Thanks, Sherry!

Most of the food blogging world already knows, but we lost a dear friend last week. Sherry of What Did You Eat? passed away suddenly. :( As a tribute to Sherry, many of us prepared one of her recipes this past week and are blogging about them today in tribute to such a wonderful woman. I found Sherry's blog a couple years ago and became a fan from the beginning. She made me laugh and her recipes sounded delicious. And then she joined the Daring Bakers and we got to know each other a little better through e-mail. She was a joy to chat with and I really loved getting to know her through her stories on her blog. I've many memories of things she'd said to me, but there is this one comment she made that had me absolutely rolling - tears streaming down my face and an effort to catch my breath.. it was regarding a certain recipe we were making and what a bitch it was. No one was having any luck and we were all frustrated. But she managed to find the exact right words to make it all seem not so bad - I have a feeling she did that often in her life.. helped those she loved and cared about feel better when they weren't in a good place. The world is a sadder place now that she's gone. Fortunately, many of us have memories to keep her close to our hearts and we've got her recipes to keep us thankful she was such a great cook! So in tribute to that beautiful woman, I made one of her many recipes that I've got tucked away in my recipe file.. This is a vegetarian dish that she enjoyed and was written by her favorite chef and cookbook author, Deborah Madison. The book she chose this recipe from is Vegetarian Cooking for Everyone and it's called Fideos, Dry Mexican Soup. This is a perfect recipe for a warm day.. it was easy to put together and didn't take much time in a hot kitchen. The changes I made were to use organic chicken stock from Trader Joe's, but adding the same spices to it that Sherry did. Since Hubbs loves noodles and carmelized onions together, I just mixed them into the noodles instead of pureeing them. And finally, thanks to a left over rotisserie chicken, I shredded some breast meat and threw it into the mix for a lil protein. I served it simply with sliced cukes from our garden dressed in balsamic vinegar and a lil olive oil. It really was delicious and will become a regularly made dinner for us. I thought about Sherry the whole time I prepared it and while we were eating it and I couldn't help but feel that she was smiling down upon us in approval. Thank you Sherry, for the laughs, the insight to your life, the friendship and for my knowing I've been blessed to have you in my life, for however brief that time might have been. Ya'll can read about the recipe on Sherry's blog here xoxo