For the Storylady

Did's mother writes a weekly column for her local paper. Occasionally I get an email from her asking for inspiration about her topic for the week. I've sent her my memories from Mule Day to Christmas. Recently she asked for help for a friend of her's who's dubbed herself Storylady. She volunteers in an elementary school in Oregon & every summer she prepares for the next year's visit by picking & researching her theme.

This year's theme is "Recipes." My first thought was, "I have nothing to offer on this one," but I was reminded of a story. This is what I sent to her hoping it will help:

When Husband & I were first married, I took over the kitchen duties because I didn't really want to live on TV dinners, PB & J, frozen pizza, & granola bars. In doing so, I inherited the few recipes he had on hand and a 1994 copy of the Better Homes & Gardens Cookbook (you know the one, red & white checked cover). I loved it & used it with regularity.

I went to it for peanut butter cookies, hot milk cake, twice baked potatoes, banana bread, spare ribs, beef stew, you name it. The inside of the book was soon dusted with flour & spotted with grease. It moved with us twice and fed us for the first five or so years of marriage.

Then along came B.B. He's our third child, our second son, and the wildest of our pack hands down. He's been busy since the day he was born. I'm pretty sure he doesn't even sit still to sleep. When he was tiny, 18 months-2 years old or so, I caught him sitting in his sister's bedroom floor, buck naked, browsing through my Better Homes & Gardens Cookbook. He wasn't happy when I took it away from him. Not at all.

A few weeks later, my youngest brother-in-law came over & borrowed a few cookbooks while he was home on leave from the Army. After his leave was over, I realized I couldn't find my red & white cookbook anywhere. I called & asked him. He hadn't borrowed that one because he had his own copy. I tore the house apart, emptied all my kitchen cabinets, all my bookshelves, even the bottom of the kids' closets to no avail. My book was gone.

I told my grandmother that I feared the gremlins that haunted her house when I was little had spirited it off. She gave me a copy she had from the mid 1960's. I was thrilled! I took it home & started looking for the equivalent of my favorite recipes from my 1994 copy. A few weeks later, I decided to bake a cake & went to the book ends on my kitchen counter top to get my book....and it was gone. Again, I tore through all our possessions in search of the red & white cover. Again, to no avail.

This time my husband had a theory, and as no other (viable) explanation has ever presented it's self, we think happened: B.B. had a penchant for throwing things away. We often had to dig clothing out of the trash that he was done wearing for the day. More than once I went to toss in a dirty diaper only to find the toy he'd lost laying in the top of the trash can. We think he threw away both copies of my cook book. He had been fascinated by it as well, and since books are not known to walk away on their own, it's our best guess. I just never noticed the extra weight in the bag, what with all the diapers we toted out during that time.

Personally I thought an International Ring of Cookbook Thieves had targeted us & made off with the favorite of my cookbooks. I now have an even older copy (there's no copyright in this one) my great-aunt picked up at a yard sale a few years back. We decided to wait until Isaiah was over his aversion to my cooking before I brought it to our house from my grandmother's.

Oh, and then there's the time he broke the binding, tore out the cover page from my 1946 copy of The Joy of Cooking...he also shredded a few of the hand written recipes that had been tucked into the book by the former owner.

Believe me, there has been no end to the jokes by my husband about how bad my cooking must be if our toddler is so intent on destroying all my recipes!