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Parenting - My Mother's Recipe Box

My Mother's Recipe Box
by Rachel Paxton - rachel@creativehomemaking.com

Remember the days when cookbooks weren't so readily available,
and you or your mother relied on only one or two different
cookbooks for cooking all of your family's meals?  I still have
my mother's old cookbooks, as well as my grandmother's.  Each one
is worn from age and use--if you flip through the tattered pages
it is obvious which recipes were turned to time and time again.
These cookbooks will always number among my most precious
treasures.

When our mothers wanted to try new recipes, they most likely
didn't run out and buy new cookbooks.  They often didn't have the
extra money to spend, and often there weren't very many to choose
from.  So where did they get new recipes?  From each other.

When I was a child I remember my mother exchanging recipe cards
with friends and relatives and bringing them home and filing them
away in her recipe box.  I always loved going through her recipes
(although she often got mad at me for getting them all out of
order!) 

All the years while I was learning how to cook I went through her
recipe box time and time again, pulling out my favorite recipes
and preparing them again and again.

Seeing who the recipes were from made them all the more special.
I also love looking back at all the recipe cards I prepared
myself while I was in 4-H and spent much of my time learning how
to cook.  I still prepare many of the recipes I used back then. 
To this day, all I have to do is open my recipe card box, and I
am instantly transported back in time.

My mother hasn't exchanged recipe cards with anyone in more than
20 years.  I have very few of my own (although I hope to inherit
hers someday!)  But even to this day there is no better place to
find favorite family recipes than in my mother's recipe box. 

Twenty years from now, I look forward to going through my recipe box
with my own daughter, telling her stories about where all of my
different recipes came from.

Rachel Paxton is a freelance writer and mom who is the author of
What's for Dinner?, an e-cookbook containing more than 250 quick
easy dinner ideas.  For recipes, tips to organize your home, home
decorating, crafts, and frugal family fun, visit Creative
Homemaking at http://www.creativehomemaking.com and Suite 101 at
http://www.suite101.com/welcome.cfm/creative_homemaking.   To
subscribe to their monthly newsletter send a blank e-mail message
to FreeRecipes-subscribe@egroups.com.