The Nostalgia of a Community Cookbook
By Abby Belbeck
Almost 20 years ago, my sister-in-law gave me a cookbook. One of those projects where all the church ladies had gathered to bring their best recipes for some fundraiser or another. I was newly married and eager to jump into cooking since this was my first time with a kitchen of my own in which to experiment. I grew up in a home where my mother did not enjoy cooking but had a large number of mouths to feed. We ate the same five meals for my entire childhood. I had no experience in the kitchen but was undaunted. I just wanted to learn how to make yummy meals for my new family. My sister in law was a phenomenal cook and I soaked up all the advice from her that I could get. I didn’t know any of the other women that contributed to that cookbook. But I knew that whatever she made was always delicious. I would flip through that cookbook and test out recipes sight unseen. You just had to read the ingredients and decide whether they sounded good. I reveled in the freedom of experimenting, of trying a recipe that was a dud, of trying something else and finding a new favorite.
None of these recipes were fancy. Margarine ruled supreme. These were just meant to be yummy foods to feed growing families. Miniature cheesy meatloaves, ten different kinds of lasagna, poppy seed chicken, briskets, and pot roasts all lovingly transcribed with the contributor’s name listed out beside it. I attempted so many of those recipes and avoided others. (I will never understand the South’s obsession with jello salad). What this cookbook did was help me find my feet in the kitchen. I grew and changed as a cook. It helped me learn what I liked. What I didn’t. And what I could pull off in the kitchen. And as I grew as a cook so did my family, eventually adding children to the mix.
Pretty soon The Pioneer Woman came along and everyone started cooking her recipes (who else still makes her infamous cinnamon rolls?) and I began to find inspiration on the pages of the internet instead of in a cookbook. Pinterest changed everything for me because here were not only endless recipes to peruse one by one but they also came with incredible food photography so I could see what it looked like. I still have recipes pinned to my boards that I have never made, and maybe never will, waiting for the right day or for the blog that originally posted it to expire.
I have noticed a change in the way that I cook lately. I’ve lost the joy of discovery. The algorithm feeds me the same variations of the same recipes as it has for the last decade. Truthfully, I am bored of cooking and especially bored of eating the same old foods.
We recently lost my sister in law to a short and desperate battle with cancer. And one of the areas that I miss her most is in the kitchen. I have that old community cookbook in front of me now. The book opens directly my old favorites, their pages grease-splattered and crinkled with use and moisture. As I flip through and come across an old recipe I made when I was first married, or her name in the margins, I am reminded of a different time. A time when the algorithm didn’t rule our lives. A time when you dived into a recipe not because it had a beautifully styled photograph but because you had all the ingredients on hand. A time when a community of cooks came together to share their best for a good cause.
What is this post doing on a site about books you might ask? Our book club pick for April, The Funeral Ladies of Ellerie County, features a group of women, cooks, who come together to make a community cookbook to fundraise for one of their own. And it reminds me not only of my own such cookbook but also of my reading life.
Too often I can get caught in the endless scroll of someone else’s beautifully styled book posts. Or find myself in awe of how many books some influencer managed to read this year (if they’re even telling the truth). Or to only know about the books that are making a splash on social media. And that is a boring reading life, one dictated by an algorithm that feeds me what it thinks I want only because I paused too long over a reel. I want to go back to the time when I read a book based on an enticing phrase on the back cover copy. Or based on the recommendation of a good friend. Or when I picked up a book from my TBR pile because now all of a sudden it’s the right time.
We have more choices now than ever when it comes to recipes to try or books to read, and yet, somehow, inexplicably, it feels like less. Maybe this is all nostalgia talking, but it shouldn’t be this hard, right? It didn’t used to be this hard. Maybe the solution to the modern problems we face isn’t found on a little screen in our hands, but in the pages of an old cookbook, or in the community that supports us in a crisis, or in a book someone hands us and says, “You have to read this. Just trust me.”
Do you have one of these community cookbooks? If so what is your favorite recipe?
have a shelf filled with these cookbooks. They include recipes of my mom’s and dear friends from the different places we have lived. Lost mom in 1982. She was 55. She loved us well with planned dinners of recipes handwritten or typed and collected on cards from friends.
I’m so sorry for your loss. Recipes sure do bring those loving memories close.
I, too, am very sorry for your loss. I miss my inlaws so much!
Two things to share. First I have Methodist women’s cookbooks from 1950 to 2015. From Springfield Illinois to Scottsdale AZ. Second, this past Thanksgiving, the sisters and SIL laid down the law to the 20s and 30s, single, coupled, or married they were required to bring adult dishes to Thanksgiving. They outdid themselves! Pretty sure Pinterest was overrepresented but they were so proud of their dishes. Cousins coordinated some appetizers, gourmet desserts. Recipes were shared.
It is love within a family of sharing that builds those bonds.