Eat Joy

The last of many things my mother-in-law taught me is to specify where mourners should go for a non-religious memorial. She wanted her ashes scattered at Truman Lake in Missouri, where she spent a lot of time fishing. Yes, we made the “sleeps with the fishes” joke…we also told our stories about her and remembered, together, some of the days we shared with her.

She taught me how to make a version of chili that I thought was better than my own mother’s, and cornbread dressing that I thought was almost as good, with hard-boiled eggs chopped up in it instead of raw eggs mixed in to cook. I like to make her “baby plum” cake, from a recipe of her mother’s that calls for baby food plums in the batter, and her cole slaw, which is better than anyone’s.

One time after we’d had a long day of travel, my mother-in-law, whose name was Martha, welcomed us with a big pot of soup that was unlike anything else I’d ever tasted. It was made with cabbage, ground beef, beef broth, bell pepper, onion, grated cheddar, salt and pepper, and cumin. It’s hard to clean up but marvelous to taste.

Between Martha’s death in February and her memorial, this past weekend, I’ve been reading Eat Joy, edited by Natalie Eve Garrett, with sections on “growing pains,” “loss,” “healing,” and “homecoming.” Each essay is by a writer, telling a story about what a certain food means to them, and then there’s a recipe. It’s a good way to remember someone.

My favorite essay is by Claire Messud, about her mother. She quotes her mother as saying, late in life, that “there’s so much of life to get through, once you realize that your dreams won’t come true.” I think that’s something many of us learn from our mothers, that our lives won’t necessarily have a shape, like fictional lives do—that we may be cut off before we reach our big goals, so it’s important to find meaning and pleasure in each day.

Messud’s recipe is for the brownies her mother made. My recipe for the cabbage and beef soup is written in Martha’s beautiful cursive on a sheet of paper from a “Farm&Home Savings” notepad. Mira Jacob’s recipe is for the chai she would make with her mother giving advice like “I always warm the milk separately.” Jacobs says she adds sugar because her mother “disapproves of people adding their own sugar individually (‘Joyless,’ she will say, and she will be right.)”

Do you have recipes that make you remember particular people?