Opening My Mother’s Recipe Box

While clearing out the clutter from my sister’s storage cabinet, I found my mother’s small, gray, tin recipe box. In a drawer, hidden among unfinished knitting projects, dusty needlepoint pillowcases, and numerous gloves and socks with no mates, were index card recipes written in my mother’s familiar handwriting. A few were typed. Others were simple, folded-up magazine pages torn from publications long since out of print, or cardboard pieces cut from food packaging, provided by manufacturers who printed free recipes alongside product directions, tempting consumers to purchase their products. Many of the recipes in the box were smudged and stained from repeated usage; a few of the index cards were blank. I recognized telltale shifts in preferences, as my mother, later in life and living alone for the first time, added her own favorites, date-nut bread, vegetarian casseroles, and three versions of chicken cacciatore. That day, I glanced swiftly over the contents and shut the lid, placing the rusty, dented box of memories in a bag to cart home.A year passed before I opened it again. I still wonder why I hesitated. Maybe it was the handwritten notes, copied down when my mother was younger and stronger, long before she became ill. Maybe it was the idea that these recipes were written down with her aspirations for the future, for future meals, parties, and special occasions to be shared with family and friends. Or maybe it was a guilty feeling that I was peeking into my mother’s private space. I only know that I miss the person who created this unique, one-of-a-kind personal collection that I kept close but hadn’t truly examined.Today, when I finished staring at the box and finally opened the lid for a closer look, I smiled and compared the contents of my mother’s tin box to my own recipe collection, assembled over my lifetime, and contained in a battered, black 3-ring binder. I imagine future generations amused by the quaintness of paper files while accessing their own digitized recipes kept on tiny chips backed up on Mars. Reorganized by category (bread, meat, dessert, etc.) twenty years ago, my binder was given a name by my then ten-year-old son—Adrian’s good food.…and fish—and decorated with a colorful, rainbow-like drawing, indicating with descriptive, onomatopoeic words such as “yum,” “mmmmm,” and “chchch,” that my son approved of everything but the fish recipes. I never found out what “chchch” meant and my son, now thirty, doesn’t remember.A handful of recipes in my binder date back to the 1980s and were written on the same type of three-by-five index cards I found in my mother’s recipe box, but with a hole punched in the upper right-hand corner. Most of my selections have been added since 2004, reflecting my growing interest in improving my cooking skills, expanding my repertoire of solid, reliable dishes, and evidencing a desire to try new foods. Internet searches provide me with an almost limitless source of recipes drawn from a hundred different cuisines. I can choose from blogs, online magazines, and company websites promoting products. I print recipes that appeal to me after reviewing a dozen variations. Sometimes the choices are overwhelming.Yet ever since I found and opened my mother’s tin box, I’ve wondered what my final binder will contain because just as food fads, scientific studies, and family dynamics evolve over time, so does the binder. As a set of living documents, my collection constantly changes; new pages are snapped in and recipes that were never used or are no longer in use are tossed.I expected the composition of my mother’s recipe box to evolve too, mirroring changes in her cooking from the years right before she passed away, when she occasionally made simple meals, mostly just for herself. Instead, a majority of index cards, a virtual archive of my mother’s cooking life, hold recipes from a much earlier time. They came from a busier time for her, when most women, even those who worked outside their homes like she did, were expected to cook and prepare holiday meals for their families. I wondered what the recipes meant to her and why she kept them. Were they saved for me?Her index cards brought to mind an earlier place and time in my life. And, given that neuroscientists tell us the scent of a food can bring back forgotten memories, I hypothesized that the sight of recipes, like snapshots taken of another era, can be just as powerful. They evoked a place that existed in a vague, dreamlike scene, rekindled with determined concentration. As the fog lifted, that time seemed to return, constant and unchanged, as if the intervening five decades had been temporarily erased. I found two Toll House cookie recipes printed on familiar Nestlé packaging, and tasted the cookies my sisters and I baked and then ate with glasses of cold milk. I spotted a sponge cake recipe and watched my mother and older sister separate a dozen eggs for the batter. I pulled out a banana bread recipe and felt the walnuts crunching between my teeth. ***Our family of six, two parents and four girls, lived on Long Island, a suburb of New York City, at a time when farms “out east” still existed, but were rapidly disappearing as housing developments built to fulfill postwar dreams replaced rural villages. In the 1960s we could still purchase summer corn from a local stand that fronted a field near the main road; by the time I graduated from high school, that stand was gone and the farm was a grassy lot. We bought milk and ice cream at Matinecock Farm, a dairy market attached to an old barn that housed a few tired, sad-looking cows, sheep, goats, and chickens. The live display kept children entertained outside while their mothers shopped. We brought slightly stale white bread from home to feed the cows through the wire fence. One or two cows quietly accepted the bread, licking us with their great big sandpaper-like tongues. We laughed and wiped our hands on our pants. The last time I was in my hometown, no trace of the muddy barnyard remained. A small strip mall housing a martial arts studio, an insurance agency, and a print shop stood in its place along with a senior housing facility around the corner.Ice cream could also be purchased from the Good Humor man (never a woman) or from Mr. Softee. Both came daily around the neighborhood in small trucks during hot summer months. We played outside for hours, riding our bicycles or chasing each other until we dropped in the shade. Then the drama would unfold every summer afternoon.We all heard the music and instantly sprang into action. Merry, jangly bells announced the arrival of the ice cream truck driver, rolling slowly down the lane, enticing us.Negotiations between siblings and friends came fast and furious.