Clocks fell back this morning. Groans on all sides that we’ve been robbed of an hour of daylight. This moan is only tempered by the realization (at least for some) that it also means an extra hour of sleep on this lazy Sunday morning.

For a person who routinely rises at 5 AM, this time shift is a bonus. Light filters in an hour earlier in the morning, shining on the start of a new day. The fact that darkness creeps in earlier at the end of day seems only fair. Life is a balancing act. Only dedicated morning people could understand and celebrate with me, but they must be out there somewhere. Most people I know just complain about the darkness and ignore the morning light.

Spent my early morning today going through cookbooks. Plans for an at home Sunday include braising a chuck roast in a slow oven. Now, I know how to do this, but I was just wondering if there was a new spin that might enhance the end product. What I found instead was the source of my basic knowledge.

Did you ever think about how you first learned to do something that now seems so firmly fixed that you feel as though you created the process on your own? I realized this morning that my ingrained process for making pot roast came from Jeff Smith’s 1987 cookbook, The Frugal Gourmet Cooks American.

Opening to the page for “Yankee Pot Roast” brought me back to another time and place. The adaptations in my handwriting spoke to a serious attempt to master a process that was new to me at the time. I may feel as though I own this basic recipe now, but it’s time that credit should be given to the source.