| Remember the days when cookbooks weren't so | | | | All the years while I was learning how to cook I |
| readily available, and you or your mother relied on | | | | went through her recipe box time and time again, |
| only one or two different cookbooks for cooking all | | | | pulling out my favorite recipes and preparing them |
| of your family's meals? I still have my mother's old | | | | again and again. |
| cookbooks, as well as my grandmother's. Each one is | | | | Seeing who the recipes were from made them all the |
| worn from age and use--if you flip through the | | | | more special. I also love looking back at all the recipe |
| tattered pages it is obvious which recipes were | | | | cards I prepared myself while I was in 4-H and spent |
| turned to time and time again. These cookbooks will | | | | much of my time learning how to cook. I still prepare |
| always number among my most precious treasures. | | | | many of the recipes I used back then. To this day, all |
| When our mothers wanted to try new recipes, they | | | | I have to do is open my recipe card box, and I am |
| most likely didn't run out and buy new cookbooks. | | | | instantly transported back in time. |
| They often didn't have the extra money to spend, | | | | My mother hasn't exchanged recipe cards with |
| and often there weren't very many to choose from. | | | | anyone in more than 20 years. I have very few of |
| So where did they get new recipes? From each | | | | my own (although I hope to inherit hers someday!) |
| other. | | | | But even to this day there is no better place to find |
| When I was a child I remember my mother | | | | favorite family recipes than in my mother's recipe |
| exchanging recipe cards with friends and relatives and | | | | box. |
| bringing them home and filing them away in her | | | | Twenty years from now, I look forward to going |
| recipe box. I always loved going through her recipes | | | | through my recipe box with my own daughter, telling |
| (although she often got mad at me for getting them | | | | her stories about where all of my different recipes |
| all out of order!) | | | | came from. |