“You ask.”“No, you ask.”“I did last time. She said no.”The youngest, the better student, the kid who took out the trash that day, or the one with the broken arm was sent to beg a dime or a quarter from a parent before the driver shifted gears and departed the lane in search of more successful kids.“Okay, I’ll ask but if she says no, I have some birthday money left.”Every few weeks my mother would say yes and hand us a quarter. Maybe we caught her at a good moment or maybe she needed a quiet hour and preferred us outside, dripping ice cream on the pavement.While I waited for the verdict, I watched as the girl from across the street ran to her driveway to ask her father. He shook his head no. She pretended to cry and tried again with her mother. My eyes widened. She came running with paper bills flapping in her little, triumphant hands.My sister came running too. Birthday money, she told me later.A line formed at the side window of the truck.We always ordered the same things from the Good Humor man: a Toasted Almond bar of vanilla ice cream covered in sugary almond-y bits for my sister, a chocolate eclair bar of chocolate and vanilla ice cream swathed in crunchy cake bits for me. Or we bought orange or grape Italian ices from Mr. Softee, but never soft serve because it melted too quickly.As I viewed recipe cards for cold ratatouille and barbeque sauce, I realized how many of my food memories were connected to the freedom of long, casual summertime days and not just the cozy, rich comfort foods of fall and winter, like chicken soup, roast beef, baked potatoes, and apple pie. I remembered hot dogs and hamburgers roasting slowly on the little charcoal grill my father carefully lined with aluminum foil each time he used it to make cleanup easier. And the long wait for watermelon, cherries, cantaloupe, and peaches that appeared in the supermarket for three quick months then disappeared for nine slow ones. They were always worth the wait. We’d dive into a ten-inch wedge of watermelon and spit the black seeds at whichever kid happened to be in the vicinity. Then I’d wonder if a watermelon plant could germinate in the lawn and grow before summer ended. Most of all I remembered sitting on a damp towel, hungrily eating gritty sandwiches and squashed fruit at Jones Beach, the scent of sun-warmed peanut butter temporarily overpowering the thrill of jumping through the cold, grey ocean waves. Occasionally my mother gave us money to buy icy Cokes or Orange Crush at the greasy concession stand.Though we rarely drank soda and my mother only bought sweets on special occasions, candy featured significantly in my long-ago memories. No wonder my parents dreaded opening the dentist’s bill. We’d walk to the nearby strip mall, anchored by an A&P supermarket, to visit Cards, a small candy/school supply/greeting card/magazine/tobacco shop. The large display case, like a layered, terraced garden, held at least two dozen varieties of chocolates and candies: Nestlé Crunch, Chuckles, Good & Plenty, Almond Joy, Bit-O-Honey, Tootsie Rolls, Charms lollipops, Cracker Jacks. The list went on. Candies that I thought had disappeared sometimes pop up in “olde tyme shoppes.” Like a roll of Reed’s root beer or butterscotch hard candies, button candy, Mary Janes, Turkish Taffy. Or to even more Or by my of in were a strip and an to by such as and my food memories were with my mother and our to were to and Italian or We food for us In my fast was to across the was as and my mother almost every that time, I always thought she to I have since from my older sister that she it at My mother had to her that before she preferred eating from paper over the so that was to of cooking have from her when she was for As she her family told her to one of dessert, made from and two or She and determined never to on food life for her, and my mother needed to make three meals a for days each year until my three sisters and I were old to her I of my mother, I her as she had been during her last in a set up in her so she could in her own I her in the around her in the between the and the In my memories she doesn’t she with her family on a I her her life again. I was four years my father had a No more for the No more ice My mother tried to to she two each fish or baked chicken for and hot or for the of I my mother’s recipe box, I realized it contained no fish recipes. She never ate and since my father had twenty years earlier in she never it in the my parents the that to my and his life. at the was from his and a of his The same were repeated so they came to mind and time at our was maybe her in the She from the to hold on the A and my father opened the As our the after running down the she to three my his and to back to the the my father We laughed every at my and seemed to the to her between our in a and to a few of to father out of his and into casual and at the head of the it was his to the for a My mother brought his to the and took her own to He shook his head as he at his white fish and it or he that it He was not of most and our and up his and ate with little but no He I to and he mother quietly ate She a of her other a few or a of The around the to school, for the it was to the who was to set the that but our ate my and right the on the when no one was in the he happened We ran He as he waited for my mother to our found memories from that time can be sometimes with The recipe in my binder also the only one I from my among its the type of dairy by and of that and My father with and apple I I had made it for on a I I made it only and the of to all in the also the food choices for the of the I a time when butter in the butter replaced We baked