Recipes and tradition

Reminiscing

The other day, my wife and I were doing our weekly menu planning.  We try to balance the cooking effort to match our activities of the week.  So when one of us needs to be at a meeting or other event, we usually plan out something quick and easy.  We save the more involved dinners for when our time is not so limited.  For some reason, the conversation we were having triggered a memory of one of my Mom’s casserole dishes in my mind.  The smell and taste I remembered was wonderful.  It was a casserole my Mom used to make when I was still living at home.  I remembered parts of the recipe, but not all the ingredients.

The tragedy is my Mom passed away around 10 years ago, due to Ovarian Cancer.  She was an amazing woman and a great cook.  Unfortunately, I never asked her for my favorite recipes.  Just as I was thinking all is lost and I would never taste those memorable dishes again, my wife suggested I ask my sister if she remembered the dish.

Re-Creation

So, I called my sister and described the casserole I was thinking about.  To my delight, she said yes, she had the recipe.  A few minutes more and I had a copy of the ingredients with cooking directions.  The next day I made that casserole.  The moment of truth was with that first bite.  My wife asked if it tasted the same as I remembered?  To my surprise it tasted exactly how I remembered.

I was thinking.  If my sister has this recipe, maybe she was the smart one and recorded these recipes from Mom.  So, I contacted my sister again and asked if she had any more of Mom’s recipes.  She confirmed that she had them and would get them together for me.  I am so lucky my sister captured this knowledge.

Advice

Never take your loved ones for granted.  You may be used to seeing them on a semi-regular basis.  Don’t forget to tell them how much they mean to you.  If any of them are great cooks you might want to capture their knowledge before you realize one day that you don’t have access to it anymore.

My wife and I are planning to compile a book of our family’s favorite recipes this year.  The kid’s might not appreciate the book right now, but they will a few years down the road.  They’ll be saying wow, I’m glad they wrote down some of their knowledge for us.

This year we’re planning to start a tradition of sharing with our kids the recipes and show them how to make their favorite dishes.