Recipes pass hands through generations, from grandmother to mother to daughter and on, there is something of a time honored tradition in the female life cycle that almost demands it be so. It should be no surprise then that recipes are a very popular business, with people writing books, magazine articles, getting syndicated press through local print, newspapers, even geniuses like Rachel Ray or Emeril Largesse taking food preparation no matter how intricate or simple and bringing it out to the consumer in their popular television shows. Heck, the revenue and interest from those two and others just like them has even spawned an entire network dedicated to food, food television, food preparation, and food exploration. Julia Child this ain’t; yet in a strange and subtle way, it is. Forgetting all the showmanship and all the personalities involved, there really is one solitary figurehead for the wonderful world of food in our culture, and it’s the recipe.

Without the recipe there is no meal to prepare. Even the “dash of this, little bit of that and cook until it’s just light brown,” is a recipe; instructions for how to cook what. But recipes aren’t just for food; they’re for everything. Recipes may sometimes be called “instructions;” like a recipe for a cosmopolitan might be called instructions for mixing the drink; really nothing more than a drink recipe.

All recipes include many of your favorite dishes; they may also include the things you’re not very keen on cooking everyday. For example: healthy recipes or low fat recipes may be something you cook up a couple times a month because you’re feeling guilty about eating out too much or eating food that’s not as healthy as you should. Also restaurant recipes are something you may have on recipe cards that you pull out for special occasions like when the in-laws are coming and you want to serve a dish with some white wine or something like that.

Cooking recipes are available just about everywhere; free online recipes are also offered by some of the greatest chefs in the world as they offer you the opportunity to try and prepare their dish, then come to their restaurant and be blown away by the chefs own version of the same meal.

Cooking is one of the great refined arts we as humans still practice with some regularity. For your health and long life why not try a chef inspired vegetarian dish this evening and skip the KFC for just one night; your thighs will thank you in the long run.