Throwback, Cooking Style

When I graduated from college, my mom gave me a gift.  It was a little Longaberger basket, filled with recipes from my childhood.  She had dividers for each section, and notes on some of the recipes ("knead the dough - this is not hard", "very easy", "some people like these toppings" - referring to my rather bland pizza tastes).  The recipe box was both useful and cherished from the beginning.  Over time, I have added my tried and true recipes to my mom's, and I outgrew the little Longaberger basket.  A few Christmases ago, she gave me a bigger basket, so I transferred all of the little dividers in her handwriting, and switched over all the recipes too.  For 24 years, I have thought of her often as I made her pizza, her "famous Mrs. Cleaver's chocolate chip cookies", "baboon brownies" and other time honored dishes.

Yesterday, I set about the task of cleaning out my cookbook cabinet.  What was once oft-used and frequently added to has lately been rarely opened.  So going through this cabinet was like going down memory lane.  Among the things I found:

• Several Gooseberry Patch cookbooks, almost all from my dear best friend from college.  She dated them all and wrote in the inside cover of them all, and I recalled our visits when our kids were little, swapping recipes and making dirt pudding with our kids.  Cookbooks with handwritten notes = keepers.
• 25+ Quick Cooking magazines.  Oh, how I loved that magazine.  Each month upon its arrival, I sat down during naptime and read all the wonderful recipes and all the anecdotes about cooks around the country.  I knew they needed to be recycled, but before I could do it, I decided to flip through them all.  Oh, the memories!  I paused a moment as I leafed through the June/July 2004 copy, realizing that the last time I had probably touched those pages was days before I gave birth to our third son, 9 weeks early.  I decided to keep that one and a couple of other copies for good measure. 
• Kids Cookbooks!  My husband has always worked long hours, and when the kids were little, he was only home for an hour or two on Sundays.  Because the day felt so long to the kids and me, I instituted Kids in the Kitchen every Sunday afternoon.  Each week we would make a kid friendly recipe, and it helped make what felt like a long day a little more cheerful.  I also ran across a well worn birthday cake cookbook (given to me by my dear college friend also!).  Though I have almost no skill at baking, the kids often chose a birthday cake for me to make from its pages, and we have lots of memories of special caterpillar cakes, beach scenes, and carousel cakes (though my talented sis created that one!).  I kept most of these because I'm a preschool teacher, and also grandchildren.
• Various fundraiser cookbooks.  Man, I had forgotten how common it was to make a church cookbook and sell it as a fundraiser.  I have several from different churches my husband and I have attended over the last 40+ years, and as I thumbed through them, I smiled at all the names I recognized.  I kept a few of these since they were so full of history.
• A Bread Machine Cookbook.  Remember when bread machines were all the rage?  I still had my cookbook, with a post it inside the front cover from my mom with tips about using it.  She instructed me to buy "Bread Flour", and told me I would find it at King Soopers, the grocery store in Colorado where we shopped the first year we were married.  Sentimental post its = must be kept.
• Betty Crocker and Better Homes and Gardens Binder Cookbooks.  These were both gifts from our wedding, and one houses the Pastitsio recipe I make every year on Christmas Eve.  Wedding cookbooks must be kept.

As I was going through the books, remembering each season of life with each book, I came across a fundraiser cookbook from an organization I didn't recognize.  When I flipped open the cover, I saw my dear grandma's handwriting.  My breath caught in my throat as I read her brief inscription:  "Shelley, just relax and have fun cooking.  You do all things well.  Love, Grandma D, April 95".  My eyes welled up as I remembered her encouraging me often with those very words.  Cookbooks with handwritten notes (see above), must be kept, especially when those notes are from family members who have passed away.

I know it doesn't sound like I purged much, but honestly I did. And the books I kept will remain in my cabinets, maybe to be used for recipes, but certainly to be used as a snapshot of my life in those years. And the goal of the cookbook purging was met - I made space for some dishes I need to re-house, so it was a win-win!

I use Pinterest for almost all of my new recipes now.  Sometimes, if a recipe becomes a family favorite, I do write it on a recipe card and put it in my box.  But often I just search Pinterest for whatever type of dish I'm looking for and read it from my phone or computer.  And while I love being able to have any recipe I desire in three seconds, I think something has been lost since I've moved away from those pages in my cabinet. In fifteen years, am I going to flip through Pinterest, recalling my son's third birthday or a dear friend's visit?  Probably not.  Someday (soon!), I want to write out my recipes for my daughters when they leave home, and I hope they can treasure the family dishes the way I have been able to myself.  And maybe someday they will flip through my old cookbooks and reminisce about the way mom used to cook.