Index Cards & Recipes

When my mother came to live with me, my wife and kids back in 2002 due to her declining health, one issue happened that saddens me to this day.  From my very earliest memories as a young kid of perhaps age three or so, I remember always enjoyed looking at and reading the many recipes my mother had written down on index cards from books, family, and friends that she kept in a small box in the kitchen cupboard.  The cards were often tattered or stained with droplets of various ingredients, but they were all well used and really wonderful to look at and examine. 

My mother used them regularly to make all sorts of wonderful dishes and desserts for my Dad, me, and my siblings all while I was growing up.  And, as a kid, I used them quite often as a "starting point" to make my own "special" food creations as well.  I liked baking as a kid, and the budding "scientist" in me always had be experiment with anything I made.  I am the same to this day.  I think of a formal recipe as more of a  basic path towards creating something different and unique.  I would for instance, take the basic plan of how to make, say, a vanilla cake, and then rummage through the cupboards to see what other "stuff" we had, like spices, nuts, other flavorants, colors, etc... and make something more unique. 

Well, after my mother had been in her new home with us for a few weeks, and she felt more settled and happy, I ended up getting an itch to try to make something for us all, and I thought I would try to bake a cake that I based off of an old recipe I was remembering was a little different in my Mom's recipe box.  But, I didn't remember seeing it amongst the various things we had unpacked from her move to live with us.  I asked her if she remembered where it might be, presuming it was likely in one of the couple of boxes we had still to unpack that contained things she didn't really want early on after the move. 

Unfortunately, she said that she had thrown it out a few weeks before, while she was packing, because it was "dirty" and "old".  It made me horribly sad.  I tried my best to not show it, but I was so very sad that the little box of recipes was gone.  I didn't cry in front of my mother, but that evening, I did while talking with my wife. 

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