Recipe cards

 
If you remember the days when you asked a friend for a recipe and received a hand-written 3x5 lined note card, you're probably from my generation. I hope you saved them, because apparently they are now vintage.

Like me, you probably have them tucked away in a recipe box, stained and yellowed from years on your kitchen counter, with scribbled notes on who liked it and what you did differently. The recipe cards were usually signed by the giver, who usually felt honored to share.

Great Granny Lola Beth Tunnell's recipe in her own handwriting
for 7-Up Pound Cake
has to be at least 50 plus years old!

For the younger readers, you most likely have a designated folder on your desktop or smart phone with recipes from epicurious.com, foodnetworktv.com, Cookingchanneltv.com, Marthastewart.com, or a favorite food blog. You have pinned a few beautiful culinary creations on Pinterest with plans to make them one day. I am personally addicted to Pinterest, and have to limit my time on this site, lest the day disappear with nothing but pinning beautiful things having been done! When my son cooks, he always has his laptop or IPad open, having quickly searched for the perfect recipe online, which is often accompanied by video instructions. In one quick search, he can access thousands of recipes worldwide, until he finds the exact one he prefers. He does read cookbooks, but usually only in my kitchen. Gone are the days of searching through cookbook indexes and reading pages of author notes and guidelines. With one click I just located and printed my favorite croissant recipe, from americastestkitchen.com....amazing if you ask me.

My messy cookbook shelf and my prized recipe binder.

You will notice from reading my blog, that I still refer to handwritten recipes given to me by my mother, my mother-in-law, and my friends. I used to have a small box to store them in, but I have moved on to a small ringed binder for my day-to-day favorites, and 8 larger ringed binders for my collections over the years. I can make all of the day-to-day ones by heart, but I love opening the small binder and seeing my mother's or mother-in-law's beautiful cursive handwriting. I enjoy reading the scribbled notes that I have added to some recipes over the years--sort of a culinary trail from my inexperienced cooking days as a young girl to my confidence as an accomplished older cook.

The beef goulash recipe is from the 1970's--think I made it once!

My work friend's recipe for Swedish Meatballs, my mother's favorite Sock-It-To-Me Cake (c1975),
Betty's basic recipe for a variety of cream pie fillings,
and Marsha's wonderful step-father's Bill's $25 award winning cornbread recipe.

I also intend to pass on my personal binders full of notes, stains
and bits of past recipe attempts covering each page.

I admire friend's recipe books like others admire old family photo albums and record vinyls!

One of my dear friends keeps her family recipes in a lined school workbook, just like her mother used to do. Each recipe is handwritten in beautiful block print and cursive. Some are written in English; some are printed in Spanish; some Italian--lucky girl is multilingual. I can translate enough of the words to know what the recipe is about, but the care with which each recipe is preserved is something to be applauded.

Love the shadow of the hand over my friend's beautiful handwriting.
Very good recipe also!

My own handwriting has definitely suffered from so many years of typing my thoughts, but I try to remind myself to preserve this skill, if only for my future grandchildren to know what handwriting was all about. I was distraught when I learned that our public schools now only offer cursive as an elective in third grade! I was so thrilled as a third-grader that I could bring home that special lined paper with letters to trace all the beautiful swirls and circles into a perfectly handwritten word. I would sit at the kitchen table going over and over with my cartridge ink pen until I mastered each letter. When the A+"Perfect" was written at the top of my pages, I couldn't wait to get home and share my accomplishment with my mother. The cartridge ink pen was only used for cursive school work, because cartridges were expensive; but my best friend Marsha and I thought we were just too darn cool writing our homework sheets in ink instead of pencil!

Marsha's grandmother's Easy Lemon Pie recipe is actually my oldest recipe in my own handwriting.
It dates back to our elementary school years together as BFFs.
It's a simple no-bake recipe.
The last time we were together she had made one--
just for me.

My childhood best friend Marsha passed away last year.

I made this remembrance card for her mom,
with a poem we had read at my mother's funeral.
Marsha's mother and father and my mother and father were lifelong best friend--
we both took credit for introducing them!

I think one of the reasons I admire cookbook author Susan Branch, other than she is just so sweet, real, and a beautiful writer, is that she actually takes the time to write her books in her own handwriting. Her penmanship must have won her numerous A+s in elementary school. I also find it charming that she still uses lined 3x5 cards to write out recipes (and sells beautifully decorated sets on her website susanbranch.com). Susan also has an old recipe box with tattered cards in her kitchen. Kindred spirits. Some things just need to be preserved and for me Susan is a master at preserving the art of expressive thought in one's own handwriting.

