Meg Roussos / The BulletinBob and Pris Brubaker of Bend make their plates of green chile chicken on rice. They've been making the dish for decades.

We all have “keeper” recipes. They’re the family favorites that we crave. They’re the recipes that friends request after they’ve eaten dinner with us. They’re the best ones that we make again and again.

Joyce Scott, of Bend, and her husband, Bill, have been married for 56 years, and she’s been making a shrimp salad recipe that she got from her mother-in-law for all 56 years.

The Scotts eat it with a slice of their favorite bakery bread on the side, and that’s their idea of a perfect, light dinner. We wanted that keeper.

“If I take this recipe to an event, or have company over when I serve it, I’m always asked, ‘Would you share your recipe?’” Scott told us. She’s a retired elementary school secretary, and her husband was a principal for many years in Bend.

Scott has tweaked the shrimp salad recipe over the years. The original called for canned shrimp and didn’t include peas or avocados like her current version.

“The mayonnaise is the most important thing. I use Best Foods mayo. It takes the flavor away if you use Miracle Whip. I use a good bit, but am careful and don’t use too much. The salad shouldn’t be slopping around in mayonnaise,” Scott said.

If you’re not sure what to make for dinner tonight, you’re in luck.

Two other Bend home cooks each shared a favorite keeper recipe with us, and we talked to Kathy Brennan — co-author of “Keepers: Two Home Cooks Share Their Tried-and-True Weeknight Recipes and the Secrets to Happiness in the Kitchen” (Rodale Books, 2013) — to get a few of her tips and strategies for guaranteed-to-be-good home cooking.

“Keepers” won the prestigious International Association of Culinary Professionals 2014 award for best general cookbook.

Brennan and co-author Caroline Campion are former editors at Saveur magazine, and they’re working moms with kids. Brennan attended culinary school and cooked in restaurants around the world but decided to write “Keepers” to give home cooks encouragement and support as they strive to make weeknight meals.

“It’s not easy to plan ahead all the time, but even if you can do it a little, it can help you out. Everybody should have that one back-pocket recipe they can pull out that’s always a crowd pleaser, and that you most likely have the ingredients at home,” Brennan said in a phone interview from her home in New Jersey.

“We hope people will try, once a week, to add something new to their cooking repertoire,” Brennan said.

“Keepers” has more than 125 of Brennan’s and Campion’s favorite, original, family-friendly keepers, plus chapters that include how to assemble a pantry full of food that will enable you to make a good dinner without a grocery run; “Ten Kitchen Tools Worth the Space;” “Ten Flavor-Boosting Pantry Staples” (see sidebar) and tips for organizing the kitchen.

What’s the point of buying a cookbook these days when you can Google any ingredient and find a multitude of recipes?

“Obviously you can put in ‘chicken’ and come up with 565,000 recipes, but do you know that it’s a keeper? The ‘Keepers’ recipes are tried-and-true favorites, and everything on the Internet is such a crapshoot. Who wrote the recipe and has it been tested and edited properly? When you buy our book, you get food that’s been made by real people, and it’s a whole collection,” Brennan said.

Japanese-Style Meat and Potatoes is a keeper that Brennan’s Japanese mother made frequently when she was growing up.

“It takes ingredients everyone is so familiar with and combines them in a different way. It’s been a revelation for so many people we’ve come across. Someone said her initial reaction was, ‘Kids are never going to eat that; but then they love it.’ It’s simple; it lasts on the back of the stove, so if people are coming home at different hours, they can scoop some of it onto rice, and it’s good hot or at room temperature. It’s very forgiving to being reheated,” Brennan said.

The recipe for Crustless Broccoli and Cheddar Quiche can be assembled in minutes, and Morning Chicken marinates all day in the refrigerator.

“The quiche can be in the oven in five minutes, and if you spend five minutes putting Morning Chicken together, there’s very little for you to do at night to make it,” Brennan said.

One of Bend resident Tierney Hogan’s keepers is Kale, Bean and Sausage Stew, a recipe she found in Real Simple magazine. It sounded good to Hogan, a busy registered nurse and project manager who is also an avid quilter and blogger at tierneycreates.wordpress.com.

She told us she had an ulterior motive when she cooked the stew for the first time.

“What excited me about the recipe was it was a way to sneak some kale in Terry. My husband is not about green vegetables. They have to be disguised,” she said.

The stew was so delicious that it’s been a fall and winter keeper for years at the Hogans’ house. They serve it with crusty bread and a local brew.

“I really think it’s a magical dish, the way the flavors come together. Make it a day before, if you can. All the flavors talk to each other in the fridge overnight,” Hogan said.

Green Chile Chicken is a keeper at Pris and Bob Brubaker’s house in Bend. Pris found it in an ad for a Lucky Store when they lived in California and remembers that it came from Sunset Magazine.

She guessed that she’s been making it for close to 20 years.

“Bob and I take turns cooking, and when one of us says, ‘What’s for dinner?’ and the answer is ‘Green Chile Chicken,’ the response is ‘Goooood.’ It’s yummy. It’s just a wonderful sauce,” she said.

The Brubakers often make a double batch or more and freeze some. They serve it over white rice, with steamed asparagus or broccoli on the side that they sprinkle with rice vinegar.

What’s for dinner tonight at your house? You can’t go wrong with a keeper.

— Reporter: ahighberger@mac.com

Editor’s note: A recipe accompanying this story has been corrected. The original version omitted an ingredient from the Kale, Bean and Sausage Stew. The Bulletin regrets the error.