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The Best Gift Is the Gift of Food Memories

How to Preserve Your Family Recipes

Sandra Wendel
ILLUMINATION

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Cinnamon Streusel Coffee Cake, author’s photo © Write On Inc

When the world is spinning out of control. When life seems particularly offbeat. If you have the flu and need comfort. Where do you turn? Your refrigerator and your childhood.

Nothing says comfort more than a bowl of grandma’s matzo ball soup, or a slice of her cinnamon streusel coffee cake. What brings people together? Food. Who doesn’t like preparing a brisket with that amazing sauce you remember from Sunday night dinners? Or a crunchy chicken thigh, the one with the baked onion on top?

Family. Food. Memory.

I recall my grandmother asking me what I wanted her to leave me. She was referring to jewelry or china. I said, “Your recipes.” We would often cook together when I was home from college and interested in learning how to make her black bottom pie. Or roll up her strudel, which she’d sent back with me to the dorm, with a tin of toffee cookies and mandelbrate. A slice of home.

Those memories, those recipes, that’s what sticks with us after all these years. I’ll bet you have some from your family.

My grandmother did leave me her recipes in a box stained with spills from who knows what, handwritten, clippings, notes about modifications. I decided to preserve those…

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