Thank you, Aunt Yvonne, player of piano and guitar, attention-payer to us kids, former nun, high school home-economics teacher, finder of love late in life, for introducing me to pecan pie. 🙏❤️
Thanks, Elizabeth. She was one of ten on my father side. Oddly, even though she was the one who had entered and eventually left the convent, she was also the most progressive and joyful. (Lots of Catholic stuffery in my dad‘s family!)
I love everything about this one, Elizabeth... from the art on the walls (yours and hers), to the way our surroundings become things that simply are (often over decades), the lost seed packets (wow, I get that), the many cookbooks you don't use, the new and old version of the one, your mother's wish for continuity, your words about treasuring the sticky note with her handwriting, and the meditation on name changes... all of it. There's a wonderful throughline that pulls the reader right along. And did you like broccoli cornbread....?
Great line: "Meaning seems to travel this way—imperfectly, sideways, often without anyone’s explicit consent or intent."
I think you just wrote the jacket copy for this one, Amy. Seriously, thank you for pulling out all those threads and for giving thought to those details. Makes me smile.
I did like the broccoli cornbread, but my personal preference -- the one I make on repeat here -- is a brown butter skillet cornbread. Mmm! 🌽
Beautiful. I have been pulling handwritten recipes from loved ones I have lost and framing them to hang on my walls and keep those who wrote them a little closer for a little longer.
Oh...ooooh! Maybe that's what I need to do with those frames in storage -- or with the space left behind by the missing seed packets?! What a wonderful idea, Roe. Thank you so much for sharing that.
"... one [cookbook] shared by a group of homeschooling mothers who wanted me to become a more relaxed entertainer. I didn’t." 🤭
I remember my mom's recipe box, index cards in her careful compact cursive. Another index card was tucked in there, a little "puzzle for Father's Day" that she made for my dad with faces clipped from photos of my sisters and me as babies. I think one of my sisters has that box still.
Cookbooks and recipes and memories ... ! Thanks for such an evocative essay, Elizabeth.
Elizabeth, this story of finding little treasures in between the recipe cards is representative of exactly what I find so compelling about our food memories. There is so often a deeper layer to why or how we remember. Thank you for sharing yours here.
No self-respecting Quebecer would omit tourtière from their Christmas menu. There are many variations on this double-crusted meat pie, so the filling can include ground pork and other meats. In some regions, although less common in Montreal and other cities, it can include rabbit, moose or local game. Years ago, my husband and I took over making tourtière from my ageing mother. Instead, we invited her over on a December afternoon, and she "directed" us in the making of a dozen or so tourtières, some to be savoured immediately, others to be frozen for the holidays. Luckily, we have the recipe in her handwriting on a piece of lined paper because dementia has robbed her of most memories, including how to make tourtière. We have become the family keepers and bakers of this holiday dish, positions we hold with honour.
Linda, yum!! Can I be an honorary Quebecer long enough to learn how to make tourtiere? It sounds amazing!
This is a wonderful, wonderful story. Makes my heart happy to read how you and your husband are carrying your mother’s tradition forward. Hugs for the challenges of dementia, and thank you for the keeping. So good to see you here.
I read this a couple of times, Elizabeth, and cornbread and beans man that I am, I kept coming back to the cornbread part, but not in a tasty way. In a meme way.
There is a meme photo with two little boys, shirtless and wearing bib overalls while standing next to a corral fence. One of the little boys, thumbs tugging on his shoulder straps says to the other little boys, about (I’m guessing here) a third little boy, “His cornbread ain’t cooked all the way through.”
Hahaha!!! Such a great expression. There seem to be a lot of half-baked ideas out in the world these days, which I suppose is to be expected coming from folks who ain't quite done in the middle. 🌽
I read this one in the Stockholm airport last week, too rummy and full of thoughts to write anything coherent in response. There are so many things swirling in this essay! I appreciate and want to sit longer with what you are expressing about how history is both understood and lost through the things that seem unremarkable. Through what we keep and what we discard.
I especially appreciate your exploration of the two versions of the cookbooks. In my role as a school district librarian, one of my tasks was weeding the collections. During Covid closures, I was able to do long-neglected weeding, and I found some really old books with the kind of content you found in your cookbook. I was so torn about what to do with them. I felt they had historical significance (they do!), but they also had the power to do harm without someone to provide context or use them as vehicles for understanding history. I could go on (and on and on), but I won't. Just wanted to say that you raise really important issues through something as seemingly small as two editions of a children's cookbook. And that's something important to notice.
As for food, this coming weekend what is left of one branch of my extended family will be gathering for the kind of family dinner we used to have when we were kids. I'll be bring what we call Slav Spaghetti, from a recipe my great-grandmother passed down to all of us. She was an immigrant from Croatia, and it is one of the few things that remain of a history that's been largely lost. Whenever I smell it cooking, I am transported to her house. (Key ingredients are nutmeg and cinnamon; it is quite different from Italian spaghetti sauces.)
