Sharing recipes keeps family traditions alive, lets younger generations carry them forward, and gives more people the joy and memories behind each dish.
Old recipe boxes …I love them
There’s something about an old recipe box filled with handwritten recipes from your mother, grandma, aunt, or uncle. Your family’s history, right there, through meals filled with love.
Lost History
For example, how many families say, “I loved Grandma’s apple cake, but no one knows how to make it”? Or “What was the special ingredient Aunt Jessie put in her pickles?” I see no reason to keep a recipe secret. Okay, maybe for a while if the food is in a contest like the county fair. But secret from family? NO! Share! Keep those “secrets”!
Because I do believe that sometimes the hands that make the cake or cookie do something small, unknown, and unrealized, something not spelled out on the recipe card; watch them. That’s love going into the food. Watch carefully when Mamaw or Ma pulls that biscuit dough together. Is it still shaggy, or well kneaded together? How many times does she fold the dough to get those layers?
My Mom’s Kitchen
My mom didn’t keep recipe cards; she kept it all in a couple of cookbooks kept in a drawer, or in her head. I could always tell which recipes were our family favorites – just by looking at Mom’s cookbooks. The splattered pages. Yellowed magazine recipes tucked between pages. The books that fell open to certain pages. Notes in her handwriting in the margins. These are precious memories of past family dinners, snacks, or get-together.
One of the only Christmas presents from her that I still have is the red Betty Crocker cookbook she gave me in the early 1970’s. And I have a few of my own favorites with splattered pages in that book, still on my cookbook shelf.
Don’t lose the Love
At least share the special cookie or chicken with the family. Keep that history. Let your loved ones make the cake they loved from your kitchen, long after you are gone. Swear your kids to keep the barbecue sauce or the canned peaches a secret. But at least keep the recipes moving forward. Don’t let the love you shared become lost.
I have an old recipe box, given to me second-hand by a young woman we consider our “adopted daughter.” I’ve filled it with cards of the things I make, things she knows. I hope one day she opens it up and says, “I remember Sally making this!”
How to keep your recipes? In a recipe box? Shoe box? On recipe cards or scraps of paper? Bound in a book? Please Share!!
Do you need a recipe box? YES!
Does your family share secrets? Or do the secrets disappear when someone passes? What recipe do you wish you could have? Please tell me!
