Updating Your Traditions with Log Cabin

Thank you to Log Cabin for sponsoring my post about updated traditions in my household. To learn more about Log Cabin Syrups (which are all free of High Fructose Corn Syrup), breakfast for dinner, and other new ways to update traditions in your home, click here. I was selected for this sponsorship by the Clever Girls Collective, which endorses Blog With Integrity, as I do.

One of the things I appreciate about being out as an adult is the chance to start my own traditions. Where as a child I might bring in the new year watching fireworks, as an adult, I bring in the new year praying with my friends. When Sunday breakfast used to be a box of fresh donuts, now it’s a nice batch of buttermilk pancakes.

Becoming an adult is about forging your own path, writing your own story, living your own life. That’s not to say that you can’t take with you some of the lessons from your childhood. They – after all – did make you the person you are today. But part of growing means you’re constantly getting better, constantly tweaking and improving on things that have room for improvement.

I know one of those areas for me is in the cooking arena. This blog has documented many of my journeys with cooking, and I think it’s fairly clear that I am (or was) a strictly “by the cookbook” type of chef. As half engineer, my analytical mind wants to look at numbers and measure things precisely. But that isn’t what cooking is about. If you stick to the book all the time, then you’re stuck with someone else’s taste. Fortunately, one of my friends is a master at cooking for flavor, and has helped me to embrace the flavorful, heartfelt side of cooking.

Because of his assistance, I’ve been able to create my new go-to-makes-everyone-happy side dish. And what’s so great about the dish is that it’s basically taking an off-the-shelf product, and just adding a little bit of something something to make it so much better. Do you want to know what it is?

My Secret Ingredient Baked Beans.

Yup. Beans, beans the musical fruit. What I do is take a can of baked beans from the grocery store and as I’m heating them up, I stir in my secret ingredient. *whispers*Log Cabin Syrup*stops whispering* The syrup adds a delicious sweet maple flavor to your beans. Even if your beans are already flavored, adding the syrup makes it so much better. And going completely against my engineering side, I don’t measure or count – I just give the bottle of syrup a good squeeze or two.

I’m so excited because now, where traditionally, I would just be someone that eats the yummy food everyone else makes, now I am the one cooking up the beans that people can’t stop eating. They’re my new go-to- side-dish for when friends come over to eat.  It’s my very first food tradition. *beams*

As I mentioned before, I also have been tweaking some of my breakfast traditions. Breakfast for me used to be a bowl of cereal or a donut – most usually eaten on the go. Now, I actually COOK breakfast – meaning eggs, bacon, pancakes, hash browns. I used to follow an old cookbook pancake recipe, but recently found an amazing buttermilk recipe that makes totally delicious pancakes. Maybe one day I will share it with you. And of course, my pancakes have to be smothered in Log Cabin syrup. YUM.

Those are just a couple of ways where I’m forging my own path – starting new traditions for myself, and for my friends and family. What about you? Do you stick to old traditions or do you update them as you grow older?