Rita, I really thought I'd replied to this already. Substack has been a little hinky for me recently. Then again, my brain might be the issue. 😅
I'm really grateful for your perspective as a librarian. I imagine you've seen more than most in that regard. When there was a local movement to have a Civil War statue removed from the front of the county courthouse, I was slower to come around, because I worry about erasure over recognition and clarification. But when I came to better understand the context and that it was erected many years after the war, during the Jim Crow era, I was better able to see how insidious it was. The thing I keep tripping over is how oblivious I was to most of this while I was surrounded by it. I was never much of a history buff when I was in school, but boy does it seem invaluable now!
Your Croatian spaghetti recipe sounds AMAZING! I'd love to try it sometime.
Thank you so much for giving this so much thought. I hope you're settling back in after your trip.
Such a great post - and ofcourse I recognize all the cookbook authors you reference. I find cookbooks so calming to read if I'm anxious or unable to sleep - especially if they're written with lots of detail like Nigel Slater or Laurie Colwin, whom I really relate to. Family oriented recipes tug at the heart. Always. Cooking really is an act of love. (Unless it's 6:15pm and I've forgotten to thaw anything lol ...)
Of course you do! And having written a recipe or two just to share here or with friends, I have a much deeper appreciation than I once did for how much WORK goes into those books. I often say that food is my love language. But sometimes the language is a little sharp when I've run out of ideas and motivation!
Elizabeth, the comments here are so rich and colourful. Food does this! Thank you for your story, the details of your shelves (which I always think say more about a person that anything else.) A diary of a life, through food. And thank you for the prompt. Stay tuned for my response! x
I absolutely have trouble trusting people who either have no bookshelves or, worse, have shelves filled with books that are purely decorative. The diary might be made richer were I to remember the names of the books I've already given away. Suffice to say, I learned the hard way to not soak lentils, and some of those cooking chapters are best not revisited. 😅
Elizabeth, the comments here are so rich and colourful. Food does this! Thank you for your story, the details of your shelves (which I always think say more about a person that anything else.) A diary of a life, through food. And thank you for the prompt. Stay tuned for my response! x
Thank you, Aunt Yvonne, player of piano and guitar, attention-payer to us kids, former nun, high school home-economics teacher, finder of love late in life, for introducing me to pecan pie. 🙏❤️
Ah, Don. This is lovely. Aunt Yvonne sounds like someone who'd be a delight to know, and pecan pie. Yum!
Thanks, Elizabeth. She was one of ten on my father side. Oddly, even though she was the one who had entered and eventually left the convent, she was also the most progressive and joyful. (Lots of Catholic stuffery in my dad‘s family!)
Wow..too beautiful and personal for me to comment.. except to say...LOVED ALL YOU WROTE....priceless...
Thank you, Barry. I understand and appreciate that personal thing. Some memories are like that. Hugs and love back to you!
Memories are often rekindled "just in time"
Here's one! Sleeping in the loft at our old log cabin, my mother decided to start breakfast. She lit the wood stove directly beneath.
But she put the 'chamber pot' which had been in the outhouse, on the stove first!
Guess how quickly we rose!!!
Omigosh, Jill! That is not what we want to smell cooking on the stove! Hahah! What a great one for the family storybook. Thank you for sharing.
I love everything about this one, Elizabeth... from the art on the walls (yours and hers), to the way our surroundings become things that simply are (often over decades), the lost seed packets (wow, I get that), the many cookbooks you don't use, the new and old version of the one, your mother's wish for continuity, your words about treasuring the sticky note with her handwriting, and the meditation on name changes... all of it. There's a wonderful throughline that pulls the reader right along. And did you like broccoli cornbread....?
Great line: "Meaning seems to travel this way—imperfectly, sideways, often without anyone’s explicit consent or intent."
I think you just wrote the jacket copy for this one, Amy. Seriously, thank you for pulling out all those threads and for giving thought to those details. Makes me smile.
I did like the broccoli cornbread, but my personal preference -- the one I make on repeat here -- is a brown butter skillet cornbread. Mmm! 🌽
Beautiful. I have been pulling handwritten recipes from loved ones I have lost and framing them to hang on my walls and keep those who wrote them a little closer for a little longer.
Oh...ooooh! Maybe that's what I need to do with those frames in storage -- or with the space left behind by the missing seed packets?! What a wonderful idea, Roe. Thank you so much for sharing that.
"... one [cookbook] shared by a group of homeschooling mothers who wanted me to become a more relaxed entertainer. I didn’t." 🤭
I remember my mom's recipe box, index cards in her careful compact cursive. Another index card was tucked in there, a little "puzzle for Father's Day" that she made for my dad with faces clipped from photos of my sisters and me as babies. I think one of my sisters has that box still.
Cookbooks and recipes and memories ... ! Thanks for such an evocative essay, Elizabeth.
Elizabeth, this story of finding little treasures in between the recipe cards is representative of exactly what I find so compelling about our food memories. There is so often a deeper layer to why or how we remember. Thank you for sharing yours here.
