Keepers of the feast

This is a post I've been wanting to write since way back in the winter some time when my friend Shannon posted.... something. I can't find the post she put up that made me come up with this idea but I'll still give her credit. It was something about her daughter Abby learning to print. I think. Anyway, whatever brilliant thing she wrote or Abby did, it (for some reason) got me thinking about my favourite recipes and where I keep them. I started thinking about my mum's old wooden recipe box and then her "new" 1980's teale plastic recipe box and then the photo album recipe books she made for Beth and I.

I realized that there are as many stories about the boxes that hold recipes as there are about the recipes themselves. And I think they're probably good stories, family stories, stories we'd all like to hear.

Here are my two recipe holders:


I got the tin box from my very close friend Marnie (who I don't talk to nearly often enough anymore). Marnie and I were roommates for a good chunk of university and have been very close ever since. She did her third year abroad in Nice, France. She brought back a tin of cookies for me. The cookies were alright but what I really liked was the tin they came in. Needing a place for recipes I was collecting once and a while from roommates and friends, I started to stick them in the tin. It's been with me ever since. Once in a while I have to weed it as it starts to get full again and there are recipes I'm not using. It's hard to make the choices about what stays and goes as all the recipes have stories: who gave it to me, when I tasted it, where I was.

One year for Christmas, my mum gave Beth and I each a small photo album partially filled with recipe cards. On each card she had written our favourite recipes of hers. It was probably one of the best gifts she ever gave me and I use those recipes all the time. Not surprisingly, most of them are for baking; she was an outstanding baker and she bred that into Beth and I. The small album started to fall apart the year after I got it, simply due to use. I haven't replaced it yet, but I should. I'm just trying to hold out as long as I can, moving recipes to the back as the pages fall out. I don't want to give up the ratty thing because my mum picked it out. I doubt she laboured over which dollar-store album to buy, but it still means something to me just because it has been the home-away-from-home for these favourite recipes for so long, almost 10 years now, I think.

That's the story of my recipe holders. I'd love to see yours and hear your stories. If you choose to share them, just drop me a comment so I can link to you.