An Ode to Moms who Cook

Today, I was privileged to see the labor of love of one of my friends. Upon the death of her mother, she took away a 20 gallon tub of recipes, cookbooks, and clippings from her mother's home and began to compile them in notebooks. It was the one thing she had wanted. And today she showed me the first of the binders. In the outside slip cover, there were tattered handwritten recipes for Ricotta Cheese Biscuits and Scotch Oatmeal Shortbread (plus another I can't recall). Just reading them evoked a sense of warmth and comfort . . . and made me hungry. Inside was page after page of magazine clippings, handwritten recipe cards, commercial recipe cards (you know, the ones we all get in the mail), Weight Watchers recipe cards from the 1970s (for the baby-weight, my friend explained), and so much more. Highbrow recipes from Jean Georges Vongritchen and then not so highbrow ads from Campbell's soup, featuring "recipes" for combining their soups into "Pearoom" (pea and mushroom soups combined, and the like). And lots of casseroles. There were old recipes but also new www printouts from the Food Network, attesting to her mother's constant and continuous interest in new foods. Lots of Italian but also a variety of other genres of foods. It must have been a challenge just to sort all the little scraps of paper. But my friend remembers her mother--an amazing cook--making many of the dishes, and so compiling the paper must have been like sitting down to another homecooked meal (which I experienced, in a way--my friend sent me home with a delicious eggplant rollatini that they were having for dinner, straight from her mom's notebooks. YUM!) It's a real treasure she's made, one that no doubt her own daughters will value as well.

My own mom is a great cook too. And I want her recipes and books (as well as my Grandma's Dresden, hint hint). My mom has a great clippings file and books with asterisks and notes. One of her favorites is America Cooks, the Junior League collection, but she also uses the identifiable red and white checkered Better Homes and Gardens binder as a standard. My compilation of her recipes is mainly electronic, though I have several handwritten sheets of paper too as well as a cookbook she made for me on her first computer when I went off to school that includes many family favorites (plus my own edition of BH&G, which I was thrilled to receive one holiday). For years, almost since I first had my own kitchen in grad school, I've been compiling family recipes--I currently have three books of more than 700 pages total of recipes from family, friends, and my own experiments. All with notes and comments on the origins and experiences of the meals. This blog actually derives from those cookbooks, which I've been keeping for 15 years. I've recently been adding recipes from my maternal great grandmother, and paternal grandmother to the books; the one who typed all of her recipes on discreet little cards and the other whose scrawling handwriting fills the pages of a tiny notebook. And recently, when a dear family friend passed away unexpectedly, my mom mailed me photocopies of her recipes for Chicken and Sausage Gumbo and Red Beans and Rice, which I then cooked in her memory. I've also been hounding my partner to gather her mother's recipes, especially as her mother doesn't cook from directions (mine thankfully does, down to the teaspoon, so it's easy to compile, though the dishes are never exactly the same--she knows how she alters recipes but she doesn't always write it down). DP's family is Chinese with Thai influences so just getting the names of ingredients into English can be a challenge. But these collections, like my friend's, will be a great gift to our children.

Who are thankfully sound asleep with no trouble, on this, just their third night in big kid beds.

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Red Beans and Rice
This recipe comes from Miss Betty, complete with tips on ingredients—Camellia beans and Tony’s Creole Seasoning. I think this was my first Cajun food, sitting at her kitchen table with a bowl ladled from a simmering pot. DP and I made it at the end of the week of September 11, 2001, in NYC, but with Goya beans and Chicken Apple Sausage. Not exactly authentic but comfort food nonetheless. And it was perfect! Just what we needed. We made it again when she passed away last year (and numerous times in between).

1 lb. kidney beans (preferrably Camellia)
1 large onion, chopped
2 stalks celery, chopped
1 green pepper, chopped
2 tablespoons parsley, chopped
2 tablespoons ground bay leaf [or 2-3 whole leaves]
1/3 cup bacon drippings [or 3 pieces of bacon]
2 lb. smoked sausage
garlic salt, salt, pepper [or 1 tablespoon Tony’s]

Wash beans. Fill pot with water (2-3 quarts). Add onion, celery, green pepper, parsley, bay leaf, and bacon drippings. Bring to boil uncovered. Simmer and keep adding water until beans are softened, and gravy and beans are desired consistency (we added 1 quart more), approximately 2 hours. Add sausage, then Tony’s. Simmer uncovered about ½ hour longer. Turn off heat, let rest for 30 minutes. Make rice. Serve.