In clearing out a pantry today, I came across a couple of recipe boxes that belonged to my mother and me. As I thumbed through the worn recipe cards and tattered clippings, it occurred to me that family recipe boxes are really much more than the sum of their contents. In those boxes is the treasure of a family story, albeit one in which much time is spent in the kitchen. And the added treasure of recognizing the handwriting of people who may not even be with us anymore—the pleasure of reliving that special dish that they were expert at, or the thing they always prepared at Christmas—makes the box not just a recipe box; it’s a box of memories, and more than a little inspiration to recreate a few.
I found Aunt Ruth’s handwritten taco soup recipe on a piece of folded up lined paper. If I had been on a mission to find it, I probably would have spent years in the futile attempt. And yet, there it was, just waiting to be savored again.
And at every family gathering, my mother brought her baked beans. To everyone else, they were Aunt Doris’ Baked Beans. In her clearly legible script there it is, on a 3×5 card that in its tattered and stained simplicity gives no clue to the treasure I just unearthed.
Larry’s Fudge Cake, the one my brother was sure to see at every one of his birthday celebrations is lined up in the box, as is the Russian Tea that I think smells just like tears, since it was the tea that my mom sent to me during that absolutely miserable first (and only) graduate semester spent at Middle Tennessee University.
Oh, and Mama Belle’s Lemonade Pie, comprised of just three ingredients, is scrawled on a card with the admonition to just “use your favorite crust.” You’d have to know Mama Belle to fully appreciate the ambiguity of that line. Her kitchen utensils were piled up willy nilly in a large drawer into which she would regularly dive in search of forks or spatulas or whatever else she needed. Organization was not her strong suit but she sure had fun in the kitchen. She could put together a heavenly muscadine pie, swimming in buttery pastry that was coated in sugar granules. And if she knew I was coming, she would throw together the best yeast rolls imaginable. Sadly, she didn’t leave that recipe for me. At least, I don’t think so, but I’m still looking.
Big Mama, my mother’s mom, specialized in vegetables and chocolate pie. Seriously, the only dessert worth mentioning that was ever placed on that little white kitchen cabinet was her chocolate pie. And thankfully I do have that recipe in the box. But how she got those little beads of sweat to dance atop the meringue is a mystery. I figure, though, that it’s got to be a product of the Mississippi humidity and an unairconditioned kitchen, which I’m not willing to replicate. And I don’t know about her recipe for black-eyed peas as I don’t think I’ve eaten more than two forkfuls of those in my life, so THAT one can remain AWOL. She always had a can of tuna on hand for me on vegetable day. She was a good grandmother.
The frozen fruit salad from my fourth-grade recipe book, the green bean casserole that graced every Thanksgiving table, the weekly-supper chicken and rice dish that takes just three ingredients and an hour—the list of recipes and memories in that special box just keeps going, like a conversation with the loved one to whom the recipe was worth recording.
You don’t find too many recipe boxes anymore, and I think that’s a bit sad. I understand it completely; we don’t have time for that, and yet the few minutes it took to record something that was considered special or hopeful is a snapshot of that person just as surely as a photograph in an album. Mama Hennie’s Creamed Corn will always be “her” to me, as will her fried apple pies. And that crockpot of cornbread dressing that my mama ALWAYS had on the countertop at Thanksgiving just calls her name and draws both a smile and a tear.
The kitchen is where just about everything good in life happens. It’s almost always the warmest, whether you’re talking hearts or heat, and most problems can usually be solved around the kitchen table. And it’s just about always where those you love the most gather. Those little index cards, giving line-by-line instructions for a family favorite–whether scrawled in a hurry or meticulously detailed—spell much more than a recipe. They spell family. And there could be worse ways to spend a rainy Sunday afternoon than visiting family, even if it’s just a box.
