The name “Supperstruck” came into existence many years ago. It was an invention of my younger son who was a big fan of the AC/DC song Thunderstruck. We were driving home from somewhere and I was bemoaning the fact that I had no ideas for supper. He yelled from the back seat, “You’ve been supperstruck!”

Supperstruck, as my son and I defined it then, was the realization that you have no plan for supper with mealtime fast approaching. I thought the name was brilliant and always wanted to do something with it, but it took me a while to figure out what that might be. I envisioned an ebook at first, but decided that was too limiting. I wanted something more fluid that I could expand and develop over time, hence this website.

When I started the site, I based it on the notion of being stumped about supper and other meals.  The goal was to provide recipes and ideas for meals, snacks, and dessert but somewhere along the line my perspective changed.

As I developed the site, my ideas began to move in a different direction, toward something more profound, at least for me.

I’d been thinking a lot about culinary legacy – what we inherit from our families or borrow and learn from other cultures. Culinary history is a part of that and something that has always interested me. If I’m going to cook dishes or use ingredients from another culture, I want to know their origins, significance, and legacy within that culture. There are also some larger issues in the food space that I read about regularly and want to discuss, like food waste, sustainability, nutrition, and how diet affects particular health conditions.

I’d been thinking too about the times my family was “struck” by supper, both the meals we loved and those we definitely did not. (See my rutabaga experience as an example.)

All told, I realized after launching this site that I wanted more than just a compendium of recipes. I wanted Supperstruck to be a record of my culinary experience, knowledge, creations, and things I’ve learned; a legacy, of sorts, for my kids and a place they can visit when they need to recall a lesson I imparted or a recipe that was in regular rotation in our home.

Supperstruck is not just for them, of course, but it is inspired by the notion of passing down culinary knowledge to the next generation, a modernized version of the dog-eared cookbooks and recipe cards of eras past and a tribute to the wonderful cooks in my family who preceded me and taught me so much.

Dedicated to Dorothy, Marilyn, and Annie, all cooks and bakers extraordinaire.