The little brown recipe box

My mother gave me her recipe box. That simple sentence doesn’t do justice to the enormity of that simple act. My mother gave me the recipe box that the women in her family made for her full of family recipes passed down for generations – some of them dating back to the time when they crossed the prairie in the Conestoga wagon looking for a new home on the Oklahoma plains. They gave them to her on her wedding day. These recipes are our family. I learned to cook using these recipes. We both learned to cook using these recipes.



She and I grew up together in the kitchen of that little house that didn’t seem so little back then. We baked fluffy biscuits, cinnamon rolls and countless cookies, rolling them out on the butcher block my dad made for her as a wedding gift. The recipe cards themselves show the accumulation of years worth of butter, flour, eggs, and the occasional two year old wielding a red ink pen. Some have been so lovingly used that they are no longer readable. But I know what’s there…it’s love.


It was a treasured moment for the two of us. We read through each and every card in that little box. We recalled stories about each recipe – laughing, remembering, and even crying a little! The accumulated recipes of a lifetime, passed from one generation to the next. The flavours of home of one family coming together with the flavours of home from another to make a new family – ours.


These recipes are the legacy of a family who has travelled far from home, but has always maintained that figurative place of ‘home’ in our hearts. They are a treasure that I cherish, and a little bit of home right here in England. She didn't just give me her recipe box - she gave me her heart.  Thank you.