Recipes

The discovery of a new dish does more for the happiness of the human race than the discovery of a star.
--Jean Anthelme Brillat-Savarin

I have some sort of sickness that periodically prompts me to do projects that don’t actually need to be done. Maybe because they delay frightening projects like cleaning my closet (which really does need to be done) or mundane tasks like dusting and laundry (which also need to be done).

So my latest project has been typing up all of my recipe cards. I have very slight (though Adam would argue with how slight they really are) obsessive tendencies. Tendencies that make it difficult for me to have some recipes on 3x5 cards and some ripped out of magazines and some printed from emails or websites. I want things uniform. With such chaos in the world aren’t little pockets of order reassuring? I think so.

When I told Adam what I was doing he said, “And then you’re going to put them in page protectors.” He knows about my love affair with page protectors. Although certain corners of my house beg to differ, I really love neat and tidy and could you get more neat and tidy than a page protector?

For the past several weeks, during school while my children are working on their assignments and I need to be in the room to be the taskmaster, I’ve been typing recipes. I finished today (and yes I’ve been slipping them in page protectors) and I’ve been lost in the memories and history that my recipes represent.

I have a recipe for banana bread from my Great Grandma Wood. I have my Grandma Dahl’s pumpkin chocolate chip cookies and my Grandma Jaynes’ peach pie. I have lots of recipes from my mom. Recipes of some of my very favorites. My soul food.

I have the recipe for chocolate filled cupcakes that Olivia, our cousins Hannah and Britta and I made one summer when we were young.

I have the recipe that was served at my aunt Launa’s wedding. I don’t know the real name—we’ve only called it Launa’s Wedding Cake. I have my aunt Claudia’s recipe for Yum Yum Cake and my aunt Mary's chocolate chip cookie recipe. I have a recipe for bread pudding that my mom used to make and I like mostly because she told me that my Grandpa Jaynes liked bread pudding. (He died when I was 15 months old so I don’t remember him but love hearing about him.)

I have recipes from my mother-in-law. (swiss enchiladas, clam chowder and lasagna that are similar to but easier than my mom’s) I have Marianne’s pancakes. I have a sloppy joe recipe from my college roommate Trista and a sugar cookie recipe from my other roommate Erin.

I have recipes that invoke Connecticut. Mindy’s caramel popcorn, Tara’s quesadilla’s, Lisa’s cinnamon rolls (that I make every Christmas). I have recipes of Apryl’s that remind me of her apartment that was always fragrant with the scent of baking bread. I have Marina’s chicken paprika and Lynnette’s chocolate lava cakes and pumpkin cake.

I have a sweet and sour meatball recipe and amazing cookie recipes from Patty in San Francisco.

I have the recipe for the carrot cake Janet made me for my birthday and her chicken pot pie which is the ultimate in comfort food.

Do I love all these recipes for their own merit or because I love who gave them to me? Both.

I have recipes that I found on my own. Recipes that transform me to crisp fall days (pork chops with apple onion stuffing) or hot summer ones (Fourth of July Cherry-Cola Cake). I have a recipe for frosting that I found last summer. Braeden called it “peace on earth on a cupcake” so that’s what I named it in my cookbook.

I found a recipe for pastel four-layer cake that reminds me of the cake my aunt Pam used to make every year for my mom’s birthday. I have the recipe for Alabama Chocolate-Pecan Christmas Fudge Pie which is every bit as decadent as it sounds. I ate the pie in its entirety the Christmas I was pregnant with Emma. (Adam’s very nearly forgiven me for not saving him a piece.)

I have the recipe for mint brownies, which is an institution in our current ward and known for its Mother’s Day appearance in Relief Society and my new bread recipe is from Anne who made this version for an Enrichment meeting.

Upon reflection, I don’t think my recipe upgrade was quite as useless as I originally feared. I was reminded of this important truth:

No one cooks alone. Even at her most solitary, a cook in the kitchen is surrounded by generations of cooks past, the advice and menus of cooks present, the wisdom of cookbook writers.
--Laurie Colwin