Cooking with Generations
“No one who cooks, cooks alone. Even at her most solitary a cook in the kitchen is surrounded by generations of cooks past, the advice and menus of cooks present, the wisdom of cookbook writers.” -Laurie Colwin
I have thought about this quote often and it truly resonates with me. I come from a family of cooks and bakers. I remember watching my great-grandmother make blackberry cobbler and creamed corn. I have learned countless things from my Grandmother and one of my favorite items I own is my moms cookbook.The picture here was taken after a day of cooking with my Mother-in-law, she was teaching me how to make all of her favorite traditional Nicaraguian dishes.
Cooking has made me feel connected to so many that I love, and now its something that I also enjoy with my children.
In the town I grew up in the women regularly and gladly shared recipes. Many families I knew (including mine) all ate Mrs. Deckers Honey Wholewheat Bread. We enjoyed the Andersons molasses cookies and everyone loved my moms pies. True, as each cook made the same recipe they put their own touch on it and thus made them their own, but it was a shared world that I loved.
When I was in college I went to school with a bunch of girls who came from homes equally hospitible and as full of yummy food as the one I grew up in. There was one big difference. Recipes were closely guarded and never shared. And, more than once when I shared a recipe they took credit for it as if they had made it up alone. I was disappointed. Not because I needed credit for the recipe, but because it came from those women, those generations of women who had impacted me and then it felt lost.
I suppose in the world of social media it’s hard to feel original and like something is just yours and so it becomes easier to keep things close instead of share. However, I think we really lose something in the not sharing.
So, whether I get credit at the end of the day or not (and often I mean the women I learned from not getting credit) I am going to share.
I have been asked a lot this weekend about family recipes. Especially for our familys caramel popcorn.
I’m going to be sharing here. Not just recipes, but much of the things that Kyle and I create. I hope they are a blessing to you, and maybe this will be a place where we can re-create that sharing community.
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Thompson House 