Recipe Boxes are Powerful Things

 “Life is so brief that we should not glance either too far backwards or forwards…therefore study how to fix our happiness in our glass and in our plate.”- Grimod de la Reynière

 There’s a skeleton in my closet—or, more accurately, a recipe box.  A recipe box that I’ve kept unopened in a cabinet since my mom passed away. I moved it from Ohio to Illinois, to Arizona and finally to Tennessee, shuffling it around, unable to sift through the recipes but unwilling to part with it. Finally today, I pulled the box down off the shelf. It's just a plastic index card box, a treasured little box of recipes that my mom had, a fixture of the kitchen counter of my youth.  I finally got to the point where I could open it and run my fingers through the cards. The hand writing, the notes and the food memories were all so overwhelming.

 It holds droves of my mothers life; her handwriting, neat and perfect, my grandmothers severe slanted cursive, on those little recipe cards that reads, "from the kitchen of."  The notes she jotted in the corners, the time worn, tissue thin recipes that I grew up with, faded with time, care-worn and beloved. Memories of years of Sunday dinners, picnics, potluck dinners, the chicken and dumplings she made when the weather was dreary. The "Danny Crisp" chicken that she made every Tuesday when my brothers friend would join us for dinner. Thanksgiving and Christmas recipes that probably belonged to her mother's mother. I also found some mystery recipes and some just plain mysteries. Why is the word “relax” printed on the back of a cookie recipe? It was a wonderful  portal into her world. The love with which she had fed her family all those years was palpable in the recipe box’s greasy, smudged index cards.

Recipes are funny things.  They carry so much with them.  Recipes are so much more than words on a page.  There are some we love not because they are the best, but because they are what we grew up with and fold in memories. 

Autumn Burned Brightly

"Autumn burned brightly, a running flame through the hills, a torch flung to the trees."- Faith Baldwin

What a blessing it is to live in Middle Tennessee! Autumn in these hills is quite a spectacle!  Vibrant reds, oranges, yellows and browns, and I've been able to witness it for 3 years!

I love the chorus of color that accompanies the church steeples here as they sing the praises of another glorious fall day.  

After a few days of beautiful weather, it didn't take long before I was doing what I love to do, seeking out the back roads and the countryside.  Every turn brings a new surprise, even for an experienced leaf peeper like me.  

 

The people who work the land here shaped it into a fascinating mix of old and new that is uniquely Middle Tennessee.  Thanks to the abundance of rocks that seems to sprout relentlessly from the land, people built miles and miles of picturesque stone walls.

 

Some of these walls guide you along idyllic country roads, others disappear into the new growth woodlands, croplands and pastures.  

I love how the blazing trees and the red barn vie for attention.  

 

Franklin, Tennessee, a beautiful place to put down roots.