Old Recipes

Today I was looking for a recipe in anticipation of company next week. I am carefully stocking up on the ingredients that are commonly found in many Western kitchens this time of year:

Cream cheese
Sour cream
Holiday spices (I am out of Cinnamon? What? Perish the thought!)
Pumpkin
MORE butter…

…Frank’s Red Hot (I like a little kick, don’t you?)

and on and on…

What recipe I was searching for and what ingredients I was noting to buy are not important here. What I realized today is that I held in my hands the magic of other women (and one or two men). I held their recipes for success, for comfort, for joy, for celebration. I held some recipes that were stained from multiple use. I drifted through others copied by my own hand many, many years ago when I still drew little circles over i’s instead of capping them with a simple dot. Some recipes simply said “Mom’s pie crust” which is now my crust and every bit just as good. I touched the recipes of people who were no longer in my life, but are still in my heart. I read my own earliest recipes I used over and over when I had more pennies than dollars, often accompanied by a grocery list in the margin and ballpark ingredient prices.

I have a stack of old index cards, sheets of notepaper with handwritten notes, and even photocopied recipes. I wondered for a moment if I should make it a side project to type everything up, order it neatly on my laptop, print off a nice clean copy, and tuck those recipes into a binder before placing with the growing stack of cookbooks in the corner.

And I was really was tempted… but then I looked at those recipes… the distinctive swish! of a former employer’s decisive cursive, the careful printing from an old friend I haven’t seen in years… my mother’s email with instructions to read the entire recipe for pumpkin bread first before starting the baking. Their energies and intentions are in those recipes. And I want to keep those energies in my kitchen. I want to continue them.

I still might buy a binder to better hold and care for those recipes, but I have decided to keep the papers and note cards just as they are now: some stained from cooking dinners and desserts of the past, some containing my handwritten notes in page corners, some creased from multiple folds over the years, and all full of the love and energy of the people who brought them into my life.

May you know the joy of collecting many recipes from other kitchens and enjoy all those wonderful energies that make our kitchens so magic.