Family history can be found and preserved in a number of places. One of these places is in old family cookbooks. I want to ask you not to forget the old family cookbooks and the little bits of history that can be a comfort to many in unexpected times. It is fun to discover new recipes on the internet, however, often there is much richer and nourishing tidbits found when turning to a family cookbook.

This reflection was stirred by a piece written by Rhona McAdam entitled The Boston School of Cooking Cookbook. I have shared it below. Enjoy!

The Boston School of Cooking Cookbook

This is my mother's cookbook, its spine loose

with age, the fabric bare of colour at the seams

and weak, so it must be held tenderly, the way

my mother knows, easing into its pages

with her disobedient-knuckled hands.

This book is my mother's; she navigates

its mysteries with indifferent skill,

reads the runes of food stains,

the faded trail of silverfish

who ate their random way over words;

she has the eye to decipher the tastes

of another time, scrawled

in the margins, invoking the power

of other kitchens, the fit of old aprons,

the shape of a family

swallowed into other lives.

This book's pages, furred with use,

fade to brown. Its leaves have pressed

my mother's memories in perfect squares, the things

she needs concealed from time,

things she likes to come upon by chance:

household tips and obituaries, invitations

to weddings.  My first poem is in there, and the card

someone made for mother's day. Sentiment

among the weeds of recipes she clipped 

in more ambitious days

that crowd, untasted, between the even rows

of meals we chewed our way through

but never knew the names of, all those years'

worth of peeled vegetables and trimmed meat,

a lifetime's preparation vanished

into our waiting mouths.