August 11, 2014

Battle Scarred and Much Loved

If you are like me you have a dedicated drawer  in your kitchen filled with pot holders.  Most cooks do.  And most likely your potholders are battle scarred from the action they have known through the years. Mine sport burn holes, singed edges, stains and various other pock marks that are testimony to the service that they have provided time and again over the years.

On the top of the heap in my potholder drawer are the large oven mitts that I go to time and again.  They provide adequate protection when I reach into an oven to remove a piping hot dish or homemade cake.  Sometimes an errant thumb dips into the mixture, leaving a fresh stain on the potholder's surface.  But always they are ready to be pressed into action at a moment's notice.

Buried deep within that potholder drawer can be found other lesser used relics including the hand loomed squares created by my youngsters, or the cleverly crafted quilted beauties that I purchased at a church bizarre years ago. There's even a silicone hand mitt that actually resembles an odd hand puppet. For some reason I always hesitate to use any of those assorted mitts, reaching instead for the old standards. Could it be because they're most comfortable and reliable?  I suppose. I guess potholders can really tell a lot about a person and each has its own story to tell. 

And so can the tattered and well-used cards in my recipe file or the be-speckled pages of my favorite recipe box.  That box is filled with index cards of recipes, written in my mother's precise hand printing.  Just flipping through each makes me feel close to her when I go in search of a favorite concoction of some sort.  

The pages of my recipe books, on the other hand, sport splotches of batter and splats of other ingredients called for in one recipe or another.  A few of the pages of my Betty Crocker cookbook, in fact, have fallen out and are tucked loosely in.  That book has been with me for most of my adult life and I treasure it.  

But it doesn't bother me one little bit that those books, cards and pot holders are well used and loved.  I imagine that should someone someday inherit all of my recipes files and books, they will come to know which ones are the tastiest and favorites merely by their ragged edges and splattered surfaces. And that's a comforting thought.  

Favorite potholders, recipes and memories are meant to be cherished.  And they all have their own tales to tell.  Listen sometime and you may just hear them speak to you.