Snow days and baking…they go together like PB & J <3

We are having an “ice” day here in the middle of the U.S. of A. today.  Rain has been falling and hitting the already frozen ground and while it looks like wet pavement, it is really just a solid sheet of slippery surface that would take you out in a split second. 

So we are housebound yet again. And of course, being low on milk, I used the last of it to make cinnamon rolls. Don’t ask. It’s a Midwest thing. 

I pulled out the recipe box featured in the photo above and dug through the “bread” section for Russ’s mom’s cinnamon rolls and my heart is broken. I can’t find it.

I’m sure it was pulled at some point, used for the zillionth time and stuck somewhere to be filed. Oh, I will find it someday. Nothing gets pitched in this house, but I am sad to see it AWOL. 

This recipe box was a wedding shower gift from my mom. Ironically, the woman didn’t enjoy cooking that much. But she knew I did. So she wrote family members, former teachers, friends who had me for meals and snacks and asked them to hand write some favorite recipes. Then she found photos of me in the kitchen as a child and decoupaged an old file box. 

I can print any number of recipes off the internet these days and Lord knows, I have enough cookbooks in my collection to keep us well fed for decades. But this box means the world to me. In it I have, in their own handwriting, recipes from people who no longer walk with us. I have added recipes from friends and other family over the years and it is a treasure. 

My dad’s “Cinnamon Goo” recipe (yes, my father signed his recipe to me “Carl, Jr.”), along with his pancakes are not only filled with his character, they were originals he made up. Directions like, “mix well, but don’t beat the life out of it” are so him, they still make me smile. 

Jessie Mansell was my playmate for a number of Airstream travel trips out west when I was growing up. Jessie was in her 70’s at least and would travel with her daughter and son-in-law, who were cronies of my parents. They would be off doing their trailer activities and I hung out with Jessie.

She smoked like a chimney and loved to play cards. I adored her. She would start out laughing and then get to coughing as she winced one eye to keep the blue plume of smoke out of it. My mother, who hated cigarettes, somehow felt this was the best person for me to be with and she was right. Jessie was my “summer grandma” and she loved me like her own.

I was talking to a friend this week who was bemoaning the fact that she was having trouble tracking down recipe cards. We also shared a similar grief over the lack of handwritten notes these days. While stamps are getting pretty pricey, I will avow that a handwritten note does a whole lot of good to a body who has walked out to the mailbox on a cold day. 

We might call them dying arts, but we can certainly revive them. Be part of the resistance to AI and letting computers take over our thinking. Write a note, share a recipe HANDWRITTEN on a card. Take a little extra time to be intentional in passing your words along in a way that just might have a lasting impression <3 

Stay warm. 

Stay safe. 

You are dearly loved <3