My Mother’s Recipe Box
My Mom died in September last year, and my sisters and I have been going through the depressing process of taking care of all her things. I read this article today, and thought I’d share…
My Mom was a great cook. She made the best baked beans I have ever ate, and no one has ever been able to make them like she did after all these years. Missing Mom, I went through her cookbook last week, looking for some of her fabulous recipes to post. I was very surprised to not only find Mom’s recipes all mixed together in a box, but also found my Grandma’s old Spotlight Cookbook. This is a real treasure to folks that appreciate these things…
The cookbook is a compilation of recipes taken from different church groups and local folk, and the following article by Rachel Paxton really brings it all home.
Enjoy…
My Mother’s Recipe Box
by Rachel Paxton
Remember the days when cookbooks weren’t so readily available, and you or your mother relied on only one or two different cookbooks for cooking all of your family’s meals? I still have my mother’s old cookbooks, as well as my grandmother’s. Each one is worn from age and use–if you flip through the tattered pages it is obvious which recipes were turned to time and time again. These cookbooks will always number among my most precious treasures.
When our mothers wanted to try new recipes, they most likely didn’t run out and buy new cookbooks. They often didn’t have the extra money to spend, and often there weren’t very many to choose from. So where did they get new recipes? From each other.
When I was a child I remember my mother exchanging recipe cards with friends and relatives and bringing them home and filing them away in her recipe box. I always loved going through her recipes (although she often got mad at me for getting them all out of order!)
All the years while I was learning how to cook I went through her recipe box time and time again, pulling out my favorite recipes and preparing them again and again.
Seeing who the recipes were from made them all the more special. I also love looking back at all the recipe cards I prepared myself while I was in 4-H and spent much of my time learning how to cook. I still prepare many of the recipes I used back then. To this day, all I have to do is open my recipe card box, and I am instantly transported back in time.
My mother hasn’t exchanged recipe cards with anyone in more than 20 years. I have very few of my own (although I hope to inherit hers someday!) But even to this day there is no better place to find favorite family recipes than in my mother’s recipe box.
Twenty years from now, I look forward to going through my recipe box with my own daughter, telling her stories about where all of my different recipes came from.
Rachel Paxton is a freelance writer and mom who publishes the Creative Homemaking Recipe of the Week Club, a weekly newsletter that contains quick, easy dinner ideas and money-saving household hints. To subscribe send a blank e-mail message to FreeRecipes-subscribe@egroups.com. Visit Creative Homemaking and in the Home and Garden section of Suite 101.
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Peace,
Charlie~
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January 19th, 2006 20:35
Food memories are some of the best memories there are.
We all have those recipe boxes full of tattered directions and great memories.
I’ve done the recipe box one better. After my kids kept bugging me to write down my recipes for them, I decided to do them one better. I’d give them both the recipes and the memories that went with them
The result is a self-published
book with most of my favorite recipes and stories that they inspired. It was fun to do and easy to publish. And it’ll give them something to remember me by. I tried to keep the guilt to a minimum.
I highly recommend it to all of you amateur cooks. My book is at www.lulu.com/recipestories, which is a great way to publish a book. You can literally do it for free. Try it.
Brian Cummings