TheBanyanTree: Photographs and Memories

[Pam North]

I'm not sure who gave me the idea, or where it came from - it's been more
than twenty years ago!  (Sheesh!!!!  Where *does* the time go?!?!)  But I
bought a photo album, the kind with the lift-up clear pages, to use as a
cookbook.  All those multi-shaped cut-out recipes would always fit
somewhere... big ones, little ones.

I don't use it much.  Okay, I probably haven't opened it in a couple of
years.  But, like this morning, when I decided I'd make blueberry cobbler, I
wanted the recipe I got with blueberries, from the blueberry farm, many,
many years ago.  I was pretty darned sure that I stuck it in those pages.
And I did.  I just had to flip through to find it.

And as I flipped, it felt like a stroll down memory lane, just as if there
had been real family photos under those clear pages.  A lot of the recipes I
never even tried to cook - they just looked good in the magazine and I must
have judged them 'keepers'.   Lots of Hershey recipes (like I don't also
have two Hershey cookbooks!), Nestle, Jello... Bisquick and cake mixes.  Oh,
there are also some 'originals' in those pages.  Like my mom's 'Tunnel
of Fudge' Cake, a big favorite when I was a kid.  And a recipe from my
cousin Linda, 'Bella's Bavarian Cream Cake'.  A story....

I have a very favorite cousin: Sky.  (Last summer, my friend Carla and I
and my son drove all the way to Boston for a cook-out, just because Sky was
going to be there with his family, just returning from three years in
Spain.)  Sky is the youngest of my dad's sister Bette's five kids. Linda was
the oldest.  Well, she may still be, but nobody has heard from her in
years.  And I mean *years*!  Something like 25 of them!  Evidently, she
really hated her mom and so disassociated herself from her.  And all her
siblings and the rest of her family in the process.

But somehow, way back in my early teens, I must have conned her into
becoming a sort of 'pen pal' with me.   (I had LOTS of them back in my youth
- I just *loved* hand-writing letters to family and friends!)  And we
exchanged recipes at least once.  I never made this cake - it just *looked*
overwhelming in my mind, but I've never been able to toss it either.  For
me, it's my one lone connection to a cousin...

So.  This photo album.  I evidently turned my dad onto the idea also,
because when he died, I inherited his as well.  I haven't opened that one
yet.  I know I'll see recipes written in his all-caps print, recipes that he
actually made!  He had a pretty debilitating stroke back in '82, and for
many, many months, he wasn't able to swallow.  After a lot of rehab, and
even hypnosis, he slowly regained that talent, and as he did, he spent hours
and hours in the kitchen creating concoctions that went down 'easier'.  From
there he just grew into something of a 'gourmet cook'!  My friends in my
young Marine Corps days would *beg* to go back and visit my folks with me -
just because they knew that dinner and dessert would be scrumptious!  It
will also have the recipe to tore from the pages of a magazine for "No-Fail
Fudge", and again, his all-caps print across the middle of it:  "Wanna Bet?"

Meanwhile mine...  I've held on to these silly recipes for years.  But I
haven't even opened the album in years!  *Why* hang onto it?!    One page
has the entire back panel from a box of Bisquick!  It didn't help me out at
all this morning when I went looking for the pancake recipe since it wasn't
included on that back panel.  But I did google the recipe in less than a
minute!  Which is what I'm pretty darn sure I could do with a huge
percentage of those recipes hoarded away!

But still...

I found the recipe for 'Miss Jan's Apple Pie'.  Jan was the wife of Don, mom
to Corey and Sheena.  Back when I was first married (the first time!), and
pregnant with my daughter, my (then) husband coached a Little League team,
and Corey was on it.   Jan was a young stay-at-home-military-wife, and she
offered to sit for my new baby when she came.  And Molly was their little
'real-life' doll!  On my way to work, I'd get her out of bed, change her
diaper, and plop her in the car and off we'd go!  Sheena and Jan would pick
her outfit for the morning from the plethora stuffed into her diaper bag,
and she had pictures taken with those kids all the time!  Molly was safe,
and got loads of love and attention from them until we moved when she was
eleven months old.

We moved to South Carolina (when both her parents got orders to the Drill
field), so when Don got orders a year or so later, it was only natural to
invite them to come stay with us while they waited for housing and got
settled.  Jan was white, Don a very dark black.  And I only mention that
because....

By the time they came, I also had a brand new baby boy.  And they moved into
his room.  Don put himself in charge of those middle-of-the-night feedings!
I can still remember that little white baby held up on the shoulders of
Don's darkness.  For some reason it just tickled the heck out of me!

Anyway, Jan was a whiz in the kitchen!  (I remember her showing me how to
levelly measure flour!)  And Jan was used to cooking on a budget.  To this
day my kids still ask for 'Miss Jan's Recipe' as a dinner choice!  That's
it!  Just 'Miss Jan's Recipe'.  She browned hamburger, cooked elbow noodles,
then tossed it all with spaghetti sauce and some mozzarella cheese!  (I
think some folks might refer to this as 'goulash'.)  "What's for dinner?"
"Miss Jan's Recipe".  "Oh good!!"

She was a whiz with the simple stuff.  Her 'Apple Pie' recipe?  Slice up 6
medium apples, and toss them in the pie pan.  Sprinkle a tablespoon sugar
and a table cinnamon on top of the slices.  Mix one cup flour, 1 cup sugar,
3/4 of a cup of melted butter, one egg and 1/2 cup walnuts in a bowl and
'dump' it on top of the apples.  Bake at 350 degrees for 45 minutes, or
until the top crust is golden brown.

They weren't with us for long because once they got there, they found out
Don's orders had been cancelled!  (That's right...the whole family packed up
and moved, only to find out they weren't supposed to be there.  And they
came back to North Carolina!)  As did we a few years later.  By then Jan was
working outside her home, assisting in the elementary school that her kids
attended.  And that my daughter started first grade in.  Everybody there
knew our history.

So, it wasn't surprising, the day I got the call that my daughter had fallen
and gotten hurt, that when I got to the nurse's room and found my kid laying
on the cot with a broken arm, it was Miss Jan that they appointed to drive
to the hospital with us since my child's mother had already had to sit down
once and put her head between her legs to keep from passing out!

Yeah, I gotta hang on to Miss Jan's Apple Pie recipe.

There's a lot of stuff in my life I need to let go of and get toss out.  But
I just don't think I'm ready to toss this 'photo' album yet.

Pam