It all started when I needed a lidded container for leftovers…
I began searching for matching lids and ended up cleaning and organizing three of my mother’s kitchen cabinets.
I removed a stack of pie plates, reminding me of Thanksgiving, sweet potato, pumpkin, and apple pies, or summer’s fruit or cream pies with graham cracker crust.
Casserole dishes with memories of baked dove with apple from my father’s fall hunts, or chicken tetrazzini, macaroni and cheese, and Christmas creamy tomato dill.
Mixing bowls and measuring cups from years of Mama baking our birthday cakes with my favorite seven-minute frosting, fluffy and silky white to lick the beaters after she iced the cake with swirled and curled lifts of the spatula.
I found a vintage metal ice tray with a release handle still in the box. I also found an assortment of mismatched lids and containers, plus new containers still in their wrapping.
I removed everything, sorted it, threw away what I needed to, and washed the rest clean of the remains of night intruders with resin-like ambered wings and broken legs.
I found two recipe boxes in the far corner, and a Ziploc bag stuffed with handwritten recipes shared and passed down by family and friends. I opened them like unexpected gifts, reading each card, handwritten with love, as if they were sacred letters of friendship. They included the names of my mother’s girlfriends and recipes from my aunts and Granma. I had unearthed a valuable treasure!
Lined cards with ingredients and directions for “Rag Tops” from Mrs. Wade, Pear relish from my fourth-grade teacher, Aunt Faye’s favorite spinach dip, and “Miss” Doris strawberry cake, pink and delicious. Granma’s highly touted cornbread, which her children and grandchildren come close to but can't replicate the flavor of, made from water-ground cornmeal and fried in an iron skillet, with the words don’t rush.
I found the long-forgotten ingredients for Mama’s original yellow-baby-squash-pickles, and how her kitchen exploded with canning jars, vinegar, and dill smells steaming on a hot summer morning. There were no directions that followed her list of herbs, but I hope to figure it out next year as I experiment in my own kitchen.
Another recipe for Lemon Chiffon Loquat Pie-in order to have enough loquats, they must be picked from your own tree. I remember climbing that tree near the barn to pick her loquats, which were peeled and seeded, folded into gelatin and meringue.
My Granma’s handwritten recipe card, passed down to my mother, had yellowed over time, with stained splatters of stewed chicken broth, mushroom soup, and simmered celery and peppers darkening the paper for chicken tetrazzini.
Another recipe she wrote to her daughter, with personalized directions using I and You, as if they were having a conversation, over Bread and Butter Pickles.
Folded between recipes in the boxes were newspaper clippings for making marmalade and preserves; when you live in a citrus grove, orange, grapefruit, and tangerine-fragrant syrups thickened on the stove and were canned in jars.
Our family's favorite, Melt-in-Mouth Cookie, recipe was made from orange rind and hard-boiled egg yolks, showed its years of discoloration, and mama helped me bake for a second-place ribbon at the county fair.
What treasured recipes have you shared in your family? Please feel free to share your comments below.
