Someone explain this to me...

Ok, I'll admit it... I have the soul of an engineer. I'm very artistic in my own way, but my true heart and soul belong to logic, reasoning, mathematics and science. Forget art class, I wanted Physics.

I'm weird, so sue me.

Anyway, I've never understood the whole "family recipe" thing... as in "this stays in the family and you can NEVER, NEVER EVER give it out to anyone... ever. Period." To me, there simply is no rational to it and it feels selfish (I have something that's mine, all mine, and I won't share it with you... nahny nahny boo boo). Why am I discussing this?

Well, I was baking anise biscuits with my cousin... it was my grandmother's recipe that we've spent two Christmases perfecting. Why? Well, her measurements aren't really 6 cups of flour, it's 6 cups of flour more or less. It isn't 8 oz of juice, it's a "glass of juice." It took us a while to discover her glasses were 10 oz, not 8. A handful, well... her hands are bigger than mine! A "demitasse cup of baking powder" but we can't find her demitasse cups... ACK.

Cooking might be an art, but baking is definitely a science (which is probably why I prefer baking). If you add too much liquid, your cookies won't set... too much flour and they'll be dry rocks.

Anyway, we think we've hit on the correct amounts of everything (perhaps a bit more anise next year) and I laughed about how I wanted to take grandma's recipe card and scan it to put it on the internet... just so people could see what we were working with. She was scandalized -- put Grandma's recipe on the INTERNET so EVERYONE could see it? Holy jeez, you would have thought I was proposing putting nuclear secrets on the internet. This shock and adamant refusal started a discussion as to WHY it's taboo to share her biscuit or butter cookie recipe (which, oddly enough, doesn't include butter... go figure)... All we ever got to is because "it's a family thing."

Yeah, I'm sorry, not good enough. Sentimentality doesn't trump logic, which to me is "If someone appreciates something of yours enough to ask for the recipe, use what you learned in kindergarten and share." It's the right thing to do. I share every single recipe I have -- from my mother's tomato sauce to my eggplant parmesan, lasagna and chicken salad recipes -- when people ask. My best friend shared her grandmother's tea cakes recipe with me when I told her how much I liked them.

So what if people make them for their family or make it to bring to parties? The rational was: "If you give out the recipe, everyone will bring the same thing." What? With Food TV, AllRecipes.com, Epicurious and the thousands of websites and blogs devoted to recipes... everyone will bring my grandmother's anise biscuits to the same party? Not rational. Not logical.

So come on, blogosphere... are you like that? Do you not share "secret" family recipes? Why? How about the other coin -- why do you share? I share because it makes me feel good that someone liked what I made (same reason why I sew stuff for people... I like the appreciation). I can understand not sharing a recipe you make money off of (like if you owned a bakery!), but if you're not profitting from it... uh....

Help me out here, give me your reasons!

Jen