Brooklyn, meet Hungry. I mean, Hungary.

If there's anything the frum world has enough of, it's food magazines. Between Relish, Family Table, Whisk, Bits N Bites, B'tayavon, and a gazillion cookbooks from Susie Fishbein to Jamie Geller, I think we're up to our necks in gourmet recipes with ingredients we can barely pronounce, let alone buy or figure out how to use.

I grew up in Brooklyn, the daughter of an American-born mother and Israeli-born father. But wait! My maternal grandmother was from Czechoslovakia (Beregszaz), maternal grandfather from Hungary (Nyregyhaz and Budapest), paternal grandmother from Rumania (Klausenberg), paternal grandfather from Rumania (Hermanstadt). In other words, I grew up on Hungarian cooking with a touch of Israeli influence.

My mother is an amazing cook. Her food is finger-lickin' delicious. The ingredients she uses are readily accessible in kosher supermarkets, simple to prepare, and gusto. Sitting down to a meal at her home is not a slapdash affair. If she's serving you breakfast or lunch, she'll defrost and toast a whole wheat bagel, remove from her fridge homemade tuna salad and Israeli salad cut up in tiny, symmetrical squares -  which my father prepared. She'll also offer Israeli pitted olives and a coffee or juice. I feel warm, loved, pampered. It's not your on-the-run dry cereal.

Suppers are not chicken-and-potatoes either. There's always cut up fruit followed by a delicious appetizer or soup, followed by a deliciously prepared chicken or fish dish with a starch and vegetable side, followed by dessert. You leave the table feeling full and satisfied and begging for her recipes.

Don't get me started on melaveh malkahs, yomtov meals, chanukah parties, or sheva brachos. The abundance and variety of foods makes me dizzy. Everything is expertly, deliciously prepared. Her challah and cakes are scrumptious and perfect.

My sister two years my junior inherited the Hungarian gene. She's even better than my mother at some things because she takes risks and tries new recipes all the time. Unfortunately, the "kokoshcake gene" skipped me over altogether and instead I got impatience and ADHD. I love puttering in the kitchen, but my recipes flop more often than not. I just can't get that perfect doneness, the attention to detail, the perfect complement of spices and ingredients and timing.

But I try.

And I collect recipes.

Which are currently, like in many frum homes, in complete disarray.

I have a binder full of cutouts from magazines. An index card holder with index cards  of sloppily jotted recipes. Bits of paper everywhere with hastily scribbled notes. You know the scene.

Six months ago, my super organized and super balabuste upstairs neighbor asked to borrow my computer to type up her recipes. I gladly accommodated her in my (messy) dining room. To my amazement, she brought with her on a USB stick a template for typing up recipes on index cards - with titles, columns, the works! She then printed it all out on beautiful index cards and placed it in laminated pages inside a gorgeous faux-leather recipe book.

My eyes popped out. It's possible to be that organized? Wow.

As a gesture of appreciation, she went out and bought an identical recipe card binder for me. It's sleek, it's gorgeous... and I never did anything about it.

BUT I WANT TO!

But I never have time.

Maybe now is the time?

Another thing the world has way too much of is food blogs. There are food blogs a dime a dozen. Who needs another one?

Well, this isn't a food blogs. It's my personal family recipes.

So now, all of you Facebook friends won't have to ask me for recipes... you'll have them right here. Along with an accompanying story of that recipe's origins. Once in a blue moon there will also be a photo accompaniment.

I'll try to post one recipe a day but no promises. And all of you are invited to comment, ask questions, and guest blog with recipes of your own.

I'm very excited about this venture. Maybe my recipe collection will finally merit organization. For as I type the recipe and its story here, I will also print it on the index cards.

Maybe I'll be able to add to my recipe collection as well, from you, my readers.

I'm so excited. Are you?