**originally published 6/26/15**
My drawer of plastic storage containers recently reached maximum capacity and I had to make some hard decisions about what to toss. After I matched tops and bottoms, separated the Rubbermaid from the Tupperware, and accepted that I would never use the pastel bunny-face popsicle molds, I discovered a slightly rusty metal box with a hinged lid. My mother’s recipe holder.
This box lived in the drawer beneath our wall oven at my childhood home, along with all my mom’s cookbooks. When she moved out and got rid of most everything, I kept the box for sentimental reasons. I can’t remember my mother ever using the box when she cooked. In fact, I can barely remember her cooking.
Due to her declining health from Multiple Sclerosis (M.S.), family meals disappeared by the time I reached puberty. However, I learned to cook early, thanks to her encouragement – and benign neglect of my kitchen experiments.
Southern Living, Betty Crocker, and the Amana Touchmatic II Radarange Microwave Oven Cook Book were my early cooking instructors. On my own I figured out how to dispose of the evidence: muffins like hockey pucks, briquette brownies, and a confusing puddle of sugar syrup that was supposed to be microwave taffy.
I learned how to cook at my grandmother’s house. At home, I blazed a solo trail of culinary inquiry – because even before M.S. made cooking impossible for her, my mother had a tenuous relationship with food.
She told me about starving herself all day in high school so she could have a plate of French Fries and a coke after class and still stay skinny. Smoking was a great way to stay thin, but she said she never liked it enough to keep going. She blamed growing up during World War II for malnutrition and told me that was probably why she had such bird bones. Indeed, old photos and dresses show that she didn’t eat much.
(This is not a physical trait I share with my mom. I couldn’t fit into her wedding dress when I was eight years old.)
Back when she did cook for the family, my mom’s rotation included lemon chicken, beef-and-rice, and liver-and-onions. I vividly recall her attempt at stuffing a whole head of cabbage. It freaked me out because it looked like a brain stewing on the stove.
My mother’s taste in food always seemed odd to me. She liked peanut butter and tomato sandwiches, crystallized ginger straight from the container, and liver-and-onions. If I ever wanted to give her a food gift, I’d just think about the last thing I’d ever want to eat and get her that.
The tin box of recipe cards, dishes my mother made a point of remembering, sat under the spare ice trays at the very back of my storage drawer. It escaped the trash can in past years because I promised myself I would find a recipe I liked and think of my mother as I made it. As long as I didn’t open the box, I imagined there was some wonderful meal with the aroma of her loving memory.
This time, the tin box couldn’t deflect my organization zeal with a nostalgic fantasy. Storage in my kitchen is a high stakes Tetris game.
To purge any sentimentality, I took a calculating, clinical look at the box’s contents. My Recipe Inventory is at the bottom of this post. All recipe names are directly from the cards.
After sorting and matching and cataloguing all the recipes, I came to the conclusion that couldn’t pay me to prepare or eat the vast majority of these.
- How can a person have SIX salads, all gelatin-based, and nary a one featuring lettuce?
- A casserole with chicken, beef, AND bacon is just pandering to the barnyard.
- My surprise about the Surprise Tuna Quiche is that anyone would think canned tuna and American cheese quiche would be a good idea.
- TV Guide simply isn’t a source I trust for fondue.
Popular cuisine from the late 60’s and early 70’s just didn’t have legs, like a lot of culture from that time. Nostalgia looks best with movie lighting, and very little analysis. Under the harsh glare of retrospect, many things that were special in the past become grotesque, outdated, and revolting. I think it’s time to let go of those wistful dreams of reliving good old days that never were.
At the same time, opening that box released a flood of laughter, and nausea, and happy memories. Each recipe took me back to church potlucks, neighborhood barbecues, family gatherings, and ordinary weekdays after school when my mother would talk with me for hours. While we didn’t have gourmet meals, we had delicious conversations and shared juicy stories about our lives.
Even if the recipes are ready to be retired from active duty, they still have value. I can use them to tell my kids about the grandmother they didn’t get a chance to know – and how lucky they are to have me in the kitchen instead.
This is why my house is cluttered. This is why I’ll never achieve the modern minimalist decor that looks so exquisitely clean and child-free in the magazines. This is why the storage drawer is always at maximum capacity.
Family history is the reason I live in Dirty House Beautiful.
