Cooking Wherever

I was born for cooking with internet. I've long ago dumped recipe books as no sooner do I find a beautiful recipe than I also discover that I do not have, do not know the name in the local language, or do not want to go through the trouble to find one of the main ingredients.  Don't get me wrong, I've never gone completely local and have trekked to find butter or cream or local honey on occasion, but really I am perfectly happy with how I can cook with a web device in my hands. Search millet, goat cheese, raisins, pork and I'm sure to find a recipe that calls for all 4 and claims to be gourmet (yeah, my kids never buy that, but...).  Search for Amaranth flour, cocoa, coconut, vanilla and Iwith a 'm sure to find an amazing, healthy breakfast bar.
And now with my husband on this radical diet, completely avoiding sugars and most complex carbs I can still search the limited ingredients available: goat cheese, chicken, spinach, garlic, quinoa, lemon and be sure someone out there has also been dieting and finding goat cheese for an unheard of 2 dollars a roll and fixating a bit...and blogging about it.
In the wake of my daughter becoming a teenager and now living with two of them, as well as a tween, an 8 yr. old and a 1 yr. old I was thinking about the mixture of ways family is made, and the personalities that are dumped together and expected to survive--and even to sharpen each other and realized family recipes are for the birds. I'm actually not sure if the internet helps either. I haven't searched for 1 fastidious 14 year old with a desire to succeed that dogs him constantly; 1 13 yr old book worm who loves doing her nails, eating lemons and (who knew) playing soccer in the mud; 1 extremely energetic 10 yr old who loves guns, speed, friends, and playing badminton, biking, hide and seek, or swimming especially when the sun has already gone down; 1 8 yr old from China who loves pretty clothes, pretty shoes, pretty hair, pretty bracelets, pretty cakes, friends, school, and making sure she knows where mom is all the time; and 1 1 yr old who has already shorted our house when he caused an electric fire, jumped out of his crib, summersaulted into his crib, fell 4 feet to his head trying to keep up with sister on the playground,  runs everywhere and will gnaw on a piece of celery for an hour.  But I'm pretty sure I wouldn't find that exact mix and I'd be stuck trying to figure out how to parent these kids on another's contagiously emphatic success plan.
And so I try not to search for plans, and instead pray, hope, laugh, and beg and know that today is the best day I have with these amazing souls and tomorrow they will be different, with different wants, needs, longings, hurts and victories. And today pray that the hope will someday be realized. Even better than a good recipe, I hope for adults that stand tall in the confidence of who they are, what they believe and where they are headed. Someday.