by Marilyn Bubb

Created on: April 24, 2009

Heads bent over our work, we spent the afternoon in my great-aunt Evelyn's kitchen. We'd just finished cleaning up after our noon meal, complete with peach cobbler and an interesting egg salad with saltines crushed up in it... the unusual recipe prompted me to ask Aunt Evelyn if she shared her recipes. Did she share her recipes?! Well, Honey... of course she did! Out came the tattered remains of "receipt books" that had been a part of her family's life for the past 70 years. These recipes had seen her family through hard times, happy times, and times of great celebration.... simpler times.

Sitting at the old table in her spotless kitchen, we reverently turned the pages and visited the past... these cookbooks conjured up memories of holidays, birthdays, and everyday meals. As she shared her recipes with me, and I copied them down on the old yellow lined paper pad she gave me, she gazed around the table... in her minds' eye she saw her two sons, small and freckled, seated there. Her dear husband, who had passed on a decade before, came home from work again in her memory, and thanked her for the time and effort and love she showed, putting his favorite dishes on the table...

Her sons grew up and had wives and children, and then they had children of their own...all of them visited this home and enjoyed the stack cake, the saurkraut salad, the rice pudding.... and every time she opened that book, memories of bygone days would wash over Aunt Evelyn like a flood. New memories made, old memories touched gently and put away... the love of a mother, grandmother, aunt... all shown in the carefully prepared and beautifully presented food on her table.

I was priviledged to be a part of that day at Aunt Evelyn's, spending a long afternoon before the open kitchen window in her Kentucky home, birds singing in the yard and children playing happily in the grass.

Every time I take out those recipes she shared with me, the sounds and scents and stories from that day come to my mind again, and I'm so thankful I was blessed to have Aunt Evelyn to share with me. And every time I prepare those old-timey foods for my loved ones, I feel like it's not just my love and care that are going into them... but the love and care of generations past as well....for these recipes were penned and saved and lovingly preserved for other happy, cherished families... I continue that legacy each time I decide on that dish for this day... and I know my family feels the warmth of that special connection.

Aunt Evelyn passed away not long after that trip to her home. She shared something special with me.

It hasn't been just Aunt Evelyn. I have saved a recipe from my grandmother, written in her shaky hand on looseleaf paper, for oatmeal cookies. When I make them I feel generations of family love in my kitchen, adding to the warm cinnamon smell that bathes my home in a sweet perfume.

My mother gave me her first cookbook, purchased when she was a young bride of seventeen. The binding is broken, the pages are dog-eared, and on one page are the words "David's favorite cookies". David is my father, and Mom used to make these cookies for him by the double batch... on this page are stains from peanut butter, brown sugar, and butter.... nostalgia washes over me as I gently unfold the battered paper.

These feelings and memories are so special, so heart-warming. The convenience of the internet will never completely displace the wonderful sentiment of the printed page. The books and little cards and scraps of paper with recipes scrawled on them will always have a place in the heart and home of people who love to cook and to share. Because half of the joy of cooking comes from the sharing and the love.

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