I lost my mother recently and you really don’t know what that feels like until it happens to you. I always felt so badly for those that had lost their mothers, but you don’t realize the chunk of your heart that is taken away until your mother is taken away. There is such a hole in my heart that I doubt will ever truly mend.
My mother was a stay at home mom that cooked and baked constantly. Our cookie jar was always filled with homemade cookies, and my friends would go straight to the jar when they would come to my house. My mother always cooked from her Betty Crocker cookbook that she received as a wedding gift and giving me one for my wedding was her most important task. She cherished that book so much and felt it was so important for me to have one as well. As I have said in previous blogs, my Betty Crocker cookbook is like gold to me. Mine is missing the cover and the pages are stained and sticky from my years of use, as is my mother’s.
As a child I was always looking through her cookbook as it was pretty much always out. I could never get enough of the pictures and would often help my mother bake from that beloved cookbook. She is the reason for my love of baking. I always knew that book was special, but never knew exactly how special until she passed away and my father gave it to me. I haven’t looked through that book since I was living at home with my parents. Sometimes I would ask her to give me certain recipes since they were no longer included in my updated version of the cookbook, but I had not physically seen it in years.
With its ripped spine and how my mother had covered it with a green and white 70’s shelf paper. That book is my mother. That book is the mother I remember so fondly, the mother that was home every day with me as a child and putting a smile on my face with those foods. While it is devastatingly hard to look through right now, I hope that my children remember these wonderful things about me. The foods I made to make them smile. I never realized how powerful food can be until now.
The goal of starting my blog and sharing my favorite recipes was in hopes of making other people’s families as happy as my family has been. Despite the fact that I cry every time I even glance at my mother’s cookbook, I am going to start making her favorite recipes and share them with all of you as a tribute to her. Many of these recipes aren’t even available on-line. While she hadn’t even made most of these recipes in years, I remember them so well. The Chicken Croquettes, Turkey a la King, the birthday cakes with marshmallow animals sitting on top of the green food color dyed coconut, the Boston Creme Pie….
I hope my mother knew how important all her cooking and baking was to me. I hope she is proud of me for not only continuing that cooking and baking for my family, but for making her recipes to constantly remember her. I love you Mom.
