Yesterday was a beautiful day for a Recipe Hunt! The weather here was a mild 75 degrees with plenty of sunshine, and very little wind, except for a brief breeze that blew the colorful leaves across my path. I gassed up my black convertible Saturn Sky, and with the rag top down, and my GPS on, I was on the road again. Destination: Back roads of Missouri.
Days like this encourage people to have yard sales, estate sales, garage sales and just about any venue to rid themselves of the “clutter” in their homes. I was hunting recipes. (I almost sound like Elmer Fud!) Those golden old recipe books with yellowed, food stained pages and small handwritten notes that mark a moment in time when someone created something wonderful.
My trip took me to Lexington, Missouri. Lexington is an old Antebellum town set on the banks of the Missouri river. It is a moderately quiet town where everyone knows the business of the day. The historic homes of the mid-to-late 1800s were incredible. Mansion-like, with ornate gingerbread adorning the facades, carriage houses, and sprawling landscapes, these homes were reminiscent of some I had seen in old South. Surely, somewhere in this town I can find some heirloom recipes.
I was excited to find that the beautiful day had encouraged many estate and yard sales. One stop after another, I was searching through stacks of old magazines, library books and watermarked boxes. The people I met were so friendly and always had a wisdom to share. When I told them about my hunt, they confessed to having their own cherished books and hand-written recipe cards from mothers and grandmothers, however, they were not for sale! Most never are, but the people I meet are always willing to tell me the stories about how food played a memorable roll in their families, and every once in a while, they share a family recipe with me. My quest for the day is then satisfied.
After a long day of stopping at one property after another, nearly ready to head home, I spotted a pale-yellow house with a disheveled yard on a one-way street; one shutter hung crookedly and was in much need of a new coat of paint. An elderly lady sat in a rusty lawn chair in the front yard admiring the golden leaves above her head.
As I approached her crumbling driveway, she looked inquisitively at my car. She smiled at me and said, “Come on in, not much left.” After much small talk about the town and its history, I finally asked her if she had any cookbooks or old recipe cards she was willing to sell. (As I saw none on the two nearly empty tables left on the walkway.)
Her response made me want to load her in my car and take her home with me! She smiled again, this time with a slight far-away glaze in her eyes.
“Oh, I have lots of recipes, but I haven’t used them in a long time,” she sighed. ”I raised nine children in this old house, but they’re all grown now and moved away. My husband’s gone, too. I sure cooked ‘em great meals during the day. Most my stuff is in the attic, if you care to take a look.”
She lead me through several corridors to a small doorway with a latched hook. As the plywood door was opened, I encountered a narrow, very steep staircase, leading to the rafters of the home. As I took each step, I could smell the muskiness of the years gone by, as her life’s treasures lay eerily still in this fortress.
Stepping over trunks, hat boxes and vintage toys, she pointed to a dark corner and said, “Over there. That’s where I keep ‘em.”
There were a dozen or so boxes in the area so I asked her, “Which box?” She smiled again and nearly whispered, “All of them.”
That was one of those rare moments when the heavens opened and the angels sang and a ray of light came pouring from the heavens. I know I heard music! (I think it was Elvis!)
As I began digging through the boxes, one after another revealed their cache; hundreds, perhaps a thousand, recipe clippings from newspapers from around the country dating as far back as the 1930s; hundreds of hand-written recipe cards, categorized and neatly filed in labeled tins; cookbooks and magazines from every era. And then I discovered the cookbooks! I think I stopped breathing.
One by one I gently pulled the treasures out of the storage boxes. Julia Childs, Fannie Farmer, Irma Rombauer, classic Betty Crocker, James Beard, they were all there. Yes, Mastering the Art of French Cooking was there, too!
I raised myself from the floor of the dusting attic and put my arms around the aging woman. No words were spoken. There was no need. It was the communication of two souls; one mother to another; one woman to another; one passionate cook to another. She had been a Recipe Hunter, too. And she was ready to entrust her cherished recipes to someone who would allow them to live another generation. She sold them all to me. And I will share them with you.
Yesterday was a beautiful day for a Recipe Hunt! The weather here was a mild 75 degrees with plenty of sunshine, and very little wind, except for a brief breeze that blew the colorful leaves across my path. I gassed up my black convertible Saturn Sky, and with the rag top down, and my GPS on, I was on the road again. Destination: Back roads of Missouri.
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