with and it on potatoes, and and with corn I those out of my own cooking as I butter and even before were as the and my food memories have created a to earlier My mother’s recipe card for the scent of and fall the by her to fulfill the holiday my mother index cards for most of her she just I like to cook and my to the food of my memories written recipes have to some The chicken soup, the chicken and the I serve to my family on could for the she into her chicken a The too. I’ve also other that my mother had to up with or I her into a and made her I can her and me if they No not know I to cook the same recipes from the to with from the My mother used sauce, along with and for her I found the recipe handwritten on a of paper and into her tin box. I make I my mother would have that the new Or I use a food to make of a box would my have she would have that the new and on the And, I can have family meals, to the they to my from a local or through a I would have was better while at the I my mother would be to in her eggs in the and her to as I to through recipe cards, I realized that I a when my father a He for those summer when he was a of He never needed to as he went from his mother’s home to the and into My father the the fish or the dairy My father like he was of the and of the of the he my mother’s she went he could a of or a can of and the fish with I tried to imagine in of the a of or a from an online but the years I have tried to to my children how food and have I’ve told of the days when fruit was candy five and even were on And the time my sister announced to our parents she was now a and all My sister brought new into the and were kept on a separate appeared in the for the first time. The family was he my sister could by eating her those foods are found in most also to my children the we used to into a to make food and I on the of my a and to the I’ve told my of the time my father an from a along with a personal to the candy company in In those the arrival of of candy was a a I the root watermelon, and a few I never my father why he ordered so much Maybe he the hard Or the contained of the The have been as simple as the of We ate that candy for what seemed to have been a My their and laughed at the to my memories that came to mind are more and to that of that as time I heard my father as I finished my in the I shared with my three I the as my father the to the I the of from my my we had our at the of to the We heard and a hard and a and in the upper She never he said his head with a He opened the and to the trash can was my mother, in a to her in a of or it would be as good as No one could tell the she have time to make new I to She at me. you and sisters all of you are to miss She a of to my of my sisters never ate at The other one a roll as she ran out the three were still a I up a and a from the to the and to a of milk from the I at the side for a box of father at his at my mother but said to the opening My father the on the my mother by the arm and the and in her around as she with a little, He at me. of the have my mother She my father as they around the the trash can by the the my mother her up her and her as she heard the and it my father ate his for a my know the Or even and I’ve told the and they maybe because like my mother, I sometimes their I as an that the of my parents in the still made me me they were was as my up in I the good memories of the My my and two used to in and in farm at Farm, and or ate ice cream ordered at the window of the truck at the We baked cookies the one recipe I have my from my for a or I my eyes and then the with my to the right I roll it out and know I’ve the when my the and then the of my children me to down the I like to imagine they have the recipe in their as some food memories with no to them. to as I through my mother’s recipes, that the that my not every food a to my I was we the were on their to They just before they their home in at least two in through the we The was in the in the was in but my mother had too many She took of the She my sister to set the I was to with the The of and me. I as the cooking from the we the to the no written recipe existed, my mother what to We bits of meat, and into the the and the of food out the of the We eggs in an old a and added to the I in my to a dozen food that many to from my as the became for the a My father on for his at a in the a of the on I his to and no in sight in my Instead, from and are my was the I from tongues. That we my who sent us home with a of The chocolate and bread from a handful of a hard candy, and He a for our the cold would make a from our peanut butter on white That when I opened the to the of for my three sisters and I a in paper on the in between a bag of and a of and I My connected the but I never said a I made four peanut butter sandwiches and went to I never ate now that the not a place of every recipe card in my mother’s collection one that I would I and new ones. New foods that were to us during my such as or have taken the place of such as of from the and were not at but of bread covered in seeds and then from a in foods are gone to to new or their The of new and and their make it to on the so I the of what I with recipes I months into the my two back home for on day, for the first time, my son brought his in of and a from their and four came to visit the was and they came around the to us out were not the they were with for my He glanced at the barbeque said but I caught a of in her the of her I too our two long a new We all one up two good and make it one down good but maybe I made but you have to try We also have a few hot And came We could all me of slow years when the chicken on the grill had been in and the cold, for had when our was attached to the in the and be used to our during the we ate and I my future to too. was a by our sugary dessert, a small of We ran into the our and all other summer you to home some chicken The new had a one to two when I it was just a to their I the recipe from my every recipe in the small tin box and wondered how many were added and then by my mother as her life I the lid, I pulled out her for date-nut bread, her the one she made for and the index card into the of my binder.