Recipe Boxes Hold More Than Food Ideas
Today’s post varies a bit from my usual fiction writing or language topics, instead delving into a personal story.
I am the proud owner of two recipe boxes from two different mothers.
What I find in these boxes are pieces of their lives. Recipes they each savored and wanted to repeat.
Some are copied from cookbooks. Others are clipped out of magazines and taped to index cards.
Alphabetical filing in the green plastic box. The wooden rooster decorated box uses categories to organize the cards.
Both are remarkably similar in that the women who maintained these collections looked for foods to celebrate their guests. They jotted down recipes to sustain guests or family through to the next day. Favorite recipes, as shown by the worn corners on the 3×5 cards, are prevalent. Other cards are more pristine and filed away with no evidence of use. No doubt these recipes sounded good at the time of collection, but no opportunity to cook them arose.
Although my inherited recipe boxes are from two eras, their owners were similar in age. Of the two, the wooden one is the oldest, and the contents are frozen at a point in time 50 years ago.
A life and recipe collection cut short by tragedy.
The second box is green plastic reminiscent of the 1970s. Still adorned with the price tag from a Ben Franklin store long since closed, it is packed with more recent styles of dishes. Ones that bear the names of celebrities or fashionable titles like “Million Dollar Cake” and “Paula Deen’s Praline French Toast Casserole”.
I knew the green one existed, but I had never perused its contents until I brought it to live in my kitchen. When we undertook the sad task of cleaning out Mom’s apartment, I claimed the green box. It reminds me of her but also reminds me of the unexpected early morning call. The fast, anxious drive to say goodbye. That memory will stay attached to this green recipe box.
This box is so her. The woman I called Mom for all but five of my years. I am unlike her in most ways. But I also collect recipes. I save them online in an app and in scores of cookbooks. I do not have a recipe box of my own. No index cards copied by hand or pasted with clippings like my mothers’.
When my earthbound time is done, will someone look for a recipe box in my belongings? A testament to how I view recipes and cooking. Clues to my personality etched on each card. I think about such things.
In the last few months of her life, as we waited together for her doctor appointments, Mom and I would have random discussions. On one such occasion, she told me her handwriting wasn’t pretty. I begged to differ. She learned the classic Palmer method of cursive writing. I admired her tidy and, I dare say, beautiful penmanship.
Neither of us could have imagined during these routine appointments that her handwriting would soon grow cold. I am grateful to have it preserved on these cards.
In her recipe box, I can see the traces of the person she was. Her fondness for cherries and pineapple. The penchant for cheese balls and cakes.
But in the back of the recipe box, behind all the recipes, I find menus. She devised and repeated meals, writing the menu on each side of the index cards, always starting with the main dish and ending with dessert.
She varied between beef, chicken, and pork main dishes. Almost always a potato side dish and two or more vegetables.
One such menu card was labeled “Christmas 1995”.
It documented her plan for a typical Christmas dinner for our small Midwestern family. Roast, potatoes with gravy, glazed carrots, noodles or stuffing (apparently she left that decision to the last minute), corn, macaroni salad, and baked beans. Then she launched into the sweet cherry salad, pistachio salad, and the classic jellied cranberry sauce. Rolls and dessert rounded out the list.
Mom’s dinner plan did not specify which dessert because she usually left that to me. Typically, I made my brother’s favorite chocolate pie. Mom always had a cheese ball, olives, and a bowl of nuts for snacking while the meal finished cooking.
I can tell in later years how she pared down the menu plans. She still liked to host her friends for an occasional brunch, serving a breakfast casserole, fruit salad, biscuits, and cookies for those gatherings. She tired easily, and it became hard for her to manage multiple dishes.
Yet, as much as we tried, she rarely allowed others to bring more than dessert. She truly wanted to do it herself. It was her way of offering a part of herself, opening her home and hospitality for friends and family.
Fast forward to Christmas 2019.
She allowed us to bring the sides while she picked up fried chicken at the local deli. No more extensive menus or her best Christmas china. We ate on paper plates in a private dining room at her assisted living home. There was still laughter and satisfied appetites. We did not know it would be our last Christmas with her.
I will maintain her recipe box just as I found it. No additions, edits, or deletions. It reminds me of her and the pride she took in feeding us.
This month marks five years since her passing. There is now a distinct void in the world. I will remember her and honor her by cooking one of her recipes.
One from the green box.