Gone with the wind.........

I had decades worth of recipes written on scraps of paper and 3 x 5 cards that I had been gathering since my teens, my Mom's, and Gramma's, wonderful family recipes of all my favorites ... my Mom's Chili Verde, her amazingly easy, flavorful Chop Suey, Granny's Chicken and Dumplings, desserts, salads, and of course, recipes for those marvelous soups and stews that warmed us on the cold blustery days... anyway, I had always intended to put them all into a book, or to at least digitize them so that they could be saved and shared. I loved those scraps of paper and never got around to it. Those grubby bits of paper and card stock, spattered by ingredients, creased and worn, soft from years of being refolded after use, and smelling oh so faintly of spices, felt real to me. tangible and homey. My mothers familiar scrawl, her funny little notes........Pulling out those handwritten treasures was almost a form of therapy, certainly they were a touchstone for me. They lived in a beautiful wooden and metal scrollwork box on a shelf in my dining room.

We found what was left of the box after the fire, we kinda recognized a bit of the metal scrollwork... my son pried it open while we held our breath, hoping that the once lovely box had somehow protected those vulnerable pages......
Once he peeled back the burned layers of what was left, a few charred edges of my treasured "receipts" fluttered out, then they just disintegrated and disappeared on the breeze.

So my mission now is to piece together those recipes, add in more that I find along the way, and get a cookbook published for my Mom. I think she would have loved that.

Powered By Blogger

Tuesday, December 29, 2009

Soup for the soul

My son has said that Jeff and I bonded over soup... this is probably true. We started our relationship as contacts through work, but, somewhere along the way, we discovered a mutual love of, and respect for soup,, I remember it clearly, Jeff mentioned in an e-mail that he was making French Onion soup for dinner.... "French Onion Soup?" I replied.. "isn't it the wrong time of year to be making soup?"
And so began our relationship.....
"Oh, yes" said Jeff. "Soup never goes out of style or season.. it is the original soul food." I knew, then and there, that this must be love.... and here we are, three years later, still joyfully and "soulfully", making soup together.

In no time at all, we were cheerfully exchanging soup recipes. Soups that spoke both to our souls and to our taste buds.. I shared with him my "Magic Thai Soup" that will cure most known ailments, and he eventually shared with me his Mothers Noodle Soup.. a wonderful, earthy concoction that speaks to your very core...


I would love to record and share these recipes here. Soups belong to everyone, in every culture, and in our opinion, is the original soul food.
Posted by at No comments:
Subscribe to: Posts (Atom)