Comfort Food

With the cooler weather, my interest in cooking has increased. This weekend found me digging through cookbooks and hand-written recipes for old favorites that my mother and grandmother cooked: shrimp-rice casserole; sausage, beans, and greens soup; meatloaf. The food tastes wonderful with the crisp temperatures.

The recipes fuel my nostalgia and imagination. Recipe cards in my grandmother's handwriting often have the note "from Mama" at the top. I never met my great-grandmother, but I've heard some stories. She was a spicy, opinionated woman with a good education, but above all, she was practical. She would have found my kitchen ridiculous with the electric stove, the microwave, and the refrigerator. She kept her ice box until the last ice-delivery service stopped in the 1960s and was never fully convinced that a refrigerator and freezer could be trusted to keep the food from spoiling. I like to imagine that I know her a little because of her recipes.