***
The Recipe Box Inventory
Drinks: 4
- Mulled Wine
- Unnamed Punch with Apple and Cranberry Juice
- Instant Russian Tea
- made with Tang
- Strawberry Tea Punch
- recipe printed on a Lipton Tea Bag envelope
Sauces: 2
- Hollaidaise (sic)
- handwritten card with 11 drips obscuring words
- White Sauce
- handwritten card with 1 large brown drip
Bread: 1
- Quick Family Dinner Rolls
- total time to prepare rolls: 2 hours
Salads: 6
- Congealed Salad
- ingredients include orange Jell-O
- Blueberry Salad
- ingredients include Blackberry jello {A&P} (sic)
- Fruit Cocktail ‘N Cottage Cheese Salad
- recipe cut from a label of a Libby’s Fruit Cocktail in heavy syrup
- ingredients include lime-flavored gelatin
- Strawberry & Banana Salad
- ingredients include 3 pks. strawberry & banana jello
- Salad
- ingredients include Marshmallows, crushed pineapple, mayonnaise, and lime Jello
- Shrimp-and-Rice Salad Ring
- ingredients include shrimp, green onions, rice, broth, mayonnaise, red food coloring, heavy cream, and gelatin
Casseroles: 8
- Apple-Banana Casserole
- Hamburger Casserole
- Ham and Rice Casserole
- Broccoli Casserole
- handwritten
- Broccoli Casserole
- exact same recipe as above, but in a different handwriting
- unnamed cornbread dressing casserole
- Seven Seas Casserole
- recipe cut from a box of Minute Rice
- ingredients include 1 can tuna, condensed cream of celery soup, and cooked peas
- unnamed chicken casserole
- typed
- ingredients include 4 chicken breasts, cream of mushroom soup, chipped beef, bacon, and sour cream
- unnamed chicken casserole
- handwritten written on back of State Employee’s Credit Union withdrawal slip
- also written on slip is the number of someone named Dave
Dips: 2
- Tomato Dip
- CAL-O-RRIFIC DIP
- recipe cut from a box of Wheat Thins Crackers
Spreads: 1
- Beef Spread
- ingredients include Smoked Chopped Beef, cream cheese, mayonnaise, sherry, and olives
Party Mix: 1
- Toasted Party Mix
- recipe cut from a magazine ad for Cheerios
Chicken Dishes: 7
- Chicken Diable (sic)
- Hungarian Chicken
- handwritten on Tiki stationery, not my mother’s handwriting
- Hungary
- handwritten in my mother’s handwriting
- Chicken Tahitian
- Chicken Kiev
- written on PARKS BUILDING SUPPLY COMPANY note paper
- Boned Chicken Stuffed with Wild Rice Dressing
- recipe cut from newspaper
- Chicken Liver Saute Japanese Dish
- recipe cut from newspaper
- headline above recipe: “Japanese-accented liver dish is really delicious”
Beef Dishes: 13
- Teriyaki Steak (Island Favorite from Japan)
- recipe cut from newspaper
- Braised Short Ribs of Beef for a Crowd
- recipe cut from newspaper
- Grenadin of Beef Tenderloin
- recipe cut from newspaper
- Filet Steak Diane
- recipe cut from newspaper
- Chuckwagon Beef on a Skewer
- recipe cut from newspaper
- Beef Burger Barbecue
- recipe cut from newspaper
- Marinated Steaks
- recipe cut from newspaper
- 30 Second Pan Fried Steak
- recipe cut from newspaper
- Steak San Marco
- handwritten
- Chinese Beef
- handwritten
- Chinese Beef and Rice
- handwritten
- NGO YuK Fan Kay (Beef Tomato)
- handwritten
- Ris de Veau Braised au Jus
- recipe cut from a magazine
Specialty Dishes: 10
- Egg Fried Rice
- Shrimp Eloise
- Asparagus Venetian
- Fondue for Every Taste
- recipe page cut from TV Guide, October 7, 1971
- includes recipes for Cheese Fondue, Chocolate Fondue, Fondue Bourguinonne, and Fondue Orientale (made with only chicken broth and white wine)
- Chile Rellenos
- Taco Pie
- handwritten
- ingredients include canned “creasant” (sic) rolls, Fritos, burger, sour cream, american cheese, more Fritos, and “sreaded” (sic) lettuce
- Beefy Quiche
- Surprise Tuna Quiche
- recipe cut from a magazine
- last line of directions reads, “This quiche is unique in that it has its own ‘surprise’ cheese sauce.”
Sweets: 26
- Butter-Cinnamon Delight
- Butterballs
- Congo Cookies
- Marshmallow Treats
- recipe cut from a Rice Krispies box
- Cinnamon Coffee Cake
- Glaze
- made with sugar, butter, and rum
- Icing
- made with 1 can Baker’s coconut
- Quick Trick Fruitcake
- recipe cut from Betty Crocker Date Bar Mix box
- Carnation Five Minute Fudge
- recipe cut from a can of Carnation milk
- 24 Min. Chocolate Cake
- Pillsbury Create-a-Cake Mix Recipe Booklet
- Fresh Strawberry Pie
- recipe cut from magazine ad for Cool Whip
- Lemon Ice Box Whipped Cream Pie
- Cherry Topped Cheese Pie
- ingredients include cream cheese
- Lemon Cheese Cake with Lemon Cheese Filling
- ingredients do NOT include cheese of any kind
- Coconut Pie
- Candy Apples
- 2 copies of same recipe
- Coca-Cola Cake
- 2 copies of same recipe
- Orange Kiss-Me Cake
- Orange Candy Cake
- ingredients include a 14 oz. box of dates and 1 lb. orange candy slices
- Carrot Cake
- the only recipe she wrote her name on
- Banana Nut Bread
- Pineapple Nut Bread
- Strawberry Nut Bread
- handwritten in my sister’s handwriting
- Brownies
- handwritten by me, around age 10, on notebook paper
- ingredients include “shorting” (sic) and “baking power” (sic)
- corner of recipe page burned
