We are of an age that accumulated recipes from our relatives that were often in a collection sponsored by some local group or community (those plastic bound spirals) that may be disappearing into the ether of old books and note-cards. They often contained recipes/memories of those we knew who are no longer here. These things bring back many memories, both of the authors and the gastronomically delight.
I have had numerous occasions of acquiring a box full of recipes laboriously ordered in whatever the owner needed to reference them. It was obviously something of value to them. But it was also just as laborious to value them as something to experiment with. Not enough time, without specific intent- as to how to combine some vegetable with some other exotic ingredient- to try them out, let alone search for them.
These things are often lost to the winds of time.
The return is to those recipes that we remember in some fashion; in that spiral book or those note-cards (often in their hand) that we still have. These are the things that we call "comfort foods". Almost as good as stirring that bowl with our Mother at our side.
Okay, this is a stretch to something similar but I think as equally important. It is with those songs in the past that moved us in so similar a fashion-like a recipe. Usually at the time of our transition to things beyond ourselves, our youth to adulthood. There are those memories of "that song" that moved us to others- a group of other people, our loves, our world.
We need to return to those understandings of loving memories and help those who are now there.
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