The Recipe Box
She smelled of cigarette smoke as she waltzed into our home, holding a gold lame blouse on a hanger, a pie basket over her arm. Gramma Phyllis would perch at the kitchen counter, watching her chickens hustling around in a scramble of dinner preparations. We all stopped in our tracks once she unpacked her sweet smelling basket.
Apple pie, chocolate cream pie, rhubarb pie, pineapple pie and blueberry pie were her specialties. At each visit, her dessert arrived in style, traveling on the backseat of her Le Baron convertible in my great-grandmother’s picnic basket. I wasn’t a fan of warm fruit, but Grandma Phyllis’s blueberry pie came to our house and changed my pie bias. Her pie had fresh plump blueberries that burst in your mouth, peaks of homemade whipped cream, and warm crust that invited you to dive in. She taught her great grandson’s how to duplicate it, and we make it as a family each summer in her memory. One fourth of July, my youngest son fearlessly entered a pie eating contest, but did not enjoy the store-bought imposters.
At my bridal shower, my mother asked guests to bring their favorite recipes. I have my aunt’s chocolate cake, my sister’s banana cream pie, and my mother’s cherry cream cheese tart recipes twenty-five years later. Since I have been married, I have collected subscriptions to cooking magazines, cookbooks bought by friends, recipes passed down from family, and recommendations emailed to my inbox. I have an overflowing basket of recipes I have planned to organize but never completed.
Each year my Gramma Phyllis would take a creative class to learn something new and she would use those skills to make our Christmas gifts. The year I was engaged, she painted a recipe box which I recently moved to my nightstand. I often wake in the middle of the night with ideas that I do not want to forget. I scribble notes onto an index card and place them into the recipe box. Writing down keywords helps me to quickly fall back to sleep. When I wake up the next morning, it is fun to try and read my chicken scratch and decipher if it is an idea worth pursuing. Many of the articles I have written for this newspaper grew from this collection of thoughts. I imagine that my grandmother would be happy to know that she helped create the recipe for my success.