No self-respecting Quebecer would omit tourtière from their Christmas menu. There are many variations on this double-crusted meat pie, so the filling can include ground pork and other meats. In some regions, although less common in Montreal and other cities, it can include rabbit, moose or local game. Years ago, my husband and I took over making tourtière from my ageing mother. Instead, we invited her over on a December afternoon, and she "directed" us in the making of a dozen or so tourtières, some to be savoured immediately, others to be frozen for the holidays. Luckily, we have the recipe in her handwriting on a piece of lined paper because dementia has robbed her of most memories, including how to make tourtière. We have become the family keepers and bakers of this holiday dish, positions we hold with honour.
Linda, yum!! Can I be an honorary Quebecer long enough to learn how to make tourtiere? It sounds amazing!
This is a wonderful, wonderful story. Makes my heart happy to read how you and your husband are carrying your mother’s tradition forward. Hugs for the challenges of dementia, and thank you for the keeping. So good to see you here.
Thank you Cousin Jackie for the lemon cheesecake.
That’s sounds delicious! Yes, thank you, Cousin Jackie. And thank you, Adelaide. 💕
I read this a couple of times, Elizabeth, and cornbread and beans man that I am, I kept coming back to the cornbread part, but not in a tasty way. In a meme way.
There is a meme photo with two little boys, shirtless and wearing bib overalls while standing next to a corral fence. One of the little boys, thumbs tugging on his shoulder straps says to the other little boys, about (I’m guessing here) a third little boy, “His cornbread ain’t cooked all the way through.”
Hahaha!!! Such a great expression. There seem to be a lot of half-baked ideas out in the world these days, which I suppose is to be expected coming from folks who ain't quite done in the middle. 🌽
I read this one in the Stockholm airport last week, too rummy and full of thoughts to write anything coherent in response. There are so many things swirling in this essay! I appreciate and want to sit longer with what you are expressing about how history is both understood and lost through the things that seem unremarkable. Through what we keep and what we discard.
I especially appreciate your exploration of the two versions of the cookbooks. In my role as a school district librarian, one of my tasks was weeding the collections. During Covid closures, I was able to do long-neglected weeding, and I found some really old books with the kind of content you found in your cookbook. I was so torn about what to do with them. I felt they had historical significance (they do!), but they also had the power to do harm without someone to provide context or use them as vehicles for understanding history. I could go on (and on and on), but I won't. Just wanted to say that you raise really important issues through something as seemingly small as two editions of a children's cookbook. And that's something important to notice.
As for food, this coming weekend what is left of one branch of my extended family will be gathering for the kind of family dinner we used to have when we were kids. I'll be bring what we call Slav Spaghetti, from a recipe my great-grandmother passed down to all of us. She was an immigrant from Croatia, and it is one of the few things that remain of a history that's been largely lost. Whenever I smell it cooking, I am transported to her house. (Key ingredients are nutmeg and cinnamon; it is quite different from Italian spaghetti sauces.)
Rita, I really thought I'd replied to this already. Substack has been a little hinky for me recently. Then again, my brain might be the issue. 😅
I'm really grateful for your perspective as a librarian. I imagine you've seen more than most in that regard. When there was a local movement to have a Civil War statue removed from the front of the county courthouse, I was slower to come around, because I worry about erasure over recognition and clarification. But when I came to better understand the context and that it was erected many years after the war, during the Jim Crow era, I was better able to see how insidious it was. The thing I keep tripping over is how oblivious I was to most of this while I was surrounded by it. I was never much of a history buff when I was in school, but boy does it seem invaluable now!
Your Croatian spaghetti recipe sounds AMAZING! I'd love to try it sometime.
Thank you so much for giving this so much thought. I hope you're settling back in after your trip.
Such a great post - and ofcourse I recognize all the cookbook authors you reference. I find cookbooks so calming to read if I'm anxious or unable to sleep - especially if they're written with lots of detail like Nigel Slater or Laurie Colwin, whom I really relate to. Family oriented recipes tug at the heart. Always. Cooking really is an act of love. (Unless it's 6:15pm and I've forgotten to thaw anything lol ...)
Of course you do! And having written a recipe or two just to share here or with friends, I have a much deeper appreciation than I once did for how much WORK goes into those books. I often say that food is my love language. But sometimes the language is a little sharp when I've run out of ideas and motivation!
Thanks so much for the comment, Sue.
Elizabeth, the comments here are so rich and colourful. Food does this! Thank you for your story, the details of your shelves (which I always think say more about a person that anything else.) A diary of a life, through food. And thank you for the prompt. Stay tuned for my response! x
I absolutely have trouble trusting people who either have no bookshelves or, worse, have shelves filled with books that are purely decorative. The diary might be made richer were I to remember the names of the books I've already given away. Suffice to say, I learned the hard way to not soak lentils, and some of those cooking chapters are best not revisited. 😅
Elizabeth, the comments here are so rich and colourful. Food does this! Thank you for your story, the details of your shelves (which I always think say more about a person that anything else.) A diary of a life, through food. And thank you for the prompt. Stay tuned for my response! x