Photo Friday

This is the recipe box I mentioned in last week's Friday post. It is one of those things that I'd probably risk my life to run back in for if my house was on fire. It's nothing fancy. I'm not sure if it was once part of a kitchen set- the kind with matching storage tins and a bread box or if it was just something she always had. She could have even picked it up at a yard sale**, for all I know. But, it holds recipes she used for many years; recipes my daddy and aunt Lorna grew up with. There are recipes clipped off of food boxes and cartons, there are some hand-written on scraps of paper, and some more carefully written on index cards. There are also memories. A thousand memories of her. In the kitchen with a cigarette in one hand, spatula in the other, and the phone between her ear and shoulder. Memories of Campbell's vegetable beef soup, pistachio pudding, and Barnum and Bailey's animal crackers. Those awesome swinging saloon doors at their house in Spartanburg. Going to the bakery thrift store with her, which was just the best thing ever because I could always get snack cakes or cookies. Going to the Piggly Wiggly. That awesome Mexican restaurant next to their antique shop in Las Cruses. The story of how they found Chile, or rather, how she found them. Taking great-grandma (her mother) up the mesa in Grand Junction to buy some cherries [one of those 'you had to be there' situations]. I could go on for days...

The recipe right up front is for her spaghetti sauce. It's written in
my Aunt Lorna's handwriting.

Growing up in a family where everyone cooked regularly and where I was encouraged to cook from an early age almost certainly guarantees that some of my best memories will involve food. Funny how an old, beat up box filled with paper can be one of my most valuable possessions, right? Family and fond memories are nourishment for the soul just like food nourishes your body. Don't let anyone tell you different.

Elle

**My grandma was the yard sale queen! She always found the best stuff.