The Kindest Offer and Memory Lane
My great grandmother's recipes were stored haphazardly in an old hatbox. My grandmother moved them to a shoe box (also haphazardly) when the hat box fell apart and was beyond cellophane tape repairable.
My mother had her own method. Her pocketbook sized telephone and address book housed so many slips of tiny paper, napkins, etc it split the binding and was held together with multiple rubber bands. She could tell you the story of the events surrounding each scrap she had written on, and all were fond memories for her. Everything written in her own cryptic shorthand, no way for a stranger, or even me, her daughter, to make any of her recipes without her. Unless you made these recipes with her you could not possibly follow them.
As a gift, I made her a scrapbook/ recipe book. Each recipe was hers, carefully written on a 3x5 card with both her cryptography and a modern usable “translation”. I included photos taken when each dish was served/present or made of a fond memory with each recipe. Her tiny recipes on paper scraps I took Kodak photos of and had developed to preserve her memories, and then I hand wrote the 3x5 translations.
Each time she looked through this book, slight tears would glisten in her eyes.
When my brother chose his wife, we of course included her in our cooking circle. I was only present when I was able to return from Vegas. We were all together for her first joining and she said she would just watch because she was not a good cook. We included her by assigning the salad prep work and made her a space at the table. In the kitchen while we were doing stove and oven work etc. we were all giggling and chatting not paying much attention to the actual work when she asked how much of this hard thing is usable.
She had taken the largest chef's knife and sliced a head of lettuce like a loaf of bread and was attempting to cut a circle in the head to remove the core. We realized she meant she had zero cooking experience. She graciously offered that Mac and cheese from a box was the only item she had ever prepared, beyond television dinners. Her mother HAD NEVER cooked more either. While we taught her what she wished to learn over the years, she honestly had no real interest in domestic tasks of any nature.
When her daughter, my niece, was a teen and started taking interest in cooking, it was after her mother had passed early from cancer. Sadly, my mother had already had a stroke that left her bedridden, and it was impossible for me to physically care for her at home since she had no use of any extremity outside of her left hand.
So, the tradition passing task became mine, and I undertook the matriarchal role model. My niece became quite competent at following recipes, but did not have the culinary knowledge or aptitude to create recipes from scratch. Which was shocking to me as she is a skilled artist with paints, charcoal etc! Each week, when I visited my mom we would continue our cooking circles by moving on to the next page in the book I made her, and walk down memory lane together. I was not willing to part with such a sentimental practice.
I refuse to give up this cookbook, it holds too many memories that are dear to me. This is one of the few keepsakes I will not part with, ever. Things are just things to me, outside of a very select few items. My mother’s cookbook, made by me for her out of her scrap pieces of paper, is one of my most cherished of the few.
During the beginning of the pandemic my niece almost lived with me, she spent so much time here. It was her senior year, so she lost all the senior traditions that went with it. We set about the task of creating her own memory cookbook, making each memory and recipe as we went along.
It was complicated by needing to go to Walmart to print things, frequently only to discover their printing booths were out of order due to the pandemic.
My husband noticed the inconvenience. Now, when my husband buys himself things they are often generic, used, or a lower functioning item that meets his requirement to “just get the job done”. He always feels the need for me to have the “absolute best of the best” high end things, though.
He surprise-gifted me with this monster printer/photo center/fax/copier computerized thing that I can barely make go due to being inept at technology. I am very nearly a Luddite!
After that project, it sat unused for a very long time. Last year at some point, I needed to print something that happened to be in color. So I dusted it off and most of the ink was used previously and what was not had dried up. I obtained new cartridges and called tech support to attempt to “make it go" and they walked me through “cleaning” the mechanisms that ink touches as those were compromised with dried on ink as well.
Over a year later, I printed the recent labels for shipments. Again, mostly dry ink and corrupted print thingies. But it printed a bit. UPS and FedEx reprinted my labels as they would not scan.
The lovely lotus bamboo prompted the need for color. Each color cartridge is again dried up completely and my prints to go to the nursery were barely visible greyish prints.
Knowing the flyers are possibly the only color thing I will print for another year or so I hesitate to waste money and replace the color cartridges as each are individual and large high capacity boxes and pricey.
There is my wonderful trip down memory lane, enjoying the nostalgia and why I really have no need of the wonderful offer to send me a printer to replace my “crappy/not crappy” printer. My hubby’s feelings would be hurt if he felt his gift of the printer was not “the best of the best”. His heart was in the best place when he surprised me with his gift, and to replace his gift with a smaller model would bruise it horribly. It may not be as functional for me and my smaller print jobs, but replacing it would do harm. It’s almost cheaper to simply go back to Walmart now that the pandemic is over, and pay for items to be printed there.
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