlic - Carrots - Tomatoes - Greens - Beans - Potatoes - Rice

note: my "challenge" dishes will be enumerated on the blog 13ingredients.blogspot.com/ . Other dishes will be found here on flickr as well.

Why am I doing this really?

I jumped into this project a couple of weeks ago just for something to do online with a friend. (The "challenge" had been thought of three years earlier, but never got going.) Right now all the balls are in the air at once - cooking, planning, photographing, writing it all down ... I'll probably revamp everything soon, so now it's time to think about where I want to go with it. A hint came a few days ago, when someone I've known for nearly 40 years thanked me for teaching her, way back when, how to make some basic good food from scratch - soup, bread - and she's not the only person who has said that, over the years.

By no means do I think of myself as a "cook" - I'm impatient, don't bother with details, don't think about presentation, do not have a refined appreciation of outre cuisine. What I do have is a long life with hungry people and a modest budget. The last of the kids are still in the house, and through many of those years we had not only our own family but young friends in the house as well. I also have high regard for real food, as compared to dehydrated potatoes in a box. I grew up in a time and place where most of the older people still knew how to cook! I didn't need lessons. I only had to go into the kitchen and watch.

Everyone had a few excellent dishes that they prepared over and over. If I liked it, I would notice and would ask questions. Later, when I got out on my own, I might call someone to find out how they had made something I remembered.

When I got married, my elderly landlady called me down to the kitchen and said "Now I am going to give you your wedding present." And she taught me how to cut up a chicken! "You don't need to pay extra for chicken parts," she advised. "Buy them whole and cut them up yourself." Mrs. Kent, she was, born around 1880 in small-town Mississippi. A great and gracious lady.

I am also a dedicated armchair traveller, and one way I have satisfied that desire for other people, other places is by having friends from all over. Of course these people bring their own favorite foods, and I could sample, and then I could ask questions. The Indian ladies used to bring me samples of foods they had made at home. They knew I would try it and would probably like it.

So, getting back to the question, I have gradually realized that I am doing this project because I want to share what I've learned - simple, great, everyday and economical dishes from extended family and from old friends - all in one place and all at once. I want also to encourage people to try things, with or without a recipe. You'll have some failures, of course, so you would do well to get a large dog.

December, 2010


Still disorganized, but improving. Individual recipes are in sets. Where warranted, some will be organized into collections. Each set is meant to include the recipe, photo documentation of preparation, and sometimes, efforts gone awry! As the blog comes under control there will be an increasing number of links to relevant sections there. All of this is "work in progress", nothing engraved in stone other than Granny K's ingredients for proper chicken soup. Thanks... I guess... to those of you out there whose work is both inspiring and daunting!

January, 2011