Recipes

Recently, as I was making banana bread from a tried and true recipe, I couldn't help but remember an idea my mother put forward. Good cook that she was, she maintained her secret lay in the ability to simply follow a recipe. I now suspect it was her way of apologizing for banishing me from the kitchen when she cooked. 

Recipes

Directions for apricot souffle

or a quick cassoulet,

sticky buns, peach pies

and even oven baked French Fries.

"If you can read," assured my mother,

"you can cook." And with that she

handed me a daunting tome,

an unopened book free of any dog-eared

pages or telltale drips that might guide

this new bride on a lifelong journey.

                            *

Decades later with both covers gone,

batter spots and sauce spills speckling

the pages, it dwells unused on a shelf.

Too many gelatin concoctions,

too heavy on the cream and butter,

too old school. And yet I cannot trash it

for what it imparts: memories

of a gift given from my mother's heart.

Marilyn Aschoff Mellor