Garner Laurels For Your Cooking!

For years, the pace of my life was so fast that I did a lot of cooking from memory.  After a while, my life slowed enough that I began to enjoy cooking again.  No longer satisfied with my bland rendition of beef stew, I pulled out my mother's Betty Crocker Cook Book to check the recipe.  I went through the ingredient list, checking off each in my head until, eureka, the missing element appeared:  the noble bay leaf.