Recipes and cooking make me think of my mom and grandma. So I thought what better place than my mom's old recipe box to find inspiration for a last minute newspaper article assignment I'd been given.
Just a simple green metal box, with a bicycling celery man decal on it. Top shelf above the kitchen counter out of reach, it waited. A wonder filled with magic potions my mom spread over our table each evening. When my mom went through her "out with the old, in with the new "phase I inherited this treasure. Which is odd now that I think of it, because my mom never went through that stage. She never got rid of anything. It was one of her many endearing qualities. If you wanted it or needed it, she had it, no matter how abstruse. I guess she knew how much it would mean to me. Stuffed full of handwritten secrets, delectable delights, solving the mystery of "what's for dinner tonight?", it now sits on my counter collecting dust, you know, busy life, grown kids, a career or two, cell phones, internet, and I mostly live on spinach, croutons, and cookie dough. But I needed a recipe and a story, so it seemed the place to start.
"Don't let me down mom," I whispered, as I dusted off the lid to open the humble box. My mom was a great cook, and prepared three meals everyday for our family, but my Grandma truly loved cooking. It was her Love Language. Her sweet bread, the only thing I ever learned to make well, was my favorite. She also loved to bake pies. If someone stopped by expected or unexpected, her reaction was to bake a pie, or fry chicken. She made the best southern fried chicken and green beans there ever was. Try as we all may, no one , not even mom, could touch the magic of those green beans.
I'll bet it was bacon grease or something else deemed deadly today, that made those beans melt in your mouth. Actually, I believe it was her love, pure and simple. Everything in life is better when its made and served up from the heart.
I chuckled to myself as I read through recipe after recipe of casseroles, chicken surprise, umpteen things to do with hamburger meat, gravies, tuna things and jellyrolls, finding nothing that fit today's dietary trends. Then tucked between buttercream frosting and Southern Pecan Pie. I found it. A letter. Not any letter. A letter from my grandma. She had no idea it would be the last she would ever write. She was so happy for the recent visit with her three daughters, delighted that they had all been together for my cousin's wedding. She wished they could have stayed longer, hating being so far away from family. She in Indiana, most of us in California. It tickled her that three of her granddaughters had married in the same year. "Imagine that," she wrote, and she was sending me the recipe for her holiday sweet bread, worried it wouldn't get to me in time for my party. It did. She died 11 days after writing that letter.