2/14/2025 Newsletter
Recipes for Success is a weekly newsletter with recipes for success in your life, career, and kitchen from Sales Leader, Self-Love Author, and Homemaker, Stef Caldwell. Want more? Grab a copy of my debut book, ManifestHer, here.
🖥️ Why I Built A Private Website to Keep My Family’s Core Memories
My grandfather passed away when I was really young. One of my biggest regrets in life is that I all but ignored his very existence the last day that I ever got to see him. He and my grandmother stopped at my childhood home on a roadtrip from Indiana to Alaska, where they were going fly fishing, their favorite thing to do together. I had friends from the neighborhood over, and didn’t want to be bothered by hanging out with my grandparents when there was so much fun to be had running around the neighborhood and front yard on a spectacularly sunny and warm summer day.
As fate would have it, it was on that very trip to Alaska that my grandfather passed away in a tragic accident, slipping and falling in a river, and being carried away by the current. I remember finding out that he had passed and knowing that I would always regret not spending more time with him that day he and my grandma stopped by, and never getting the chance to give him one last hug, and tell him how much I loved him.
After I published my book, ManifestHer, my grandma told me that she too had written something meaningful to her, a memoir of sorts, the story of how my grandparents met, fell in love, built their life together, and ultimately, her recollection of the day he passed away.
It was beautiful, gut-wrenching, absolutely incredible. I couldn’t believe how lucky I was to have a grandparent that cared enough to share her story that she took the time to write it all down for me. I cherished this hand-written document, so much that in order to keep it safe, I stored it away in a box of my favorite books when we moved from Chicago to St. Charles, and that’s when the most devastating thing happened. I couldn’t find it…
🍝 Kendra’s Pasta
I’m so lucky to work in the food industry, as it happens, it attracts lots of foodies. Every quarter during my team meetings, I have one of my team present a Pecha Kucha. It’s a 20 slide presentation presented at the pace of 20 seconds per slide. It can be any topic, literally anything. One of my team members, whose dad was a professional chef and caterer growing up, chose to present “How to Make Pasta from Scratch” and all of us sat in awe as she broke down what we anticipated being a very challenging dish into 2o slides. After her Pecha Kucha, another team member asked if we could do a team-bonding activity around the Thanksgiving holiday and learn how to make pasta together. Needless to say, I was ALL THE WAY IN. So the recipe that follows is a shockingly easy, yet oh-so-impressive party trick: pasta from scratch, with a homemade vodka sauce.
I figured if you homebound and out of ideas for what to cook for Valentine’s Day, but wanted to do something more special than “the usual” this would be a delightful departure from that, and guaranteed to make your Valentine feel oh-so-loved. Buon appetito!
