Mom's Reaction

I had lunch with mother today to celebrate her 83rd birthday and I shared this project with her. I don't think she really grasped what I was doing until she went home and looked at this blog...of course, she has no idea what a blog is, but here was her e-mail to me after reading the few entries I have so far:


I just read the whole blog, Shirley, and I am now wiping tears from my eyes because this is without a doubt the most amazing thing anyone has ever done for me or about me...as time goes on we will get together and I will show you some other things, like some of my Mother's recipes written in her own handwriting which I have kept in a separate place [OMG, there are more recipe cards?!]. Also I will give you some history of how I got some of the recipes and how I grew up in the kitchen watching Mother who was such a great cook.  She  never had an electric mixer until I was probably leaving High School.  She used a hand beater to beat egg whites and whipped cream and it always came out perfectly.  To cream butter and sugar she used her hands and I still can't make the batter look that creamy with my KitchenAid Mixer...I love you so much, Shirley, and it means the world to me to see you really interested in cooking, but mainly in cooking to share with your own family and with friends.  I learned a long time ago that people really appreciate it when you prepare special things for them.

I guess WE are now off and running. She delivered to me two binders of recipes cards today—oh my goodness. Driving home from lunch with the literal and figurative weight of this project on my lap, with snippets of memories from my limited time spent in Sparta floating through my head, I realize that this isn't just a project to learn about cooking, or to learn new recipes. It's a history lesson and an attempt to grow closer to my mother by learning who she is and where she came from. So forgive me if I take some detours along the way; I'm realizing that the food is only part of the story.