22 November 2009

food for thought

one of my sisters emails us all - does anyone have our mother's cheesecake recipe? i am the keeper of her recipes, the one with the ancient, stained good housekeeping cookbook and the blue plastic recipe box. i retrieve them both, and search through the meals of our childhood, recipes written in my mother's elegant hand or carefully typed with the old script typewriter from the 60s. scalloped potatoes, meat loaf, oven baked chicken, old fashioned apple pie. tucked into the pages of the coverless cookbook i find yellowed clippings of recipes from the long gone "women's" section of the sunday paper. jordan marsh blueberry muffins, lazy beef casserole, split pea soup, the best ever chocolate cake. turning pages that she turned as a young mother, fingering the white lined index cards she painstakingly copied. smiling at long forgotten recipes, surprised at ones she saved from me. i locate the cheesecake recipe and send it off to everyone. i hold out the card for cranberry fruit nut bread to make for my family, a fitting remembrance of my mother at our thanksgiving table.

8 comments:

susan t. landry said...

...the jordan marsh blueberry muffins...
it's a road map, isn't it, on those index cards.

Anonymous said...

A lovely post. Alas, I have my mother's recipe box, but chucked the recipes. I long for some of them now...Nance

chris said...

and jimmy's harborside delmonico potatoes...

gretchen said...

I love this post. I have my grandmother's recipe box and it fills me with the smells and tastes and love that came through her kitchen. But, in the back of the yellowed, frayed cards, I found children's names -- the ones she hoped to have, but didn't.

chris said...

i don't have much in my mother's handwriting so i cherish these recipe cards.

Luuh said...

Hi I loved your post, I am making my first post and said it will beijinhos

satbu said...

hi chris what a very intersting post .you remainded me my childhood where i was not allowed to come across the ckichen as man.because of our cultuer as a result of here i'm now suffering due to lack of cooking skill.my advise for you kep the recipes

alat dapur said...

I like this post, it reminds me of childhood. Our mothers have their own way to save the recipes.