As I think about my own handwriting, I know it has changed over the years by the pressure of time and the new digital world. My childish swirls and loops occasionally slip into a thank you or birthday card signature. Impatiently, I sign my name on the grocery store monitor in unrecognizable scribbles. Who really cares what it looks like anyway, I reason in a hurry to pay. Rarely do I write out a personal check anymore; rather, I pay online with a credit card and all the seller really wants is my 4-digit security code, not my beautiful signature. Ah--what a word: signature. It really used to mean something to sign your name--your John Hancock.

My kitchen chalkboard is a fun way to announce dinner,
welcome visitors or display my lack of artistic skill.

Just look in the antique stores at the piles of handwritten invoices, postcards with simple addresses and descriptive updates on travels, and birth and marriage records which were protected in family bibles along with names beautifully written on family trees. Names are sometimes written on the backs of photographs to let the next generation know who this person was....makes me sad when there is no name and the black and white images stare at you wanting to be recognized. Before texting, before electronic check writing, before Ancestry.com, the art of the pen served a very important communications purpose that will fade into the future as old-fashioned and out-of-date. Personal signatures will probably disappear at some point. Like cursive, you will elect to sign your name to documents. Some of us will still cling to the past and send post cards and write Post-It notes to stick on our refrigerator doors so we will remember to get milk and paper towels. Alas, even I have begun to use Notes on the IPhone for grocery shopping lists and reminders, and scan recipes to e-mail to friends. It's all about balance, I suppose.

A very tiny sweet note from my friend Gretchen
accompanying one of her beautiful flower arrangements.

I do still enjoy taking the time to write notes on cards thanking friends or family for a gift or wonderful meal. I know we sometimes send a quick e-mail, text or phone message; but it's just not the same as walking to your outside mailbox and discovering a card hand-addressed to Debbie Tunnell, address, city, state, zip code. I can't wait to open mail from a friend. Rarely is it an invitation anymore; they would have used e-invite for anything but a wedding, birth, or graduation. Usually it's a thank you note or a birthday card, which I happily display on my kitchen side table.

My mother must have saved every card and letter she ever received! When she passed away, it became my job to sort through all of them--sweet memories of her children writing cards to her as little ones, of their children writing to Grandma and Grandpa, Happy Anniversary notes from fifty-two years of marriage from my dad, birthday wishes, Mother's Day cards, Christmas greetings--all were saved.

At first it seemed silly to keep so many years of cards, but as I sorted them into batches for each sibling, grandchild or friend, I was thankful that we got to enjoy small moments of her life that made her happy once again. There was a Happy Mother's Day card from her brother sent from Europe during World War II, a Communion Card from her favorite nun at St. Theresa's Home where she lived during the Depression, and sweet vintage Valentine's from childhood friends. A diary from her sister accompanied letters of homesickness from her three boot camp Naval sons during Vietnam. She had even saved letters written during my first years living far away on the East Coast--descriptive attempts to show my emerging maturity, along with the sweetest of cards that I had even forgotten sending; each filled with tiny pencil-drawn images of hearts, flowers, fighting G.I. Joe soldiers, airplanes, shooting tanks, and hand tracings of her little grandsons tiny fingers. Before me was not only a happy history of my mother's childhood and adult life, but part of my life, preserved on paper in my handwriting and that of my young sons. Not so silly after all Helen Elizabeth.  

One of my favorite finds in my mother's stacks of notes was a brief sentence written in my father's handwriting on the back of an envelope containing the electric bill:  Hon--gone to the store-back soon, love, Andy. A quiet man, that was about as emotionally expressive as I ever remember him to be. But in a few strokes of a pen, he managed to capture the one thought that would stay with my mother forever.....love, Andy.

What are your thoughts on preserving the art of pen and paper? Do you still share recipes by hand?  Below are a few photos of handwritten notes that I'm definitely keeping! For now, I'm off to write a thank you card to my sweet friend Feng, for her wonderful home cooked dinner and great conversation during my trip to Princeton last week. An e-mail would never do!

My sweet friend Feng made me a wonderful Chinese dinner with all my favorites!

Beautiful egg drop soup, chicken and broccoli, Chinese green beans, cold sesame noodles,
and the most wonderful lobster with ginger and scallions. And she remember my diet DP!
Well worth a hand-written note don't you think?

My niece's sweet story about me written in her beautiful cursive last year.
 Thank you Julia.

My niece Erin got the message across about doing your own dishes
at our family reunion in Hilton Head.
GMA (gammah) is what her grandchildren call my sister-in-law Terry.

One of the best fall dessert bar recipes......
but who was Susan L. Larsen????

I hope this inspires you to sit down and put on paper with your favorite pen, thoughts of thank you and happiest of birthdays to your friends and family or just to go through your recipe box! Recently, I found the note below from our son Chris thanking his dad for joining him in Tokyo for a brief visit. Much better than an e-mail don't you think? I use it as a bookmark and a daily reminder of Chris and why pen to paper is still so wonderful!

Love you too Chris!