My niece sent these pictures to me the other night along with the message: "When a cookbook looks like this it means it's a real good one." I pulled my copy out last Saturday to check the ingredients for my go-to quiche recipe and again this morning for the ginger cookie recipe. When Mama died, one of her best friends asked if she could have her copy of the red book. Daddy let her have it - only because I had an extra one to give to him. And, bless his heart, he used the thing! All those years he had us convinced he was helpless in the kitchen and there he was, making chicken casserole like a boss. One year, our oldest boy asked for his very own copy for his birthday. What? He has also put in his wish to inherit the third generation iron skillet. Again... what?!
The Red Cookbook (formerly known as The Necessary Kitchen) came about one Christmas - I can't even remember how long ago. I was forever swapping recipes with friends - many of them dishes I had learned from Mama and my Aunt Altus. Someone suggested I write a cookbook and the rest is history. OK, history is a strong word, but I've been accused of being dramatic a time or two... so. I found a very high-tech program called MasterCook and loaded it into my computer that was one-version-away-from-floppy-disks-old. The recipes I started with were hand written by Mama into a book I gave to her on the day I told her I was pregnant. I figured I was going to have to feed a little person once he got here so I needed to know all her secrets. I also gave her a list of favorites that I wanted to learn to make. She didn't have recipes for many of the entries but made the effort to measure and write them down the next time she fixed each one. Try as I might, there are some of those dishes I just cannot get right in spite of her directions. A few are close. But I am about given up on ever getting the chicken dressing to taste like hers. We will just have to make do until we get to Glory. I'm sure the Lord Jesus has been enjoying her cooking for the past twenty or so years... but he's going to have to get in line once I'm there because I will have a lot of catching up to do. And we haven't even started in on the dumplings.
After Mama's recipes were entered, I scoured my little basket full of 3x5 cards and added the dishes we had come to love over the years. Some neatly written on special cards, some jotted down on scraps of adding machine paper, some tiny squares of yellowed newspapers cut out with pinking shears. They came from family - Hubby's side and mine - and friends near and far. And, for some reason, I wrote little stories about each recipe - who it came from, occasions when we served it - memories it stirred up. Then I had a couple dozen copies printed at the Office Depot and used their comb binding machine to hold them together. I gave one to everybody on my list that year - friends and family alike. It seemed redundant to give one to Mama, but she told me she used it all the time. What?
I have a lot of cookbooks - I'm one of those people who reads them like novels. I have several favorites - by Vivian Howard, Joanna Gaines, Lauren Groveman, Cait Plage Robertson. I have a 1955 edition of Good Housekeeping Cookbook and a 1950 edition of Charleston Receipts that belonged to Hubby's mother. There are quite a few church cookbooks and several Southern Living Annual editions. We won't even mention the Pinterest. And there's this lady from Alabama on the Facebook who makes videos of herself cooking - Brenda Gantt. She has a cookbook, too. Maybe I'll ask for that for my birthday. But, the one I return to time and time again is Old Red.
There's nothing fancy about The Red Cookbook, including the recipes inside, but it is one of the best gifts I have ever given to my friends and family. Come to think of it... it's one of the best gifts I have ever given to myself. I'm sure the red-card-stock-bound pages have languished on many shelves over the years - some relinquished to the donation pile or otherwise laid to rest. But for a few of us, the Red Cookbook has been pulled out time and time again. Looking for something to fix for supper on Tuesday. For seasonal favorites. For a memory or two when times are troubling. For some tenuous connection to people we love - here and gone on. In the tattered splattered pages, we find comfort.
Last Sunday morning, I got a text from the aforementioned son of birthday and skillet wishes. He and his brother have both become better cooks than me. And, maybe not so coincidentally, he was the expected baby who prompted me to ask Mama to write our her recipes in the first place. He was cooking breakfast with his little girl - sausage gravy and biscuits. His doesn't need a cookbook for his biscuits - they are out of this world - but he goes to the Red Cookbook for the gravy. In his text, he attached a video clip of my eight-soon-to-be-nine-year-old granddaughter - reading from the pages like it was a storybook. Her sweet voice reading my words. I cried like I was chopping onions. Might be crying now just thinking about it. And wondering if she'd like her own copy for her birthday- I still have those original pages around here somewhere. Or maybe it's time for a second edition.
All this to say... sometimes you can't go home. But you can always go into the kitchen. And some days, that is close enough. Selah.
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