My friend Jules should just write her own blog. We swap recipes all the time — mostly over the phone in one of our daily conversations. Or via email, or private Facebook message. Jules still doesn’t text, a fault I fight daily to forgive.
You know what I wish? I wish our decades of recipes were documented. Because there is an epic {the real, not trendy use of the word} story of friendship woven into twenty-plus years of sharing vittles. I’ve long suspected this to be true, but last week Kim Severson summed the sentiment in the New York Times article, A Mother’s Cookbook Shares More Than Recipes.
“Next to the King Ranch casserole recipe in an old PTA cookbook, she made a note to add chopped green peppers, green chiles and a can of Rotel tomatoes. It was her attempt to give the sauce of canned soup a little life. The page ripples with the aftermath of some long-ago spill. Bits of dried sauce still cling to it.
The worn pages of a cookbook have a unique ability to drill into a place where food memory mixes with love and loss. As our kitchen adventures increasingly get recorded in sleek digital files or even the fleeting history of a recipe search, beat-up cookbooks become more valuable, both personally and historically.”
Our stories are best shared in messy bits. When I hold my grandmother’s yellowed recipe cards — the one with her thumbprint smudge clinging her to this life on the instructions for Ellen’s Egg Dish is my favorite — I travel back in time to her yellow kitchen on Minnesota Avenue and imagine Nana and her friend Ellen wrapping it up — coffee, cigarettes, and conversation — in order to get supper on the stove.
Jules and I live too far apart to sit at the kitchen table and swap stories or make a double batch of crockpot suppers for the Littles. But she lives right next door in the neighborhood of my heart. One of these days, we’ll write down the days telling the stories through maple syrup stains and balsamic vinegar smudges.
In the meantime, enjoy Julie’s delicious Maple Dijon Drumsticks. Serve with Parmesan Roasted Green Beans and brown rice.
- 8 skinless chicken drumsticks
- ½ tsp salt
- ½ tsp garlic powder
- ¼ tsp pepper
- ¼ cup maple syrup
- ¼ cup dijon mustard
- 2 TBS balsamic vinegar
- Place drumsticks in crockpot and sprinkle with salt, pepper, and garlic powder.
- Whisk maple syrup, dijon mustard, and balsamic vinegar together. Pour over chicken. Cook on low for 4 hours.
You two wonderful’s! Thank you for “feeding” a tired cook whose ideas are mostly memories. Love this recipe! K2, thank you for feeding my memories with stories. You bring instant recall to food, family, and fun. Grateful for you two! Love and cook on!
“But she lives right next door in the neighborhood of my heart.” One of the best summations of friendship and family I’ve ever read. Thank you!