Recipes

I started going through the cabinets earlier this week, in my attempt to corral some of the errant recipes I've got floating around here. Tonight, I started transferring the "keepers" to index cards to be filed away.

I have two recipe card boxes, both were my Mom's.

1. The Campbell's Soup recipe box that she got a few years before she died, one of those you got if you sent in enough upcs or whatever. It came with an assortment of recipes, I have it, but I don't use it much.

2. The Other Box. I saw it on ebay once, it was listed as vintage, from the early 1970's. I assume that my Mom got it when she was newly married. It has definitely yellowed with age, and the lid doesn't shut quite right, but it is usually kept open anyway, so a wonky lid doesn't factor in that much.

I was going through The Other Box tonight, and in doing that, I see bits and pieces of my Mom. The pecan pie recipe, most likely my Aunt Alma's, written on a dessert size paper plate, folded in half and in half again. Two copies of my Grama's Pineapple Upside Down Cake (PUD Cake), stored in two different places - C for Cake and P for Pineapple. The very yellow, and very worn, recipe cards for fudge, brownies, banana bread and cookie bars. Those are my most used cards, and they don't even get filed away, but rather stuffed back in the front, like she did, with the Happy Home Recipe.

My Mom died over seven years ago, and I've had the recipe card box for almost as long ... it was one of the first things I grabbed when I went back home shortly after she died. I didn't take a lot ... the recipe card box, a few things from her dresser, her Tupperware mixing bowl with the handle and the lid. If you were to look at what I kept, it wouldn't be worth more than $2 at a garage sale, but to me it's the world. It's a bit of her, who she was, what she taught me. The recipes have her hand writing on them - something to show my kids. The recipes are who she was - what she liked, what she was thinking about. It's like going back in time a bit ...

It also brings back the memories you have with the dish ... the party you served the Swedish Meatballs at, the picnic where Lisa introduced us to Apple Dip, the instructions for Swedish Potato Sausage, our traditional New Years Day meal. It's also the time spent in the kitchen, the conversations had while mixing up a meatloaf or stirring up chocolate for another pan of fudge. It's so much more than a recipe ... it's my history, it's my kids' history.

I'm slowly adding my most loved recipes to the front of the box - green pepper soup, pound cake, yeast bread. The new white index cards blend with the yellow and the frayed. The hands that touch them now are mine, cooking for the people that I love. Dog eared corners, splats where water may have dripped, chocolate fingerprint smudges ... what you can't see is the love that goes in there. Thats what I'm sharing every time I go into the kitchen.

Thanks, Mom.