Tradition, love, and recipes

My mom found it, while spring cleaning. We have been talking about it for a while. Oh, how we’ve longed for a cool, dense wedge of lemon pound cake. My deceased uncle was thought to be the last person in the family to have the recipe in his possession. My mom and I both have tried to duplicate the recipe, but have never quite mastered it. All the recipes we have tried never compared. Too much lemon. Not enough lemon. But, at last we’ve got the original family Lemon Pound Cake recipe.

I’ve been thinking and talking a lot about food lately. It’s ironic to me a culture so obsessed with food is so disconnected from it.  The only real connection we have to food is the act of -- eating.  More often than not, unfortunately, we eat from boxes or restaurants. Gone are the days of cooking. Really cooking. Like you know from scratch?  Peel the potatoes. Zest the lemons. Cut the whole fryer. Oops, I’m off on a tangent.

Think a minute about one of your favorite family dishes. Ever wonder who started making the dish? Does the dish have cultural significance? There's often stories tied to dishes and how they came about. Some recipes may have been by accident. Some creations very deliberate. Either way there's usually a story. A story from your mother's, mother. A story from your great aunt. It's more than food, it's tradition. It's love. If we stop preparing family recipes how will they live on?

I’m afraid at the rate we’re going: Eating from boxes and restaurants. We are in jeopardy of losing family dishes and recipes. Sure, I can go to the internet and find another recipe for Hot Water Cornbread, but it won’t be my great, great grandmother’s Hot Water Cornbread.  There’s a lot more than our health at stake by not preparing, cooking, and eating meals at home.

We are in jeopardy of losing generations of tradition. Pulling through a fast food restaurant and handing your child a bagged meal is quite different than cooking and enjoying a sit down meal at home. What will your children remember from your kitchen? What recipes will you pass down?

Cooking and eating is more than just a mindless past time. There is tradition and love in food and in recipes.

Now, that we've found the family Lemon Pound Cake recipe. I’ve made several copies of the original and retyped it for safe keeping. I gave my mom a copy, my daughter a copy, and our family Lemon Pound Cake recipe will live on. Good save, mom. Good save.

Bonus: On the other side of the page was a Zucchini Bread recipe.