The Recipe Box
The blue, wooden recipe box
Was a summer project in 1964,
When I was ten.
Nailed together into a rectangle with
Almost 90-degree corners,
It held tried-and-true ways to make delicious meals:
Watergate salad, corn pudding, popovers,
Blueberry mace cake, banana pudding
Ahh! The memories of those dishes make me salivate.
The occasions waft through my mind:
Pot-luck dinners, family events, company’s-a-comin meals!
No one was worried about carbs or fat.
Microwaves, insta pots, and air fryers weren’t even day dreams.
Meals took time to make and were eaten at a table with conversations.
What looked like a recipe box was really a time machine
Capturing the flavors of family life.
Cindy Herndon
Your final line sums up what I would otherwise say. Physical recipe boxes are like old daybooks, so filled with smudges, the marks of been-used-and-spilled-upon, and so much more. I had to laugh on seeing the title. Some many years back my daughter decided to ‘update’ my old-timey recipe box. She dumped everything out; but never quite got around to organizing everything. Every now and then I come upon an old index card, thumbed and brown-edged. What a gift and what memories. Thank you so much.
This poem brings back so many memories of looking through my Moms’ collection of recipe books. They seemed magical to me. Thank you! Nice work!
Oh, I love this!
What a lovely piece! Your poem evoked pleasant memories of home and simplicity. Thank you.